Recruitment and hiring have an important role to play in an organization's DEI initiatives. The people you hire are going to contribute to the overall diversity and culture of your workforce. Reinforcing inclusive values from the starting stages of recruitment ensures that you source candidates from diverse pools and that there is transparency around the importance of DEI within the organization.
In turn, this helps ensure that you hire candidates who want to be at the organization and who feel aligned with the company's mission. It may sound obvious, but people who are excited about an organization are far less likely to leave. Decreasing employee turnaround represents significant financial incentive--organizations spend roughly one-third of an employee's salary trying to replace them. Simply put, the less you have to look for new employees, the fewer resources you have to expend.
The problem is, evidence tells us that bias rears its ugly head at nearly every stage of the process. In this post, we are going to narrow the focus to how individuals and organizations can make interviews more inclusive. Consider the following guidelines:
Stop Interviewing (As Much)
It sounds counterintuitive, but bear with me. Interviews are a breeding ground for implicit bias to take over our analysis and decision-making because many interviews do not set forth concrete, measurable parameters for evaluating each candidate. This may not always be possible because at a certain point we need to put a name to a face, but consider: The simplest way to avoid interviews as a risk factor is to not hold them, or at least not until the final stages of selection.
If you are hiring for more technical roles, this is particularly true; but even positions that require "soft skills" can request candidates to complete assignments that reflect the work they would do if hired before anyone is called to interview. In short, it's best to prioritize assessing measurable skills before allowing personality traits to muddy the waters.
Structure The Interviews And Questions
I've mentioned already that bias tends to pop up when we don't have an impartial, concrete metrics for evaluation. Start by adjusting the questions to be targeted at a specific topic; avoid open-ended inquiries. Further, weed out any questions that are not directly related to the responsibilities the selected candidate will need for the position.
Structuring interviews by itemizing questions in advance ensures that everyone is asked the same questions. It also helps keep the interview focused on the topic rather than on personality traits. This is essential to inclusive interviewing since bias often skews our perception of people who are similar or dissimilar to us.
Bring In A Panel
No one person can hold all perspectives. Bringing in multiple interviewers--particularly who have diverse backgrounds, areas of expertise, and/or roles within the organization--creates a system of checks and balances in the interviewing process for two reasons.
First, there are others around us to remind us (even subconsciously) that this is a professional interaction with a specific purpose. While we don't ever intend to get sidetracked or to allow bias into our interactions, humans are social beings by nature. It is natural to ease up on the formality of the process when we are one-on-one, but that is not the best way to remain impartial. Similar to structuring the questions in advance, having multiple interviewers keeps the discussion focused and reduces potential bias.
Of course, the thread that ties all these points together is putting in conscious effort to reduce the role of bias in interviewing, and more broadly in recruitment and hiring. This starts by thinking preemptively and adjusting the process in advance. From there, you can continue to build more inclusive practices and systems throughout the organization.
Learn more about the inclusive interview process in our Inclusive Hiring course. Schedule a consultation here.
