Unmasking hiring biases [1/2]: Fundamental Practices to prepare your workspace and processes

In the realm of hiring and talent acquisition, cognitive biases can subtly and significantly influence the interviewing process, often leading to skewed assessments and potentially flawed hiring decisions. Cognitive biases are systematic patterns of deviation from rationality in judgment, leading to conclusions about people and situations being reached unfairly. Personal preferences about the candidate’s previous employer, current team composition, urgency to fill the role, and a long list of other mental shortcuts impact our judgment and can unconsciously shape our perceptions and decisions.

This series explores:

• Part 1: General strategies to prepare yourself and your processes for general bias identification and mitigation

• Part 2 (coming soon): A comprehensive list of common biases explained in detail and specific strategies for interrupting them

Fundamental practices to prepare the ground for avoiding biases

Disrupting the effects of bias in a job interview requires a structured, objective, conscious, and proactive approach. Implementing these strategies can help improve decision-making and ensure a more objective and fair assessment of candidates and hiring decisions.

Preparing a self-aware and Inclusive Culture

Self-awareness and reflection

• Reflect on your own biases and understand how they influence your perceptions and decisions.

• Consider how your cultural background and personal experiences shape your views.

• Acknowledge the potential for this bias and reflect on personal beliefs and assumptions before the interview process begins.

• Encourage self-reflection and awareness of personal biases before and after interviews.

Training and Awareness

• Participate in training programs, take courses, or watch videos to learn about and recognize various cognitive biases. YouTube can be a good resource.

• Participate in diversity, equity, and inclusion training programs.

• Learn strategies to mitigate these biases in decision-making processes. More on this will come in the next post in this series.

• Read on biases (the links are to read for free in Audible with a free trial)

  • ”Thinking, Fast and Slow" by Daniel Kahneman. This book comprehensively explores the two systems of thought: fast, intuitive thinking and slow, deliberate thinking. Kahneman, a Nobel Prize-winning psychologist, explains how cognitive biases arise and affect decision-making, including in hiring.

  • "The Undoing Project: A Friendship That Changed Our Minds" by Michael Lewis. This book chronicles the collaboration between Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, whose work on cognitive biases revolutionized the understanding of human decision-making. It provides valuable insights into how biases can impact hiring decisions.

  • "Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions" by Dan Ariely. Ariely explores the irrational behaviors and biases that affect our decisions. His insights can help hiring managers recognize and mitigate irrational biases in the hiring process.

  • "Blindspot: Hidden Biases of Good People" by Mahzarin R. Banaji and Anthony G. Greenwald delves into implicit biases and how they unconsciously influence our perceptions and decisions. It's particularly relevant for understanding and addressing hidden biases in hiring.

  • "The Power of Noticing: What the Best Leaders See" by Max H. Bazerman focuses on how leaders can improve their decision-making by being more aware of cognitive biases and offers practical strategies for noticing and mitigating biases in various contexts, including hiring.

  • "The Art of Thinking Clearly" by Rolf Dobelli is a collection of short chapters on cognitive biases and logical fallacies. It is a practical guide for recognizing and avoiding biases in everyday decision-making, including hiring.

• Educate yourself on different cultures, traditions, and perspectives. A good book on this is The Culture Map by Erin Meyer

Inclusive Practices

Promote and practice inclusivity in your personal and professional life, and create environments where diverse voices are heard and respected.

• Diverse Hiring Practices: Implement inclusive hiring methods. Think about balance in your sourcing, every step of the funnel, and the promotion process.

• Mentorship and Support: Mentor individuals from underrepresented groups.

• Equal Opportunities: Ensure equal career development opportunities.

• Inclusive Communication: Encourage open and respectful communication.

• Flexible Work Policies: Implement flexible arrangements to accommodate different needs.

• Accessibility: Make the workplace accessible to all.

• Celebrate Diversity: Recognize and celebrate diverse cultural and religious events.

• Feedback Mechanisms: Establish channels for feedback on inclusion efforts.

• Measure Progress: Set and measure diversity goals regularly.

• Stay Committed: Demonstrate a long-term commitment to inclusivity, continuously learning and adapting strategies.

Prepare your interview processes

Structured Interviews

• Develop a clear and detailed job description outlining the required skills and qualifications.

• Develop a set of standardized questions that focus on job-relevant skills and competencies rather than personal preferences or values.

• Ensure these questions are designed to assess the candidate's qualifications objectively.

• Use consistent questions for all candidates to ensure a fair comparison.

Objective Criteria

• Creating structured approaches to decision-making, such as checklists or decision matrices, can help ensure that emotional responses are replaced with factual analysis.

• Utilize leveling guidelines for hiring and promotion audit guidelines during promotion decisions. 

• Create clear, objective assessment criteria for evaluating candidates based on the job's specific requirements.

• Define calibration guidelines per competence to assess candidate responses with a clear, predefined idea of good or bad behaviors.

• Ensure that these criteria are inclusive and consider multiple perspectives.

• Rate each candidate against these criteria consistently rather than relying on overall or subjective impressions.

• Where possible, anonymize parts of the application process to focus on skills and experience rather than personal attributes or assumed preferences. For example, it is controversial, but the phone screener or interviewer doesn't need to be familiar with the candidate’s CV before the interview, as it can create bias. Your questions will be for the role, not for the candidate. 

To help structure your objective criteria, if you are in the software development industry, you may find useful my last article:

Mapping Your Journey: Understanding Software Engineering Career Levels and Expectations

Seek diverse perspectives

• Involve multiple interviewers from different backgrounds in the hiring process, including industries, teams, levels of experience, gender, etc, to gain diverse perspectives and provide a balanced evaluation of each candidate.

• Engage with people from different backgrounds, cultures, and experiences to broaden your perspective while defining your process.

• Seek out and value diverse viewpoints in discussions and decision-making processes.

During the interview

Note-taking and documentation

• Take detailed notes during the interview, focusing on specific answers and behaviors related to job performance and using the language stated in your calibration guides.

• Curate notes objectively, separating facts from personal impressions.

Follow-up questions to challenge assumptions

• Ask follow-up questions to probe deeper into responses and clarify any assumptions. You may want to prepare a list of likely follow up question to probe and challenge. In most cases the answer will hint you the follow up question, but also you want to make sure you don’t forget important, necesarry ones.

• Ensure you understand the context and specifics behind each answer. Again do this by asking more questions to narrow down the context and eliminate blind spots. Do not assume anything, even when you may think your assumtion can be the only possible one, it may be wrong.

• Challenge yourself as well as the interviewer. Try to disconfirm your first impressions. You can make up your mind in the first minutes of the interview. Ask questions to try to prove your first impression wrong.

• Actively question and challenge stereotypes and biased statements when you encounter them.

• Encourage others to provide facts, evidence, or examples to support their claims.

After the interview

Panel debriefing and data-driven decisions

• Debrief with all the interviewers.

• Discuss each candidate's responses collectively and compare evaluations to mitigate individual biases.

• Rely on data and evidence rather than assumptions or stereotypes.

• Analyze both supporting and dissenting data to form a balanced view.

• Engage with people from different backgrounds, cultures, and experiences to broaden your perspective while defining your process.

• Seek out and value diverse viewpoints in discussions and decision-making processes.

• Feedback should be objective, job-related, and focused on the candidate’s demonstration of the job-related knowledge, skills, and experiences required for the position.

• If someone isn’t able to share specifics about what the individual said or did to form the interviewer's opinion, then be careful whether to include that feedback in the decision process.

• Start seeking input from lower-ranking or less senior panel members so they can express their opinions without getting biased by the leader or feeling discouraged from speaking up if they have opposing opinions.  

Feedback and Continuous Calibration and Improvement

• Regularly review and calibrate your interview process to ensure it remains fair and unbiased.

• Seek feedback from other interviewers and candidates about the interview process and decisions to identify any biases that may have influenced outcomes and potential areas for improvement.

• Continuously review and adjust interview practices to ensure fairness and objectivity.

• Regularly review and update your practices to ensure they remain unbiased and inclusive.

• Seek feedback from colleagues and be open to making changes based on new insights and understanding.

Conclusion

Removing biases from any of your processes, such as hiring, is not a reactive action but a series of proactive and consistent habits and approaches to foster a culture, awareness, mindsets, and preparation that will enable you to make the best and more objective decisions.

Implementing some of these strategies will help ensure a more objective and fair assessment of candidates and hiring decisions, fostering a more inclusive and equitable environment.

💡 You can go deeper and learn about specific biases in the second part of this series.

Unmasking hiring biases [2/2]: The Usual Suspects. 10 common biases in hiring and how to mitigate them