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Blind Recruitment: What Is It And How Do You Implement It?
Diverse companies see 2.5 times higher cash flow per employee, higher revenues, increased employee engagement, and better retention numbers. They benefit from a wider range of perspectives and, consequently, a greater depth of creativity when brainstorming, problem-solving, and making decisions.
That means companies without a fair, inclusive, and accessible recruiting process—free of bias—are missing out on top talent and all the financial rewards of hiring them.
The Unconscious Bias Problem
Even though most companies have taken great strides by this point to make their hiring process more fair, many still suffer from less noticeable unconscious bias.
Unconscious bias in recruiting refers to forming opinions about candidates based on first impressions or irrelevant criteria, leading to less diverse teams and hindering business productivity. It might look like progressing someone onto the next stage because they went to the same high school as you or rejecting their application because of an employment gap.
Awareness of these biases and more intentional decision-making can help mitigate their impact and lead to more effective, more fruitful hiring processes.
Enter: Blind Recruitment
That’s where blind recruitment comes in. Blind recruitment is a hiring strategy designed to minimize bias by concealing candidates’ personal information during the recruiting process, including data such as names, gender, age, educational background, and even addresses.
You’ve likely heard of the famous research paper out of the National Bureau of Economy Research titled, Are Emily and Greg More Employable than Lakisha and Jamal? in which researchers responded with fictitious resumes to help-wanted ads in Boston and Chicago newspapers to see how identity-telling data affects hiring decisions.
TLDR: white-sounding names received 50 percent more interview callbacks than black-sounding names.
The goal of blind recruitment, then, is to remove identity-telling information to make it easier for hiring managers, recruiters, and HR professionals to make objective decisions about a candidate’s skills, experience, and suitability for a role—and to lessen the risk of bias (whether conscious or unconscious bias) affecting the decision-making process.
It also gives under-represented groups confidence that their application will be fairly considered, encouraging more diverse candidates to apply and enhancing the company’s image as an equitable and inclusive employer.
Researchers have proved blind recruitment to be an effective way to remove gender bias, racial bias, and even age-based discrimination. Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to set up a blind hiring program at your organization.
Step 1: Lay the Foundation
The first step to setting up a successful blind hiring program is to bring awareness to the problem and make employees understand why the change is necessary—ultimately driving adoption.
Through awareness training and reflection, employees can learn to assess and shape their behavior and broaden their mindset. This ensures an empathetic workplace and a hiring process that welcomes diverse viewpoints and ideas.
Once recruiters, hiring managers, HR professionals, and other key employees have been trained up—creating a solid foundation for bias-free recruiting—you can take additional, more actionable steps to implement an effective blind hiring process.
Step 2: Revise Job Descriptions
Job descriptions are the first point of contact between the company and a candidate, meaning they set the tone for all future interactions.
They help prospective applicants understand whether they would be a good fit for the position (and company) by clearly outlining what a role involves, what skills and qualifications are required, and what the organization is about.
Ensure job descriptions emphasize the skills and competencies required for the role, rather than stressing education requirements or years of experience, to prevent applicants from sharing overly identifying information on their applications. Additionally, use gender-neutral language to avoid discouraging any demographic from applying.
Step 3: Anonymize Resumes, Job Applications, and Cover Letters
Today, applicant tracking systems (ATS) and other HR tools can redact names, gender, age, and other personal identifiers from resumes to help recruiters and hiring managers evaluate candidates more objectively.
Be sure to leverage these anonymizing features when screening resumes and throughout the hiring process and ensure that all employees involved in recruiting know how to use them too.
Additionally, consider implementing a uniform resume format for all applicants that helps them focus on their qualifications and skills, rather than an open-ended format in which they’re more likely to share identifying information. An ATS can help with that, too.
Step 4: Invest In the Right Technology
On that note, invest in recruitment software that supports blind recruiting programs. Beyond anonymizing features and resume templates, modern recruiting tools offer skills assessments, hiring rubrics and scorecards, and AI-powered resume parsing to improve blind hiring goals.
Whatever you do, be sure to choose a solution with robust data collection and analytics capabilities so you can assess the effectiveness of your blind recruiting program and make improvements as you go.
Step 5: Implement Structured Interviews
The ultimate goal of blind recruitment is to create a more consistent, objective hiring process that fully complies with hiring equity laws. Offering structured interviews and skill-based assessments can help you do that as you move from the fully-blind screening phase into the less-anonymous interview phase.
To conduct effective structured interviews, prepare a standard set of questions for all candidates–delivered by a diverse interview panel with various backgrounds—ensuring consistency and fairness and reducing individual biases.
Offering standardized, skill-based tests with a blind evaluation during the interview process can also bring more anonymity and objectivity to your blind hiring program.
For more unconventional recruiting methods and ways to bring more fairness to your hiring programs, tune in for this week’s episode of America Back to Work. We’re sitting down with Ross Cadastre, founder of BIPOC Jobs, a tech platform connecting diverse talent to job opportunities designed for BIPOC professionals.