Bias in Hiring is REAL
I’m sure you’ve heard that the most important thing for you, as a job seeker, to do is to present yourself as the most qualified candidate. After all, the most qualified candidate is the one who gets the job, right? Not by a long shot. Every day, eminently qualified candidates are told “no thanks” for a variety of reasons that have exactly zero to do with past achievements, quality of work, education, or performance. Some of the reasons I’ve heard for excluding qualified candidates include:
The candidate attended a high school that was the hiring manager’s football rival.
The hiring manager didn’t like the candidate’s favorite sports team.
The background check was unable to confirm a candidate’s employment with a defunct, late 1990s “dot com.” HR asked the candidate to provide a W2, which he no longer had. At this point, the candidate actually declined.
The company hired the niece of one of its executives rather than a candidate who had extensive industry experience.
In the realm of hiring biases, these are all fairly benign. That’s not to say that any of them are valid or good business decisions, but they aren’t targeting a specific group of people or excluding people based on a protected class. But these are examples of both implicit and external biases, which, when left unchecked and unnoticed, can blunt the ability to make equitable hiring decisions. And that can lead hiring managers, HR professionals, and hiring companies to make possibly illegal hiring decisions and expose them to litigation.
Just last week, the Resume Builder published a survey revealing that 25% of hiring managers are reluctant to move forward with Jewish candidates. With the global rise in antisemitism and an increase in the use of antisemitic rhetoric by entertainers, sports players, and politicians, this should not surprise anyone. Yet, it is still shocking. What is particularly troubling is that 25% of the hiring managers surveyed had no trouble at all admitting that they do this. Their reasons for doing so are rooted in centuries-old stereotypes, such as the belief that Jewish people hold too much power and wealth or that Jewish people are greedy. An even more shocking finding of the survey is that 33% say antisemitism is common in their workplace, and 29% say antisemitism is acceptable in their company!
Everyone has biases. The first step in minimizing bias in hiring is to evaluate your own behavior. When evaluating applications, ask yourself some probing questions. Does this applicant remind me of myself or someone I know? What qualities or experiences am I considering that are not relevant to the job? In what ways have I already excluded or endorsed this candidate?
These are tough questions, and the answers can be disturbing. Hiring managers need to be trained in conducting interviews and removing bias from the hiring process. Every CEO will say that diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) are critical initiatives for their companies, and most understand, on some level, diverse workforces deliver better results than homogeneous ones. Yet, this persists because it has been enabled by the organizational culture. Hey, CEOs, stop allowing this bad behavior. Do better. Your numbers depend on it.