Things I’m Learning About You: Interviewing and Hiring Part Three
[Part One here, Part Two here]
Principle #2: We all have biases.
Principle #3: It is smart to hire for diversity and inclusion.
We all have biases.
It’s not often I believe in absolutes. I find that exceptions live everywhere. Of the few absolutes to which I subscribe, Human beings have biases, is always true.
If you are interviewing me, it is impossible to avoid connecting me to some other Josh that you met, or knew, whether you liked or hated, loved or loathed him. That familiarity breeds a form of bias. The bias might fall in my favor, if this paradigmatic “Josh” was beloved, or it may be to my detriment, if this person was an egotistical know-it-all. Additionally, I just referred to this hypothetical, amorphous Josh that you knew as “him.” You either ignored that or you immediately disagreed with it. I’ve never met a “her” that was a Josh, but there are some. The point of this clumsy example is to illustrate that there is bias in everything we do, say, and think. It is critical to how we are wired.
When you sit down to interview someone, it is absolutely necessary that you acknowledge bias and adjust your thought process for it. Your goal is to identify the best possible candidate for the job under the criteria we laid out in Part Two.
It helps if you know yourself well enough to identify which things are important to you, so that you don’t project those things onto others. If I were filling out an application, I would print very carefully with the neatest letterforms I could manage. When I reviewed applications with messy writing, I had to acknowledge that it told me very little about a candidate in terms of their intelligence, passion, adaptability, judgment, and ability to be nice. This was a bias that I had to overcome.
A characteristic of modern retail applicants that is unquestionably led by bias is the one of visible tattoos. I have hired retail employees in areas where tattoos would be seen as outside the mainstream, such as suburban Texas, and had to consider whether each individual’s appearance would make it difficult for them to connect with customers. I supervised a manager for whom this was a frustrating consideration. They didn’t understand why it would even come into play, since a great candidate was a great candidate. You may feel the same way.
Maybe I can illustrate this for you by exaggerating the situation. Which of these tattooed people would you be more willing to hire? I believe that many of us are biased to feel less welcomed by the appearance of the gentleman on the left. Do you agree?
If you know yourself well, and can identify your personal peccadilloes, you are well equipped to correct for bias. We all have blindness towards areas of ourselves as well, no matter our level of self-awareness. Whenever possible, bring in someone who can balance your biases with their own. Find someone you trust who is different from you so that they can offer a counterpoint when you identify a strength or weakness in a candidate. The more perspective you can gain in the interview process, the better prepared you’ll be to make a decision that benefits the team in the widest way possible.
It is also useful to have members of the team have input in the interviewing process, especially if they understand the goals. A small team, in particular, can benefit from open and honest conversation about how everyone contributes. My utopia workplace includes complete openness. Your mileage may vary.
There are many legally protected topics in interviews. You can’t ask questions about race, religion, sexual orientation, and other topics that could lead to discrimination. That’s a benefit to you as well. These things can’t determine answers to the questions laid out in Part Two, anyway.
When I wrote those questions, I wasn’t specifically thinking that I should avoid questions that focused on topics protected by the EEOA. It is simply the case that these topics are not important for the hiring decision. It is also true that I almost always learned something about the protected class of applicants when I interviewed, but that was because my goal was to engage in conversation and let people tell their story. The goal wasn’t to draw this information out, and I was careful in my follow-up questions to only ask things that were inspired by their comments.
Your questions can help you avoid bias that can be detrimental to the decision-making. You probably hold opinions about politics or religion or social issues or even mass media (like self-help columns) that could subtly or drastically affect how you view your applicant. If I felt that a conversation was heading in that direction, I would try to find a new avenue of discussion, or ask questions that focused on how those things inform their behaviors rather than their thoughts.
It is smart to hire for diversity and inclusion.
Different cultures, different experiences, or different biology all bring us to the topic of diversity and inclusion. Those two words are loaded with cultural weight in 2019, so let’s quickly define them in terms of staffing a retail store.
If you’ve made it this far in the article, I’m going to assume that you don’t have any major fight with my contention that all human beings have biases. Given that we mostly agree that we all have biases, that means that your customers do as well.
You have customers who are happier being helped by a man or by a woman. You have customers that respond well to engaging with an LGBTQ employee, or with an employee of Latin or Black or Asian descent. You have customers that appreciate people who served in the military, or who are active in their church, or who are parents. All of these preferences are bias.
A retail store staffed with a wider cross-section of humanity will draw in a wider cross-section of customer. Diversity is the cross-section represented, inclusion is how welcome people feel from all staff, including the owner, whether shopping or applying.
If you personally have any hesitation in recognizing that more diversity and inclusion is good for business, then you are going to let your biases run your interviews, and the results will reflect that with a poorer result.
There are few retailers who have zero desire to grow their customer base. Opening your business up to making more people feel welcome should be a daily goal for expanding sales.
Even if you only currently have one employee, recognize that a growing business will eventually require more employees, and you can make these conscious decisions with every step of the process.
So, you’ve identified what you want for an employee and what questions you need them to answer. You’ve considered how your brain can work against you, and how you can fight back with your questions. And you’ve recognized that your search should include as many applicants as possible.
Part Four is here. In it I discuss how to get the information you need to make a smart decision.
If you enjoyed this article, it is part of an ongoing series about hiring, which is part of an ongoing series about business for entrepreneurs. Please respond below with any thoughts or feedback, and if you find value in these articles, please subscribe.
Deleted paragraphs:
Customers like attractive employees. Famously, trade show exhibitors were the most egregious about this and their employees earned the pejorative “booth babes.” My own father preferred to hire young women to sell comic books at conventions, since the predominantly male clientele enjoyed talking to them, theoretically earning higher sales. This is not only a sexist and ageist approach, leaving little moral upside, it is also legally circumspect.
