Author’s note: This article was originally called “blind hiring”, however I’ve come to learn that this is an ableist term. A more inclusive term is “anonymised”, hence I’ll be using that going forwards.
When my wife and I first met, she dreaded applying for a new role. Despite being a highly qualified software engineer, time and time again, she would apply to companies to be completely ignored. The same companies who publicly stating that they were desperate for new talent.
I took a look over her CV, and I changed just one word. Almost overnight, she saw a drastic change: engagement from talent teams almost doubled, she was receiving far more callbacks, and she began getting interview invites. What change did I make that could have such a dramatic effect on her chances?
Her name.
We changed her name from Yekaterina to its English equivalent: Catherine. Just changing her name doubled the callbacks from job applications. Is this fair? No. Is this unexpected? Unfortunately, also no.
Countless candidates are being rejected or ignored for something which has no impact on how effective they are at work. Unfortunately, numerous studies have confirmed what my wife experienced: having a foreign sounding name can dramatically reduce your chances of being accepted for a role.
This isn’t just anecdotal. A study from the National Bureau of Economic Research discovered that:
- Applications with names that sounded white received 50% more callbacks than those with names that sounded African American.
- A White name yields as many more callbacks as an additional eight years of experience.
- The address at which someone lives can also influence the hiring decision.
For companies who are trying to increase representation in their workforce, this can present a challenge.
Why does this happen?
Our brains are constantly making judgments and decisions in the background without us ever being aware of it. We live in a complex social world, and our brains would be paralysed if we had to manually process all of this information we’re presented. Our brains have learned to take shortcuts, and they usually do a good job making fair and rational judgements. Unfortunately, this can lead to the occurrence of biases.
What do I mean by a bias here?
Picture a nurse in your mind. What gender do you imagine them to be?
Most people will automatically picture a woman.
How about a successful businessperson? You might see where this is going.
These are examples of an unconscious bias, where we automatically make assumptions and associations based on a small piece of information we’re given. These assumptions usually work in our favour, but they can have tragic consequences in the hiring space. This isn’t just limited to the English speaking world, and happens all over the world, including Germany, Sweden and France.
There are a number of different biases which can affect hiring, and name-based judgments are strongly associated with the affinity bias – people tend to prefer people who share characteristics with them.
Introducing Anonymised Hiring
A number of techniques exist to reduce the effects of cognitive bias, including:
- Anonymised hiring.
- Using scorecards during interviews.
- Staff training programmes.
- Setting up actionable reporting to understand if you’re making any progress in hiring people from underrepresented backgrounds.
Today, I want to focus on the concept of anonymised hiring.
Anonymised hiring involves anonymising personal details on job applications and CVs, leaving only the information important for hiring. You may choose to remove the applicant’s name, email and postal address. Some companies go as far as to remove the university if the applicant has enough work experience.
Implementing these changes can be quite a time consuming process, since often a hiring manager will need to manually remove these names from CVs before they’re passed elsewhere in the company. At the same time, because the names haven’t been removed from the start, the hiring manager is also exposed to the effects of unconscious bias.
Hiring platforms such as Prisma provide automatic features for supporting anonymised hiring. Prisma’s CV generation system means that the CVs automatically have key details removed, which means every applicant has an equal opportunity. You can choose how much you remove, such as their name, email, address, degree, university and more. We’ve researched best-practices and we can make recommendations within the platform, but ultimately the choice is up to you.
By introducing anonymised hiring, you give every candidate a fair chance, and you can significantly increase your success in reaching your diversity and inclusion goals.
The importance of diversity
Addressing biases in the hiring process isn’t just about fairness, it’s essential for building a diverse and inclusive workforce. If you don’t have a strategy yet for increasing diversity in your workforce, you really should consider it. Having a workforce of diverse backgrounds brings a huge variety of perspectives to situations, and can often open reveal solutions which might not be obvious to only one culture.
Your finances will thank you too. According to a McKinsey report, companies in to the top quartile for ethnic and racial diversity in management were 35% more likely to have financial returns above their industry mean.
