It’s a fact: everyone has biases, including you.

Problems arise when these biases inform our decision-making process without us even being aware.

If hiring managers let these unconscious biases affect their hiring decisions, it can devastate an organization. This decreases the innovation and cutting-edge creativity common among groups of people with different backgrounds and experiences.

Here are 9 ways to ensure you hire the best candidates without allowing common interview biases to interfere.

1. Understand Bias

A once highly useful survival mechanism, bias is a shortcut to quick, automatic decision-making. It’s a nudge to avoid the unfamiliar, including people perceived as “different,” which — in prehistoric times — could spell danger.

Even though most people consciously agree that differences in culture, race, sexual orientation, etc., aren’t anything to be feared, these biases still come into play — often without us realizing it’s happening.

As humans, we’re still a product of evolution and are born pre-programmed with these biological built-in mechanisms rooted in experiences our ancestors endured.

The first step to reducing interview bias is to become aware of how the different types of bias can manifest.

Here are a few common ways different types of bias can override better judgment during the interview and hiring process:

The Horn and Halo Effect

This concept is based on first impressions. If a candidate makes a favorable initial impact on the hiring manager, it colors their overall judgment of the person.

If the candidate makes an unfavorable first impression — maybe they’re a few minutes late to the interview — the hiring manager may view them in a negative light.

The horn and halo effect is a positive or negative judgment made on someone’s entire character based on a single positive or negative experience.

These impressions can be based on looks as well as actions. Multiple studies show that people generally view their attractive counterparts as more intelligent and conscientious than the average-looking person.

Affinity Bias

Most people are inclined to treat and view others positively when they feel a kinship, or affinity, towards the other person, usually based on similarities or shared characteristics.

This is a crucial bias to be aware of because it has the power to influence decision-making at the unconscious level.

Here are some questions to ask yourself that can help discern if the candidate is appealing based on an affinity or similarity bias:

• Do I think they’ll be a good candidate for the job simply because they seem like they’d be pleasant to sit next to on an airplane?
• Do I want to hire them because it feels like I “know” them?
• Do I think they’ll excel in the role because they remind me of someone I like and trust?
• Do I think they’re a strong candidate because they demonstrate a firm grasp and understanding of the job requirements?
  
  

Asking questions that challenge the unconscious decision-making process (which all too often goes unchecked!) is crucial, especially when the thought of doing so feels challenging or uncomfortable.

Another trick to help weed out affinity bias is to define what a “good fit” actually looks like in a candidate. Of course, you want someone who’s professional and understands the importance of working as part of a team, but which specific job-related skills and attributes are you looking for?

What are the team’s current strengths, and what are you hoping to address and add to combat areas of weakness?

Stereotypes and Confirmation Bias

Stereotypes are preconceived notions or sweeping generalizations — both positive and negative — made about a group of people and then applied to individuals within the group.

Stereotypes can become something people unconsciously look for when interacting with a person within a certain demographic. If the person behaves in accordance with the stereotype, the belief that “this is how these people behave,” is confirmed — referred to as confirmation bias.

It’s important to slow down and question your thinking enough to see if there are any stereotypes you’re clinging to. If you stumble upon anything that remotely resembles stereotype bias, question its origins and the fairness of using it to assess and judge someone without even knowing them.

The Reality of Unconscious Prejudice

Unchecked bias during the recruitment and interview process usually results in hiring the wrong person. This could mean neglecting top talent due to something foolish like:

• An unexamined racial bias
• An unfair interview
• Unequitable hiring practices
  
  

The challenge of unconscious prejudice is it exists outside the realm of our awareness (It can be an incredible challenge to catch our own biases.), thus it’s all too easy to think of bias as someone else’s problem.

The only way to remedy this issue is to realize that everyone has biases. Through acknowledgment, curiosity, and bias training, it becomes easier to spot these faulty cognitive shortcuts and make better decisions overall.

You may also like: Improving Your Employment Reference Checks

2. Be Clear About Candidate Job-Related Attributes

Beyond the general aptitude required to excel in the role, it can be helpful to paint a picture of the overall qualities, skills, and know-how you’re hoping to add to the team, and use that to paint a comprehensive picture through the job description.

If you have a group of similar people, maybe there are other cultural aspects you’d like to include within the team. Perhaps you’re looking to hire someone experienced in other areas with unique creative strengths.

If you have a clear picture of what you’re looking to include, it makes selecting a great candidate that much more straightforward.

Otherwise, it becomes all too easy to let affinity bias take over and, despite all your best intentions, hire someone based on familiarity alone.

Discover: Hiring Manager’s Guide to Hiring Diverse Engineers

3. Initiate Company-Wide Bias Training

As touched upon earlier, the challenge of bias is that it lies outside the realm of conscious cognition. This is why hosting company-wide training is so important to identify and address common biases.

Seek training that delves into how implicit bias influences decisions and invites curiosity and objectivity, covering:

• Different narratives, stereotypes, cultural associations, or opinions that may still inform opinion
• How first impression bias, including body language, eye contact, and other nonverbal biases, come into play
  
  

It’s important to pinpoint areas vulnerable to bias in both business and life.

When you know what they are, it’s easier to pay attention to how decisions are being made in each of these areas. This minimizes the likelihood of bias influencing your choices in these commonly overlooked areas.

In addition, any interviewer training specifically geared towards identifying and eliminating bias within the hiring process is extremely helpful.

4. Expand Your Recruitment Efforts to Reach a More Diverse Audience

It’s no secret that diversity is an integral element of business-related innovation and success, and thus reaching a diverse audience is a talent acquisition necessity.

When posting new job opportunities, the best way to find a broad range of possible candidates is to branch out and expand the reach of your recruitment process. Venture beyond the typical job boards and places where you usually share vacancies.

Many movers and shakers in the tech sphere achieve this through partnering with Obsidi®.

At Obsidi®, we support Black people in tech and meet our partners’ business-related needs at the same time.

5. Conduct “Blind” Resume Screenings

When reviewing resumes, make it a practice for the hiring team to redact any information that reveals candidate identifiers. Omit their name, age, gender, ethnicity, etc.

This is an excellent way to ensure you’re basing the decision to contact them for an interview on their qualifications and attributes you believe will benefit the team—and not allowing things like affinity bias to creep in and take control.

Phone screenings are also useful tools, although they may reveal gender, accent, and whether or not English is the candidate’s first language.

While many companies are jumping on the AI bandwagon and using it to advance their recruiting and applicant selection process, be aware that AI may still be beholden to the biases of those who programmed it.

Thus, if you’re using AI to help gauge a candidate’s suitability, be sure that the information you input is strictly related to the candidate’s abilities and experiences.

Do not include anything related to their demographics or other potential identifiers.

6. Implement Skill-Based Assessments

Along with blind resume screenings, it’s helpful to have candidates take job-related assessments that test their knowledge and creativity regarding the position.

Use scoring criteria to help determine the candidate’s skills, and whether or not to invite them to interview.

You can create the assessment yourself, laying out five questions that test problem-solving abilities and how they would proceed in a hypothetical situation.

The assessment could be multiple choice, open answer, or both.

7. Establish a Structured Interview Format

This is something most companies already do, to a degree.

Structured interviews with a predetermined set of questions are essential to maintaining fairness and consistency.

You can use a template for the interview questions and tweak them slightly to be job-specific.

Ensure everyone on the interview panel understands how important it is not to go off-topic and stray from asking the set of standardized questions.

A job interview that veers off course as the candidate and interviewer discover a mutual obsession for the same football team (then spend the next 20 minutes sharing their hopes and dreams for the upcoming season) risks affinity bias.

Beyond job-specific questions meant to test the candidates’ familiarity and experience with the position, consider adding topics that give insight into the prospects’ creativity and problem-solving abilities.

For those looking to add a particular skill to strengthen the team’s creativity and inject additional insight or experience that is currently lacking, think of a few questions that might give a glimpse into whether or not a candidate possesses the attributes you’re seeking.

See also: Best Interview Questions for Remote Tech Workers

8. Have a Diverse Interview and Hiring Panel

The danger of having like-minded people from a similar social sphere involved in interviewing and hiring is that they usually select a candidate who is just like them.

Having a diverse interview panel and diverse representation among those who make hiring decisions is an excellent way to ensure that affinity bias won’t influence the outcome.

In addition, involving managers or team leads of that role and providing them with non-descriptive “blind” candidate information can be a useful adjunct.

9. Conduct Regular Audits of Your Recruiting and Hiring Processes

Periodic reevaluation and examination of your recruiting and hiring procedures is a must! This can help identify and eliminate potential bias.

Track your recruitment efforts. Note where open positions are posted and seek alternative methods that reach a wider demographic.

Start your risk-free trial of Obsidi® Recruit to 10x your Black tech talent pipeline!

Conclusion

The better informed and aware you are, the less likely you are to let interview bias rule your decision-making.

Eliminating interview bias is one of the best ways to create a successful team that’s leading the charge, increasing your bottom line, and positively impacting society.

Partner with Obsidi® today to accelerate your journey to a more inclusive workplace.