HR professionals usually have to search through hundreds of resumes to find the best candidates. Our minds have limited capacity to handle big information, so our brains create shortcuts to make decisions quickly.

It makes HR managers go with their gut feelings, which leads to unconscious bias during the hiring process.

Every single detail on the resume can be a deciding factor whether you get selected or not. A mailing address can indicate an undesired location. An email address containing unusual names can turn off the recruiter, or even the college name can be perceived as a non-pedigree school.

Recruiters make decisions that make them safe, or they go with something they already know, and such activities promote unconscious bias. 

Today, companies are trying to avoid such bias and create a more diverse workforce because it leads to innovation, creativity, improving brand value, increasing productivity, etc.

Here I will share some ideas you can implement to improve the hiring and mitigating the bias.

1. Take Help from AI Powered Tools

Every single day HR makes mistakes about the candidates based on the perceptions. But this biased decision made during the hiring process can be prevented with the help of technology.

Because technology does not discriminate, and the major advantage of using technology is that it gives us data, not assumptions. 

With the right tools, we can simplify our sourcing and screening efforts based-on accurate data insights. Recruiters can take advantage of data insights about the candidates, which will help them know about them even before the interview.

Imagine if you could screen candidates based on their skill sets and rank them quickly. This process will not only help you in eliminating the bias but also close more jobs quickly.

You can use tools like resume parser, which can help remove unconscious bias by providing you an option to choose data fields as per your requirements. You can disable data fields that can lead to bias, e.g., name, religion, gender, etc.

2. Define the Processes

When there is bias, we stop probing for the right questions and try to move away from them. And there are times when HR people are not aware that they are under the influence of such favoritism. Being aware is the first step in removing such things in the hiring decisions.

HR teams can be diverse in the interview panel and ensure that they bring in more distinct people in the doors. 

Ensure you have a definite plan for the interview process and don’t just go by the feelings. Companies with a predefined process with clearly defined rules can avoid bias and benefit from cultural diversity and improved productivity.

Here also, advanced HR technology tools help fight with bias and improve on diversity.

HR leaders can create a structured process that will test all applicants to ensure they are all assessed on the same parameters. A simple way of doing this task is by creating a specific set of questions for all applicants.

3. Go for Blind Hiring

Any bias can negatively affect hiring. That is why more and more companies are focusing on removing bias in the recruitment process.

They are implementing blind hiring practices to ensure they hire the best candidates for the organizations.

In blind hiring, we remove key information about the candidates and judge them based on their skills. This type of hiring is generally used during the screening stage and helps create diversity in the organization.

This model offers tests of real talent by setting up unconventional methods. For example, if you are hiring for the developer position, you can create a test for candidates to judge their potential rather than judge them based on their resume information.

Blind hiring ensures that true talent finds a way into the organization, but this will only happen if companies’ ground realities change at all levels. Using AI-based screening solutions are also one of the keys to foster blind hiring.

The organization looking for ways to increase efficiencies and outperform its competitors has to choose diverse teams. And diversity and inclusion can be realized if we can eliminate bias in the recruitment process.

Once you equip our hiring teams with the right tools, the business can significantly reduce bias. So, as a hiring leader, the decisions you make today will determine the organization’s future.

Source: https://bit.ly/2KerJxG