My coaching client is searching for a job.
We devised a game plan, and have been working on it.
I don’t teach my job-seeking clients to apply via job boards, but there is no harm in using it as an extra step.
My client recently applied with a company via a job board.
Before submitting their resume, they were met with the following instruction: “please remove your name, email and all other personal identifying information before you apply. This helps us remove unconscious bias during the resume review process so we can focus on what you’ve done above all else.”
I had to remove all personal information from my client’s resume (which I’d created) for them to use for this application.
This is called Anonymous Hiring, aka The Blind Hiring Process.
In an effort to combat discrimination and increase diversity, companies ask job seekers to hide their identifying information when submitting job applications. Some companies interview via chat or disguised voice calls.
What exactly does “blind” hiring accomplish?
Is diversity and inclusivity really achieved this way?
Is diversity and inclusivity even what these companies want?
Do these companies realize that certain kinds of biases actually help select better suited candidates?
And, do the companies who implement The Blind Hiring Process actually understand how unconscious biases work?
I have to ask, because if they answered the above questions honestly, this approach to hiring would have never been invented.
Bias is a natural inclination for or against an idea, object, group or an individual. Biases are learned and highly dependent on variables like a person's socioeconomic status, ethnicity, race, education etc.
Biases are often ingrained in us from childhood. We absorb them from our families, society and institutions around us. Unconscious biases color our emotions, thoughts and behavior in daily situations. On the positive spectrum, we gain a sense of identity and safety through biases. When taken to the extreme, biases can create an “us-versus-them” mentality and induce harmful prejudices.
There are myriad of biases; here are examples of a few:
Authority bias - giving an idea or opinion more weight if it’s provided by an authority figure
Affinity bias - connecting with people with similar backgrounds, experiences and interests
Beauty bias - beliefs that attractive people are more qualified, competent or successful
Confirmation bias - making conclusions about a person based on your personal beliefs and prejudices
Conformity bias - tendency to act similar to the people around you regardless of your own beliefs, aka peer pressure
Nonverbal bias - basing decisions and opinions on body language and nonverbal cues
We all have some degree of bias and generally cannot be without them. It’s human nature to assign a judgement based on first impressions. We all have a lifetime of conditioning by families, schools, religious institutions and media to support their biases.
The Blind Hiring System is mostly used in pre-screening stages when applicants’ data is compiled and compared to pre-set benchmarks for each role.
This practice may be considered well-meaning (often it’s not), but it is not well thought out.
In theory, removing all personal data from resumes and judging candidates solely based on their experience and hard skills leads to unbiased hiring, but in reality it does not.
Here is why The Blind Hiring is misguided, problematic and dangerous:
1 - Unconscious bias can not be removed by an unconscious system.
You can have an unbiased feeder, but when the applicant makes it through initial pre-screening stages, they will still have to deal with your biased, prejudiced hiring staff down the road. They may be in, but they’re in for hell down the road.
Having a system that prevents you from using your unconscious biases is not a solution for objectivity. Becoming more conscious and addressing you and your staff's automatic responses and unconscious biases is.
Educating and training hiring managers on how to evaluate resumes based on substance rather than relying on their biases is also a solution.
Telling people to stop their biases often has the opposite result. Helping people notice their biases and blind spots helps them reflect and make a deliberate choice about their thoughts and behaviours towards others.
2 - Job interviews are a mutual process.
Gone are the days when an applicant would come in for an interview, sit straight with their hands on their knees and obediently answer employers’ questions.
The job seeker is interviewing the potential employer as much as they are being interviewed. This is what I teach and implore my clients to do in their job interviews.
This kind of interaction cannot be done in a meaningful way if the job applicant is interviewed through a chat, or a voice disguised conversation some companies use.
3 - Blind Hiring is just that: blind.
The hiring process requires emotional intelligence, not just hard data. You’re hiring people, not machines (at least not yet).
To ignore the human aspect and only hire on experience and skill misses the key point. You can have the most experienced and talented person, but if their personality doesn’t work well with the team, this person is a detriment to your company.
If diversity is the goal, getting to know the person you’re hiring is essential. Job seekers want to feel like the company they will work for embraces who they are and what makes them unique.
Also, how is it “unbiased” to put experience and hard skill above the emotional intelligence and all the valuable human attributes of a person? Aren’t we having a bias for experience and skill in this case? Aren’t we trying to eliminate one bias by deploying another?
Blind Hiring contradicts the very premise it’s trying to serve.
4 - Companies are jumping on the Blind Hiring bandwagon since the social justice uprising in 2020.
Where were these companies before all the inclusivity and unbiased hiring talk?
It isn’t lost on me that events of 2020 have “woken” some companies (and people) up to reevaluate their beliefs, but it seems that most are just trying to avoid criticism and covering their behinds. It’s the thing to do now: act guilty or risk getting cancelled, ostracized, criticized and condemned.
Quality talent has no respect for gutless companies.
Guilt is not a substitute for courage.
5 - Hiring others with objectivity requires an ability and willingness to first be objective with self.
A company (or person) who isn’t able to identify and question their existing biases is not fit to view others objectively.
An objective feeder system does just that, it eliminates the need for hiring managers to question their existing biases. But eliminating the need does not address the issue at its core.
The issue is lack of objectivity. Objectivity requires critical thinking and emotional intelligence. No system can outsource the work that needs to be done internally within a person and within an organization.
If we want diversity and inclusion in our workplace, we have to do the hard work of identifying the company-wide biases, and putting people who are objective in decision making roles.