How We Anonymized Candidate Code Submissions And How You Can Too
At Beam, we are constantly looking to improve our processes, including our engineering hiring process. Not only do we want to make sure we are providing the best hiring experience for our candidates, but we also want to ensure that we are always providing everyone with an equal opportunity for success. In order to do so we need to make sure we are removing any barriers that could prevent this from happening. A common barrier that can occur in the technical review process of coding submissions is the possibility of reviewer bias.
Everyone has biases and often these biases are unconscious. Unfortunately, this is an issue across the industry. At Beam, we want to figure out how we can reduce any potential for bias in our hiring processes; recently, we addressed a potential bias by reviewing the way we assess candidates on their technical ability.
During a candidate’s code review the reviewer’s own biases can often come into play, affecting the outcome of the review. Knowing the gender, ethnicity, race, or other, non-code-related aspects of a candidate can open the door to conscious or unconscious biases. Additionally, there are code-related aspects that could negatively influence the outcome of a review. For example, knowing the committer could lead us to looking up other projects a candidate may have worked on, and we may find ourselves partial to someone who has many side projects on their Github profile. At Beam, we never want such a bias to affect our hiring decisions about a candidate.
Identifying the Fix: Anonymization
Our solution to the bias problem was to anonymize all of the candidates’ code submissions so that we could better ensure that candidates were being assessed on technical ability alone.
When this suggestion was first brought up everyone saw the value in making it a reality. With a more traditional approach to hiring we realized that it was difficult to ensure that we were being as unbiased as possible.
This leads to a more level playing field for everyone, regardless of whether they are similar to us or not, reinforcing our belief at Beam that a diverse and inclusive environment is key to building a great company and a great product.
Having a more diverse workforce leads to better outcomes; diverse teams can solve different problems from many different perspectives. This will also help us to continue making Beam a place that is welcoming to people of all backgrounds.
Most importantly, it was the right thing to do.
How We Solved the Problem
During our engineering hiring process we provide candidates that have moved past the initial phone screen a take-home coding exercise. They can choose either a Ruby or Javascript exercise to work on. Candidates are then asked to submit their work either using a zip file or a git bundle.
Receiving the Submission
The candidate’s submission is sent directly to the hiring Engineering Manager. The hiring manager then takes the submission and removes any identifying information from it, such as the candidate’s name, email, website info, etc., and uses a script provided by GitHub to strip the committer and author information from all commits.
Once the submission no longer has any identifying information the hiring manager creates a PR for the submission with a unique identifier for the candidate that only they know. They then send it over to the review team.
Reviewing the Submission
The review team now has a copy of the submission that contains no personally identifying information. Once the review team has finished assessing the submission they enter information on the submission in a Google form with the candidate identifier created by the manager and send that back over to the manager.
Our Experience Since Anonymizing
The changes to our process have been very smooth, and the process is now in place to review anonymized submissions. Though this process adds a little more work for the hiring manager, it provides a great deal of added value. Anonymizing code submissions ensures that everyone gets the same chance to be reviewed on their ability alone, which was our goal in doing a blind review process.
For Beam, this is just the start. Though we have made progress in this area, we definitely have more work ahead of us as we keep asking ourselves how we can continue to make sure we are building an environment that continues to be inclusive for all people. In almost every business you can examine your own hiring practices and work to reduce bias and increase diversity.
If you are curious about joining our engineering team we are always looking for more people to help us build and maintain our culture! Check out our openings here: https://jobs.lever.co/beam
Co-author: Jim Kirkbride
