One of the most crucial aspects of any business is hiring the best talent. However, it is not easy at all. The hiring and employment diversities create room for developing a well-rounded and robust team that can perform well in various circumstances and under pressure.
In most cases, CEOs and HR managers adopt and enforce programs that according to them are free of bias. However, they might be implementing unconscious biases. For leaders to build a better performing organization, they must identify and enforce recruitment solutions to reduce – and eliminate recruiting and interviewing biases.
There is a broad range of biases that occur during the hiring and recruiting process. Below are some of the mainly exercised biases by recruiters and hirers.
1. Expectation Anchor Bias
Interviewers face this kind of bias when they bypass all of a candidate’s proper background investigation and goes ahead to be reliant of frivolous expectation anchors. This leads to the favoritism of a candidate during hiring. This way, the interviewer will believe the candidate is more suited for the job post than the others are. This belief automatically puts a mental block on the interviewer during following interviews.
In this case, the interviewer’s expectation for this particular candidate is higher. The general perception is that the candidate is better than the others – when that might not
be true.
2. Effective Heuristic Bias
This hiring bias mostly occurs when a hirer decides the job suitability of a person based on superficial factors. For example, personal body weight standards, masculinity, and visible tattoos among others. An interviewer may fail to make a critical decision based on important characteristics such as problem-solving skills, but rather based on single-dimensional factors.
Some researchers have outlined this as the most common employment bias. The ability of obese people, for example, may be underestimated for supervisory posts while that of “fit” people may be overestimated. Such biases decrease a company’s possibility of adding considerable talents to their workforce. Additionally, this bias may make a company susceptible to legal ramifications.
3. Confirmation Bias
This bias occurs when interviews or hirers in their mind create a hypothesis and look for means to prove it. It is the inborn tendency for humans to seek substantiation for pre-conceptualized beliefs. For instance, an interviewer may form a distinct opinion about a potential candidate. These views may be based on wispy information such as the school the candidate attended.
An interviewer, who does that before the actual interview can begin, is succumbing to the confirmation bias. These assumptions may force great minds out of the interview or even portray them as less competent than the other candidates. Due to interviewing confirmation bias, an organization may crush its chances of hiring the best candidates.
4. The Intuition Bias
Sometimes, interviewers may pass judgment using their “sixth sense”. It means the interviewer intuitively rejects other candidates and intuitively selects a candidate. Because not all information of a candidate may be available readily on-hand, the interviews may end up being biased. Unfortunately, the intellect, emotions, and individual makeup of the candidate are what determines these assumptions.
Like other biases, the intuition bias prejudices the interviewers’ decision-making capabilities. This prejudices, in turn, passes on the wrong judgments about a potential candidate to the selecting panel. With this bias, organizations may lock their chances of adding adept and skilled workforce to their teams. This article gives more insight on effects of hiring biases.
5. Stereotyping Bias
This kind of employment bias presumes that certain traits of a candidate will make them better or worse for the job position. For example, one may suppose women not to be strong as men because of their femininity, or believe that trustworthy people are those that go to church. Stereotypes are based on social conditions and generalizations rather than the facts about a person.
Interviewers need to be cautious and conscious of stereotypes of the minority in the society. This caution is because discrimination founded on such stereotypes can lead to legal travails. Employers should be careful of stereotypes that could inform their decisions and be prepared to dispel them through a positive and professional presentation.
6. The Contrasting Bias
An interviewer may be tempted to compare and contrast candidates when presented with a particular figure of candidates. This contrasting will lead to an interviewer making decisions depending on how different candidates measure up against one another. An interviewer can bypass this bias by using the set standards for the job description and focusing on each candidate at a time. Additionally, hirers should concentrate on the specifications of a person against the predetermined interview and selection criteria.
It is of vast importance for organizations to reduce or eliminate biases during their hiring process. This elimination does not only give a company the chance to acquire new and adept workforce, but it also ensures the organization is in line and compliance with corporate ethics policies. The recruiters should wean out hidden biases by reevaluating their recruiting programs.