How to Fight Bias and Hire Underrepresented Talent in Tech
Find top talent no matter where they come from, and hire the best person for the job, objectively
We would all like to believe that our hiring decisions are primarily objective, that we’re choosing the best person for the job, based on merit. Sure, we evaluate culture fit to more or less ensure that the new guy is going to fit in well from his first day (more to come on that topic in a later post). But the process leading up to the culture interview? That part was objective.
Except, when it wasn’t.
What is Unconscious Bias?
You’ve probably heard of conscious bias — explicitly held prejudices (both positive and negative) that frame an individual’s understanding of a type of person. Biases exist for all social groups. A person’s age, gender, physical ability, religion, weight, and even hairstyle are all subject to bias. For the self-aware, conscious biases are something actively fought against in the pursuit of objectivity. But there’s another form of bias that can yield similar consequences: unconscious, or implicit bias.
Unconscious bias occurs when social stereotypes about particular groups of people are formed outside of an individual’s own conscious awareness. Everyone holds unconscious beliefs about various social and identity groups. Our brains create these stereotypes to quickly and easily categorize the social world. Similarly, we all carry affinity bias, where we unconsciously prefer people who share qualities similar to ourselves. With affinity bias, the brain sees similarity as familiar and relatable, trustworthy and safe.
There is no way to cure unconscious bias; you can only become more aware of its existence. If you’re curious to discover where your own unconscious biases lie, then take one of the tests offered by Harvard’s Project Implicit. It’s quick and free to use. I highly recommend that you check it out.
The tech community is working toward becoming more aware of how these biases play a role in the hiring process. One technique to mitigate the effects of both conscious and unconscious bias is:
What is Blind Recruitment?
Blind recruitment is the process of anonymizing identifying information from a candidate’s application (typically, the résumé and cover letter) in the initial stages of the hiring process. Identifying information typically includes the candidate’s name, email address, physical address, gender, age, marital status, photo, interests, and in some cases, education details — basically anything that may give the hiring team an indication of a candidate’s profile beyond pure merit.
The goal of blind recruitment is to empower qualified candidates from underrepresented or unique backgrounds so that they make it further into the hiring process than they may otherwise. Successful blind recruitment is believed to increase diversity, which has its own slew of benefits for companies.
The most common blind recruitment strategies require the assistance of a colleague who isn’t part of the hiring process. Their job is to anonymize applications as they come in. The process can be time-consuming because this helpful colleague typically has to remove or obfuscate identifying data manually before forwarding the application to HR or the hiring team. But in the long run, it can be worth the effort!
Why? Because blind recruitment is one tool that, when used successfully, enables your team to identify top talent that other hiring processes overlook or write off.
But blind recruitment isn't the only tool in your arsenal! The best hiring teams know how to leverage techniques that help them stand out to top talent with “unconventional” or “nontraditional” tech backgrounds. How do they do it? That’s what we’ll look at next:
How to Hire Developers with Unconventional Backgrounds
As a technical recruiter myself, I’ve seen how an entire industry struggles with attracting and welcoming diverse talent. It’s a huge problem! There are too few developers to fill all of today’s open roles, and the industry needs all hands on deck.
Science shows just how important it is to hire people with different backgrounds and why it can feel difficult. Research has shown that a diverse workforce improves group performance, but at the same time, mixed groups result in more discomfort and distress. It’s easy to fall back into old patterns and choose the more comfortable path forward.
It also doesn’t help that hiring managers often end up hiring people like themselves. If a candidate doesn’t live in a specific city, didn’t go to a certain school, and has a different skin color, gender, sexual orientation, or disability than members of the hiring team, it becomes so much harder for them to land that job.
With this realization, I went on to co-found my startup, which we’ve seen has helped to remove some biases from technical hiring processes. I’m lucky to have seen our customers make an active effort to hire people with unconventional backgrounds.
I’ve also witnessed firsthand that many talented developers do come from less-advantaged or even disadvantaged backgrounds, and that many of those folks won’t have attended an Ivy League school or even gone to college. Several of them are self-taught. And many of them still face difficulty in landing opportunities worthy of their skillset.
So what can we learn from the companies who have successfully hired and retained a diverse engineering team? Do they have anything in common? I believe that they do. Here are a few things to take away from those folks and implement in your own tech teams, in the hopes of attracting and retaining some awesome dev talent:
1. Look for candidates in unconventional places
You probably won’t find unconventional candidates at conventional tech talent watering holes. Self-taught coders are more likely to hang out in their own discussion forums than to attend a job fair for fresh college graduates. You need to look to these communities to find candidates who would otherwise fall under the radar.
Sourcing candidates in a different way can make a difference too. Using unconventional masculine words in job ads (such as “ninja”) has been shown to deter women from applying. How can you fix this? Ask your hiring team to use inclusive words to attract a wider candidate base.
Finally, ask your team for unique referrals. When companies specifically ask employees to refer underrepresented candidates, they also receive more such referrals.
2. Assess candidates objectively
A big hurdle for candidates with unconventional backgrounds is unconscious bias in the interview process. That’s why companies need to take steps to ensure their processes are based on skill, not pedigree.
A big part of every technical hiring process is the technical assessment. This shows how well a developer writes code… Or so you would think! Traditionally, big tech companies have used whiteboarding challenges to identify the best developers. This means that a developer solves a challenge on a whiteboard in front of the hiring team.
The problem? These are incredibly stressful situations. Candidates who from the start don’t feel like they belong, often struggle even more to perform under these circumstances. Research shows that women perform worse than men in whiteboarding situations.
The answer is to use an assessment process that is, by design, more objective and inclusive, such as take-home challenges. With take-homes, developers work on their coding challenges asynchronously and remotely (likely, at home). The hiring team then reviews the work to determine the candidate’s fit.
Unlike other methods of technical assessments, here are steps that can be taken to ensure that a take-home is inclusive for everyone — including candidates who don’t have a quiet space to work in or are single parents.
3. Retain your awesome new talent
Finally, it’s not enough to hire talent with unconventional backgrounds. Companies need to retain them with an inclusive culture.
For example, microaggressions can quickly make a workplace uncomfortable for people with different backgrounds than the average developer. And if too few candidates with these backgrounds get promoted to senior roles, the incentive to leave a workplace is high.
Transparent and open communication is a good place to start. Ask your employees in surveys how they feel and what you can improve. Then, take action based on your findings to make your company a great workplace for all.
There’s no excuse not to hire diverse talent because the talent is out there. And a good place to start is to find developers with unconventional backgrounds. While this process takes some creativity and effort, it’s worth it. After all, products that work for everyone and equality in the workforce benefit us all.
At CodeSubmit, we’re empowering technical hiring teams to evaluate the best talent in the most intuitive ways. We’re dedicated to helping you streamline your assessment process while providing the absolute best candidate experience. So go ahead and take a step toward hiring the best person for the job, objectively; check out CodeSubmit.io and get started with your free 7-day trial.
