When you search ‘hire for values’ on Google, about 424m search results come up. HBR, and every other respectable HR journal has covered this topic at length.

But what does it mean and how do you do it at scale? And then how do you signal your values to incoming applicants?

For some organisations, ‘hiring for values’ could translate as including your values video on your careers page, showing the video at campus presentations or do as Atlassian does and hand out your values as temporary tattoos!

None of those PR stunts helps you hire for your values. What CHROs and their CEOs crave is the ability to embed their organisation’s values in their key people processes – in hiring and promotion decisions where values-driven decisions make the biggest impact on your culture. In graduate recruitment, that can be challenging given the hiring rates can be 2-5% of your applicant pool. This is where technology can help. Read on to see how easy it is to embed your values in recruitment using AI-led assessment technology.

Embedding your values in your hiring decisions typically means hiring for traits, based on the proposition that who you are as a person counts for as much as what you know at any point in time.

In graduate recruitment, this usually means looking for qualities like grit, curiosity, drive, emotional intelligence and the willingness to take accountability to make things happen.

See how AI can reveal these traits for every graduate applicant from analysing text responses to 5 open-ended questions. Contact us here

The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) passed in 1990. This year, Australia’s Disability Discrimination Act turned 30. Even after all that time, bias and discrimination against candidates and employees with disabilities continues to be an important topic.

The unemployment rate for those with a disability (10.1%) in 2021 was about twice as high as the rate for those without a disability (5.1%) (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2022). Coupled with increased laws and regulations regarding the protection of disabled job applicants and employees (e.g., U.S. EEOC, 2022), it is no surprise that academics, employers, and selection vendors are keen to understand where potential disability bias exists so it can be reduced or, ideally, eliminated.

Traditional face-to-face interviews are a large entry barrier for people with disabilities

Traditional face-to-face or video interviews in particular create potential barriers for individuals with disabilities, due to the well-documented stigma and prejudice against those with disabilities (Scior, 2011; Thompson et al., 2011). One study found that fake accountant job applicants that had disclosed a disability were 26% less likely to receive employment interest from the employer than those with no disability. Worse, experienced candidates with disabilities were 34% less likely to receive interest, despite presenting equally high levels of qualifications (Ameri et al., 2015). In addition to the bias held by hiring managers or recruiters, another concern is that certain selection methods create a very poor candidate experience for individuals with disabilities, causing them stress or anxiety and therefore stopping them from putting their best foot forward. For individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) in particular, in-person or video interviews can be very stressful, with less than 10% believing they are given the opportunity to demonstrate their skills and abilities in this process (Cooper & Kennady, 2021).

Stuttering is another form of disability where traditional in-person and video interviews where the candidate has to speak may lead to stress and anxiety (Manning and Beck, 2013). One study found that people who stutter find their stuttering to be a “major handicap” in their working lives and over 70% thought that they had a decreased opportunity to be hired and promoted (Klein & Hood, 2004). Other disabilities, such as dyslexia and other learning and language disabilities may cause candidates to struggle with timed online selection assessments, so it is important to identify and remove these barriers (Hyland & Rutigliano, 2013).

How do we better accommodate people with disabilities or neurodiversity in the way we interview and hire?

Cooper and Mujtaba (2022) recommend alternative approaches that allow candidates with ASD to showcase their skills without having to verbally communicate them or properly interpret nonverbal cues.

The use of an online, untimed, chat-based interview – that is, our Ai Smart Interviewer – can not only help reduce discrimination against those with disabilities but also create a more positive candidate experience for them.

This format is particularly helpful for individuals with disabilities where traditional in-person interviews, video interviews, or timed assessments may cause stress or discomfort, therefore not allowing the candidate to express themselves freely and adequately demonstrate their skills.

The power of a Smart Interviewer, supported by research

Our Sapia Labs data science team has submitted a paper on reducing bias for people with disabilities to SIOP for 2023.

In the study, the data comes directly from our Smart Interviewer, which, as we said above, is an online untimed chat-based interview platform.

Candidates can give feedback after the interview process, and some candidates include self-report disability conditions in their feedback. While a number of different disabilities were mentioned, we had sufficient sample sizes to examine candidates with autism, dyslexia, and stutter. We compared their machine learning-generated final interview scores and yes/maybe/no hiring recommendations to a randomly sampled, demographically similar group of candidates that did not disclose a disability.

Effect sizes, 4/5ths ratios, and Z-tests revealed no adverse impact against candidates with autism, stutter or dyslexia. Additionally, feedback from these groups tended to indicate the experience was positive and allowed them the opportunity to do their best.

• “It was an unusual experience but as an autistic person, I appreciated being able to interview via text rather than phone. It gave me the chance to really consider my responses in my own time.”
• “I must admit this is much more relieving than a face-to-face interview as I fear that I would stutter and accidentally say something stupid.”
• “Being dyslexic, this interview gives me a fantastic opportunity to think and re-read my responses before delivery.”

True diversity and inclusion starts with the way you hire. Our Ai Smart Interviewer allows people with disabilities and neurodiversity – real people, with real ambitions – to represent themselves fairly.

Reach out to us today to find out more.

In an earlier blog, we talked about HR’s role in managing business risk. Today we turn our focus on one risk area that occupies CHRO’s, CEOs and Boards- the risk presented by bias and how to maximise fairness by removing bias. 

Despite all the attention generated by International Women’s Day year a few months back and year on year, and myriad other initiatives, Boards, CEO’s and CHRO’s know that bias goes beyond gender and fixing it requires more than a training session or two. 

Humans are full of bias and none of us like admitting that.

Most of us would not even know when are being biased…

‘I just had a feeling he wasn’t going to be any good’

‘he just wasn’t a good culture fit’

‘she just doesn’t have the requisite experience’ 

‘we had such an awesome interview, we could have chatted forever we had so much in common ‘

Bias in recruitment is even less measured and reported on than quality of hire.

It starts with having the data. The data revolution has been happening for decades in every other function but where is the data around recruitment?

• Do you know if there is bias in screening? hiring? promotion?
• Do the leaders and Board know those stats?
• When you run your 5000 graduate applicants through a personality assessment do you probe HR on what the success profile is that is defining screening criteria?
• Is that profile preferring a certain type (eg over-indexed to qualities like drive, initiative, agility) or does it balance out hiring to include some of those all-important cultural traits like empathy and humility? 
• Is your hiring profile going to give you more ‘Satya’s’ or more ‘Travis’s’? 

More on bias measurement later…

How can bias be removed from people decisions?

Daniel Kahneman, Psychologist & Nobel Laureate, has this to say about managing bias in human decision-making. 

“When making decisions, think of options as if they were candidates. Break them up into dimensions and evaluate each dimension separately. Then – delay forming an intuition too quickly. Instead, focus on the separate points, and when you have the full profile, then you can develop your intuition.”  

Regarded as the father of behavioural economics, after 5 decades of research he has concluded that the research is unequivocal: When it comes to decision-making, algorithms are superior to people

For further reading on how AI can remove bias in recruitment, download our whitepaper here.