Interview Bias Training: What Every Business Needs to Understand About Unconscious Bias in Hiring

Interview bias training is essential for businesses looking to optimize their hiring processes. Is unconscious bias in recruitment holding your business back? When aiming to expand your team, it’s tempting to select a candidate who appears to be a solid ‘cultural fit’.

However, what if that means you’re overlooking a candidate who could be an invaluable ‘cultural add’? Interview bias training can help hiring managers and teams recognize and overcome these pitfalls. When you strive to challenge unconscious bias and foster an environment that appreciates diversity – in terms of background, experience, worldview, and many other facets – you nurture an office that benefits not only your team but also your enterprise.

Hiring based on a gut instinct that someone will mesh well with the team might be a sign that your choice was swayed by unconscious hiring bias. It’s not unusual, and in reality, we all possess unconscious bias and are influenced by it. This is where interview bias training becomes pivotal.

Bias might be evident in others.

You may notice it in how someone behaves or speaks about others. Maybe you’ve felt the sting of bias firsthand. Recognizing our inherent biases can be tough, which is why it’s dubbed unconscious.

Unconscious bias training for recruiters and unconscious bias training for hiring managers is not just a trending term; it’s a burgeoning industry. In this piece, we delve into the pivotal questions surrounding bias: What exactly is unconscious bias? How does it alter the hiring framework? Is it possible to truly counter unconscious bias? If you’ve swiftly reached your own verdicts on these queries, that’s a manifestation of unconscious bias too!

The Imperative Discussion on Bias

From the era when our ancestors congregated around fires, bias has been prevalent.

It’s essentially how we lean towards or against a concept, object, individual, or group. Bias often implies these sentiments are prejudiced or discriminatory.

Bias revolves around presumptions, stereotypes, or trepidation of the unfamiliar. It can be intrinsic or acquired, and unconscious bias is shaped and amplified by our personal histories, cultural backdrop, and surroundings. Biases can be trivial – like despising broccoli – or they can be significantly detrimental.

Why is Unconscious Bias Crucial During Hiring?

The aim of overcoming bias at work is to establish a milieu where every staff member feels the environment is congenial, secure, and devoid of discrimination or harassment. While this might sound idealistic, diverse and inclusive work settings can elevate employee contentment, augment engagement and efficiency, and bolster your company’s repute as an exemplary employer. It also diminishes the risk of potential legal repercussions from inequitable employment practices.

The Most Frequent Forms of Unconscious Bias in the Workplace

Regarding recruitment, certain biases are more prevalent. While some are self-explanatory – such as gender bias, ageism, and racism – experts have pinpointed over 150 types of unconscious bias influencing our interactions. We’ll examine a handful here. It’s plausible you’ve allowed one or more of these biases to sway your decisions, hence missing an ideal candidate.

• Confirmation Bias – Rapidly forming an opinion based on a singular detail and subsequently seeking to validate that impression.
• Overconfidence Bias – Overestimating one’s judgment capability, often intertwined with confirmation bias.
• Illusory Correlation – Misinterpreting or overstating the relevance of certain responses to the candidate’s competence.
• Beauty Bias – Preferring candidates based on appearance, which isn’t indicative of their job proficiency.
• Conformity Bias – Yielding to group consensus even if personal opinions differ.
• Contrast Effect – Comparing candidates to their predecessors instead of evaluating them based on the job’s demands.

How are you scoring in bias roulette?!

Here’s some more:

Affect heuristics – this unconscious bias sounds very scientific, but it’s one that’s being a very human survival mechanism throughout history. It’s simply about making snap judgements on someone’s ability to do a job based on superficial and irrelevant factors and your own preconceptions  – someone’s appearance, tattoos, the colour of their lipstick.

Similarity attraction – where hirers can fall into the trap of essentially hiring themselves; candidates with whom they share similar traits, interests or backgrounds. They may be fun to hang out with, but maybe not the best match for the job or building diversity.

Affinity bias – so you went to the same school, followed the same football team and maybe know the same people. That’s nice, but is it really of any relevance to the hiring decision?

Expectation anchor – where the hirer is stuck on what’s possibly an unrealistic preconception of what and who the candidate should be

Halo effect –  Your candidate is great at one thing, so that means they’re great at everything else, right? Judging candidates on one achievement or life experience doesn’t make up for a proper assessment of their qualifications and credentials

Horn effect – It’s the devil’s work. The opposite of the halo effect where one negative answer or trait darkens the hirer’s judgement and clouds the assessment process.

Intuition – going with that gut feeling again? While the emotional and intellectual connection may come into the process, it’s largely irrelevant. Focus on their actual experience and capabilities instead.

Can unconscious bias be eliminated? Can bias be unlearned?

In an ideal world, every hire would be approached in an objective way, free of unconscious basis and based on the candidate’s ability to do the job well. However, we don’t live in that perfect world and, time and time again, bias can cloud our judgement and lead to the wrong recruitment decisions. So what can we do? Let’s first talk about what doesn’t work.

Why unconscious bias training does not work

The efforts of any business to drive affirmative change in their business are to be respected. However, there’s a very good reason why unconscious bias training simply can’t work. Why?

Because unconscious bias is a universal and inherently human condition. Training targets individuals and their well-worn attitudes and world views.

While awareness and attitudes may change, inherent bias will remain because that’s the human condition.

So if humans can’t solve a very human problem, what can? Sapia is challenging the issue of unconscious bias in hiring by promoting ‘top-of-funnel’ screening that entirely avoids humans and their bias. Instead, candidates are interviewed and assessed through automation and algorithms.  The data that trains the machine is continuously tested so that if ever the slightest bias is found, it can be corrected.

According to an Article Published By Fast Company:
(Ref. https://www.fastcompany.com/90515678/science-explains-why-unconscious-bias-training-wont-reduce-workplace-racism-heres-what-will)

From a scientific perspective, there are reasons to be cautious that unconscious bias training will have a significant impact on racism, sexism, and other forms of workplace discrimination.

1. MOST BIASES ARE CONSCIOUS RATHER THAN UNCONSCIOUS

Contrary to what unconscious bias training programs would suggest, people are largely aware of their biases, attitudes, and beliefs, particularly when they concern stereotypes and prejudices. Such biases are an integral part of their self and social identity.

2. THERE IS ONLY A WEAK RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN ATTITUDES AND BEHAVIORS

Contrary to popular belief, our beliefs and attitudes are not strongly related to our behaviours. There is rarely more than 16% overlap (correlation of r = 0.4) between attitudes and behavior, and even lower for engagement and performance, or prejudice and discrimination.

3. THERE IS NO ACCURATE WAY TO MEASURE UNCONSCIOUS BIAS

The closest science has come to measuring unconscious biases is via so-called Implicit Association Tests (IAT), like Harvard’s racism or sexism test. (Over 30 million people have taken it, and you can try it for free here. These have come under significant academic criticism for being weak predictors of actual behaviours. For example, on race questions (black vs. white), the reported meta-analytic correlations range from 0.15 to 0.24.

4. IT’S HARD TO CHANGE PEOPLE’S BELIEFS, ESPECIALLY WHEN THEY DON’T WANT TO

The hardest thing to influence through any D&I initiative is how people feel about concepts such as gender or race. Systematic reviews of diversity training concluded: “The positive effects of diversity training rarely last beyond a day or two, and a number of studies suggest that it can activate bias or spark a backlash.”

Algorithms do the job humans can’t

Using machines and artificial intelligence to augment and challenge decisions is fast becoming mainstream across many applications and industries. To reduce the impact of unconscious bias in hiring decisions, testing for bias and removing it using algorithms is possible. With humans, it’s not.

Sappia tackles bias by screening and evaluating candidates with a simple open, transparent interview via a text conversation.  Candidates know text and trust text.

Unlike other Ai Hiring Tools, Sapia has no video hookups and no visual content. No CVs.

All of these factors carry the risk that unconscious bias can come into play. Nor is data extracted from social channels as our solution is designed to provide every candidate with a great experience that respects and recognises them as the individual they are.

A better experience for candidates, recruiters and clients alike

A research study by The Ladders found that recruiters only spend about 6 seconds looking at a resume. With bulk-hiring, it’s probably less. That’s 6 seconds to make or break a candidate’s hope.

Sapia’s AI-based screening comes into to its own with high volume briefs, with the capability to conduct unlimited interviews in a single hour/day, assessing >85 factors – from personality traits to language fluency and other valuable talent insights. Candidates receive personalised feedback, coaching tips for their next interview and faster decisions on their progress in the hiring process.

Sapia is not out to replace human recruiters but we are here to work as your co-pilot, helping you to make smarter, faster and unbiased hiring decisions.

Understand where unconscious bias has held your business back

AI-enabled enabled interviewing and assessment also tracks and measures bias at a micro level so businesses can understand the level and type of bias that may previously have influenced decisions. With candidate and client satisfaction rated 95%+, it’s a game-changer for changing behaviours.

Hiring’s a team sport and we’re rewriting the rules

The ability to measure unconscious bias is just one more reason to use AI-based screening tools over traditional processes.

Everyone has a story that’s bigger than their CV.

Sapia gives every candidate an opportunity to tell theirs. Through our engaging, non-threatening process where unconscious bias can be taken out of the equation (literally!), we will help you get to the best candidates sooner.

You’ll get a shortlist of candidates with the right traits and values for your business so you can move ahead to interviews with confidence and clarity. With time and resources saved on upfront screening, your team can concentrate on making the interviewing stage more rewarding for hirers and candidates alike.

With Sapia, you can soon be on your way to building more diverse, inclusive and happier workplaces. We know we can work for your business, so we’d love to work with your business. Let’s talk.

Have you seen the Inclusive e-Book? It offers a pathway to fairer hiring in 2021.

Get diversity and inclusion right whilst hiring on time and on budget. In this Inclusivity e-Book, you’ll learn: 

• How to design an inclusive recruitment path. From discovery to offer and validation of the process.
• The hidden inclusion challenges that are holding your organisation back.
• How to tell if Ai technology is ethical.

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