Research has shown that hiring processes are often biased and unfair. According to the 2017 Global Human Capital Trends Report of Deloitte, almost 70% of executive’s rate ‘diversity and inclusion’ as an important issue. We’re all unintentionally biased – and whether or not we mean for them to do so, these biases are influencing whom we hire. While bias will likely never be banned from recruitment entirely (as long as there are people involved), there are still a lot of measures we can take to fight these – unintentional – harmful biases when hiring talent.
No matter how fair-minded you are, it is likely you have a certain degree of bias. Biases are part of human nature – and much of them happen without our conscious brain ever noticing. According to a study published in the Journal of Neuroscience, our brain’s neurons designed to respond to human identity (whether it is gender, race, religion or body size) are linked by stereotypes, which distort the way we see other people. According to research by GetApp (2017), one third of job seekers think hiring processes are unfair and biased. A quarter of people even think that ALL companies have biased hiring practices.
It’s time to open up those doors for talent that has been left out for too long already! Here’s how video recruitment can help to de-bias your processes:
The human memory is ‘flexible’, and therefor notoriously unreliable. Neuroscientists have shown that each time we remember something, we are reconstructing the event, reassembling it from traces throughout the brain. Your abilities to recall a candidate’s exact responses, without any own interpretations, is risky to rely on. Using video interviews, you’re not longer forced to trust your unpredictable memory or disjointed notes. Conducted video interviews can be reviewed as often as needed, decreasing the chance of unintentional biases.
Having a structured and consistent interview process increases validity and reduces bias. Traditional interview processes are often unstructured, making them subject to bias (as well as a bad predictor of performance). Using video interviews, applicants are asked the same set of questions, in the same order, in the exact same interview environment. This creates an equal experience for every candidate, and ensures more consistent results to evaluate with more accuracy and less bias.
Collaborative hiring enables a greater level of transparency and improves the validity of the evaluation process. It not only helps people to check their unconscious biases, but also helps to uncover blind spots and prevent decisions made on ‘gut feeling’. Video recruitment allows you to easily create and manage a collaborative selection process. Interviews can be shared with in- and external stakeholder to efficiently involve them in the evaluation and decision-making process.
The last few years, AI technologies have created new ways to screen and identify the best talent. Using predictive algorithms and machine learning to assess human qualities, data can be gathered and processed in a more objective matter – free from assumptions and biases that humans fall victim to. Combining both audio and visual attributes, video interviews can provide a great amount of data to power these intelligent systems and predict the right match with more accuracy and less bias.
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To be human, is to be biased. Even when we have the best intentions, unconscious biases are something we all share. At the same time, there is no reasons why we should let them run rampant through our hiring processes. Technology has brought us new ways to create a more accurate, objective recruitment process that is less prone to bias. Recruitment should be as fair and transparent as possible. Have a critical look at your processes and judge for yourself – are your hiring practices properly guarded?
Happy bias-free Hiring!