Blind Hiring: Well-Meaning Yet Imperfect But Workable

 It makes sense to use blind hiring to eliminate specific information from a candidate's application to avoid prejudices. However, the diversity of a company's personnel does not necessarily improve when resumes are made "blind." Let's look behind the scenes to discover the problems with blind recruiting and interviewing and how to fix them.

Flaw: Unconscious bias

An assumption, belief, stereotype, or attitude they are frequently unaware of is called unconscious or implicit prejudice. Without even realising it, we make judgments about things like gender, age, race, sexual orientation, education, and background that can be unjust and discriminatory.

Receiving a blind resume might advance a candidate to the interview stage, but if your company isn't educating managers and interviewers on how to identify and address their own unconscious biases, the candidate will encounter the same difficulties in the interview that they would have encountered with their information included upfront.

Fix: The first step is realising that unconscious prejudice can have a detrimental effect on your employees. Whether you audit yourself or concentrate on incorporating this training into your company's diversity and inclusion programme, training can cure it.

Flaw: Bias in job descriptions

Blind recruiting procedures won't assist address and correcting prejudice in your job descriptions that favor one group over another. Even if two people are equally competent, the language you choose directly influences who feels comfortable applying. As a result, some people will be more willing to do so than others.

Biassed language in job descriptions might take the form of titles for the role that is gendered (such as "Chairman") or adjectives that are conventionally associated with a particular gender, such as "ninja" or "rockstar." Think about the various types of candidates these words might entice from various backgrounds, ages, and levels of experience. Some job applicants may even find phrases like "nurturing" or "assertive" offensive because they perceive them as having a gendered connotation.

Fix: Include training on inclusive job descriptions that are required for anybody in your company who writes, reviews, or posts positions. Job descriptions should at the very least be checked for gendered terminology ("he" or "she") and should avoid unusual catch phrases like "rock star" or "ninja," which may turn off job hunters

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Flaw: Impeding diversity and inclusion goals

Setting clear, quantifiable diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) objectives is important for your business, but you should be aware that blind hiring practices may prevent you from achieving your objectives. According to several studies, women's chances of receiving callbacks have actually been negatively influenced by anonymous hiring. Your company's efforts to be more inclusive by hiring more people from underrepresented groups may be unsuccessful if you take away the capacity to tell whether an applicant belongs to one of those groups.

Fix: Don't fully take away job applicants' opportunity to introduce themselves. Your ability to choose a candidate from a varied pool of applicants may be hampered if you eliminate them before they can participate in an interview. If you're a recruiter, you might want to postpone the "blind" hiring process until you've received a lot of strong resumes and are prepared to forward them to the manager or department that has the opening.

Blind recruitment can work

Although your procedures may have shortcomings, the motivation behind blind hiring and blind resume assessment is honourable and shouldn't be abandoned. Instead, refine and enhance your procedures to eliminate unconscious prejudices and give everyone involved in the recruitment process training. Blind hiring has the potential to improve workplace diversity and equity while also benefiting the entire business when done properly.

Your organisation's hiring policies and goals can be demonstrated to candidates through your employer brand.