7 Ways to Reduce Bias in the Hiring Process and Elsewhere
Too often in decisions that define careers, decision-makers have full license to “follow their gut.” As long as this continues, we will never eliminate workplace gender inequality.
The reality is this: Most organizations—even the most well-intentioned—operate with an implicit tolerance for gender stereotypes and their associated status beliefs. As such, it’s unsurprising that personnel decisions follow suit. These critical decisions are made by in a context of structural discrimination, usually with vague, ambiguous, or subjective criteria, and without any checks on their individual biases.
The results? From career‐advancing assignments and leadership development to compensation and membership on high‐status teams, men tend to reap the benefits of bias. They are more readily hired, paid more for the same work, and promoted to leadership roles in greater numbers in comparison to women or candidates from minority groups who have the same or similar qualifications.
To fight gender inequality, organizations—and those who lead them—must ensure personnel decisions are fair, objective, and based on evidence. By adopting decision‐making methods that reject discrimination, organizations can combat predictable structural discrimination.
Words Matter: Ensure Objective Criteria Informs Decisions to Reduce Bias in the Hiring Process
Opening any career-related discussion that includes subjective indicators, like potential, rather than specific examples of job performance, gives evaluators a runway to view things differently for men and candidates from underrepresented groups. Add stereotypes and status beliefs to these considerations and these assessments rarely result in equitable decisions.
Take this 2020 field study of the written performance reviews and numeric ratings of employees at a Fortune 500 technology company. Gendered language peppered the assessment, including asking evaluators to determine employees’ “helpfulness” and “willingness to take charge.” While women were consistently rated more helpful, that had no influence on their compensation or likelihood of promotion. This was because helpfulness, a stereotypical feminine characteristic, is not associated with leadership and thus not considered as relevant in a discussion about promotions.
Yet taking charge is. And despite men and women ranking equally on this so-called masculine trait, it also did little to advance women’s careers. This quality, often table stakes in a man’s review, paints women as unpleasant and unlikeable, allowing evaluators the basis to decide that women were unlikely to be effective leaders.
The PATH Forward: 7 Tactics That Can Help Companies Reduce Bias in the Hiring Process and Evaluation Process
Decision-makers need guardrails to ensure their decisions are fair, objective, and defensible. Our third book, Beyond Bias: The PATH to End Gender Inequality at Work, outlines seven ways organizations can eliminate subjective factors, override gender-biased language, and identify stereotypical considerations to fight gender inequality and effect substantive change. Here’s how:
1. Screen Candidates’ Social Identities.
The easiest change is to remove or “screen” information that may trigger a decision-maker’s unconscious bias. By removing all references to candidates’ social identities, including gender, race, ethnicity, parental status, age, education, socioeconomic position, sexual orientation, and religion, organizations reduce reliance on relatively straightforward descriptive information and increase fairness, objectivity, and transparency of their decisions. Colleges and professional schools have been doing this for a long time by identifying test-takers’ examinations by number, not name, as one example.
When we consider whether artificial intelligence tools can help reduce bias in the hiring process, there are key things to keep in mind. While software programs can be useful, they are not foolproof. Shockingly, the
2. Specify Objective Evaluation Criteria.
Personnel decisions made on the basis of clear, specific, and objective criteria overrule discriminatory influences. When organizations remove an assessor’s ability to include vague, ambiguous, and subjective factors, they will prioritize performance over “potential.”
Impartial criteria include determinable characteristics, skills, and accomplishments, backed by concrete examples. Open-ended commentary, with stereotypical ways to describe a candidate’s personality or reinforce an evaluator’s personal preferences, must be addressed. For example, when someone includes “he’s a go-getter,” or “she’s aggressive” in a performance review, the assessment is similar but reinforces obvious gender associations.
3. Nudge Decision‐Makers to Use ‘Slow Thinking’
Nobel Prize-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman coined the phrase “slow thinking,” which describes taking care, being deliberate, and basing decisions on fact. It’s an effective way to insulate personnel decisions from discriminatory influences, those that happen when someone uses “fast thinking,” which is automatic and effortless, occurring without conscious awareness.
PATH recommends using techniques designed to interrupt fast thinking and amplify reason. Collaborative, comparative, and third-party reviews of decisions hold decision-makers accountable and justify their reasoning.
4. Remove Gender‐Relevant Discretion When Possible
The NFL’s Rooney Rule, instituted in 2003, requires football teams to consider external minority candidates for coaching, management, and operational positions. Despite its best intentions, the rule has done nothing to significantly diversify the league’s coaching staffs.
The NFL’s approach, one that many companies also adopted, clearly has flaws. In order to effect change, organizations must include two additional actions to level the playing field. In addition to an established process that eliminates the influence of discriminatory factors, the number of women or other diverse applicants in any candidate pool must be significant.
5. Separate Personnel Evaluations from Personnel Decisions
At Google, diverse teams of employees interview candidates, and each person submits a detailed report to the company’s hiring committee. This approach ensures subjective preferences, first impressions, and the unconscious biases of one individual cannot unduly influence the ultimate decision.
This decision-by-committee approach also works for compensation and promotion decisions. People are more likely to be thoughtful and objective and limit their assessments to established, objective criteria when they know their decisions will be scrutinized by another person or group making the final decision.
6. Appoint Diverse Teams of Decision‐Makers
It’s proven that diverse and inclusive leadership teams are more innovative, better able to reach solutions to complex problems, and more effective in dealing with unanticipated situations than homogeneous leadership teams. Likewise, diverse teams of decision‐makers are more likely to make fairer and more objective personnel decisions and less likely to default to groupthink.
7. Monitor and Assess Decision‐Making Patterns
In order for these solutions to be effective, senior leaders must understand how candidates from different identity groups fare in the selection, promotion, or compensation process. This is not meant to prioritize reaching specified numeral diversity goals, rather it helps to determine if the company’s personnel decision-making is functioning as it should. By tracking personnel decisions and measuring both the favorable and unfavorable outcomes, leaders can spot patterns and specifically target their efforts to eliminate the resulting discrimination.
Organizations that employ PATH do not require leaders to radically change the ways a company operates. It does, however, significantly reduce the entrenched methods and discriminatory factors that reinforce gender inequality.