How to Remove Bias When Hiring
When I lost a great tech job due to a corporate reorganization, one of the execs pulled me in for a mysterious one-on-one: “I want you to know that this has nothing to do with your performance, which was very positive.”
Back in the job market, I was lucky to be expedited through the interview process for an exciting opportunity. My experience was incredibly relevant to this potential employer and I cruised through the first few rounds of interviews. During my second deep-dive with my would-be boss, I thought I was building a healthy rapport until the final minutes, when he opened a new line of questioning: “Can I ask you some questions directly? What happened at your last company? How did they pick who they were going to lay off?”
I literally wrote How to talk about getting laid off and what you want next so I thought I was relatively well positioned to answer:
“I’m glad you brought this up. I think it’s a best-case scenario when a manager can openly bring up difficult subjects. Structuring the layoff process was well above my paygrade so I unfortunately can’t comment on who was selected and why. I can also share an article that’s published online about how a whole bunch of great people were unexpectedly impacted, both across my department as well as several others. It’s a shame to see a great team broken apart but I’ll be first to thank my former employer for having had the opportunity, and I respect their right to cut people if that’s what they want to do for the sake of the business. I’m also able to provide whatever references you may want. I’d encourage you to ask my most recent coworkers about my work.”
I figured this answer projected positivity and candor, and that it would be well received. I was beginning to imagine myself in the new gig, but my heart sank when the questioning continued: “Don’t you think there was something that you could have done differently to stay off of the layoff list? They must have ways to find ongoing work for people that they really value, right?”
My personal referral, industry experience, qualifications, relevant skills, passion for the work, and positive interview reviews — none of this would matter. It felt like the hiring manager had a negative perception of people who had been laid off, and he wasn’t going to hire me.
What could I do? For that opportunity, not much. But I can educate myself and others on the pitfalls of unconscious bias in hiring as it was ultimately the company’s loss more than mine. Execs and managers who are tasked with the monumental challenge of hiring can improve interview processes to build better — and more diverse — teams, and we’d like to help.
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We are of course not the first to write about this topic. Rebecca Knight has a great piece on Harvard Business Review called 7 Practical Ways to Reduce Bias in Your Hiring Process, and one of our recent Layoff-Aid Blog posts offered tips for How to Avoid Ageism in your Job Posts. The tools seem to exist, so why does bias still play such a big role in hiring?
The missing step is acknowledging the bias. By acknowledging that we all fall victim to bias, execs can tailor recruitment strategies to openly and unabashedly counter those biases, and then pass those strategies down for implementation across the entire recruitment process. When it comes to tailoring recruitment strategies to welcome previously laid off candidates, this first step can be difficult because it forces execs to surface the lesser known ways in which bias manifests.
We spoke with Darin Enferadi, head of talent at San Francisco-based Education Technology startup Kiddom, to learn his perspectives. He shared that we often see positive bias — what Darin calls a “halo effect” — when we meet people who have worked at “rocketship” companies, or graduated from prestigious universities. These are likely great people, but your organization will suffer if you only hire from narrow pools of any kind, even when they’re great pools.
As an example of negative bias, Darin continues: “we assume that when people have been laid off, something is wrong with them, and we make them prove that it wasn’t their fault, that the company really had to downsize.” How will your team members respond to inevitable challenges if none of them have ever overcome at least a minimal level of professional adversity or hardship?
“If bias were not involved in people’s thought processes, hiring would be effortless.” Darin adds: “many of us rationalize these stereotypes, so part of talent acquisition is to combat those biased inclinations using a structured interview approach,” as well as other recruitment strategies.
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After my own interview process concluded, I wanted to help talent acquisition teams that don’t acknowledge and actively combat the biases that their recruitment processes foster. Companies that continue this pattern lose out on strong talent, which will increasingly flow to more sophisticated recruitment teams, like those sourcing through Layoff-Aid for Hiring. Companies that embrace a diverse workforce — including previously laid off candidates — will be the ones that scoop up top talent most effectively.
