Recognizing the bias in Recruitment and Selection

The recruitment and selection process in an organization can identify as eliminating unsuitable and selecting suitable contenders among the job applicants. However, humans by nature, are not foolproof but saturated with a natural instinct of biases (Boateng, 2021).

This blog will explain that biases are very common and affect an organization's recruitment and selection process.

Unconscious Bias can affect organizations and introduce unintended discrimination, resulting in poor decision-making. Further, it will be a significant obstacle to creating a heterogeneous workplace (Collings, Mellahi and Cascio, 2017). As witnessed by Boateng(2021), in many companies in America, a number of staff members of one ethnic group dominate the company when the recruitment manager is also from the same ethnic group. Biased recruitment will produce differences among groups which jeopardize an organization's journey towards success. According to the research done by (Hunt, Layton and Prince, 2015), 'companies with more diverse workforces perform better financially'. They found that gender diversity in management positions of the organization will increase profitability and organizations with culturally and ethnically diverse executive teams also perform better than homogeneous teams.

Few implicit bias that can affect recruitment at the interview level:

Halo Effect:

The halo effect is a cognitive bias mainly based on first impressions about a person's character. So, for example, when someone is nice or friendly, that will be an assumption to think that person will be clever, intelligent and better for the job. Suppose the interviewer believes that formal dressing is essential for a job and the candidate comes informally to the interview but has other positive attributes. In that case, the interviewer takes the informal dress as a negative attribute, which becomes influential (Akanda, 2013).

Horn Effect:

The Horn effect is the opposite of the Halo effect; if a person is loud or too shy, the first impression of that person will not be good, and the perception of negative characteristics will create that the person will not be smart or intelligent or not good at the job. suppose the interviewer believes that formal dress is essential for a job and the candidate comes smartly to the interview but has other attributes. In that case, the interviewer takes the formal dress as a positive attribute without considering the candidate's other attributes, which becomes influential (Akanda, 2013).

Leniency Effect:

The leniency bias will happen when the interviewer rate a candidate higher because of the feeling that if not, it will affect him unfavorably or might affect his relationship with the candidate (Akanda, 2013).

Contrast Effect:

Human brains use comparisons to place things and people in context. If the candidate appears better than the previous one, then the interviewer may rate the present candidate with higher rates than he normally rates in a different situation (Machado and Davim, 2022).

Confirmation Bias:

When the interviewer makes a pre-judgment about the candidate and his background, it's called confirmation bias if the interviewer searches for information to prove that belief (Vernooij et al., 2022).

Conformity Bias:

In an interview panel, if the interviewer unintentionally agrees with the majority of the forum about the candidate, it's called conformity bias (Machado and Davim, 2022).

Personal Similarity Bias:

In general, all humans believe that they have good characteristics and personalities. Therefore interviewer can favor any candidate who expresses similar characteristics or personalities of him. For example: when there are common backgrounds like religion, ethnicity, school or university, the interviewer may prefer that candidate over another. This is called personal similarity bias (Machado and Davim, 2022).

It's not easy to avoid any unconscious bias altogether. But organizations should design the interview process and provide adequate training and knowledge for the interviewers to minimize this kind of bias towards candidates, or interviewers should be mindful of it. Furthermore, if any organization wants to maintain diversity among the team, it's important to avoid unconscious bias during the recruitment and selection process (Machado and Davim, 2022).

In the corporate world, Tolstoi-Miller shares her personal story of bias and how recognizing her unconscious bias taught her to say “so what” (TEDx Talks, 2017).

REFERENCES

Akanda, A., 2013. The Practicalities of Human Resources. 1st ed. Authorhouse.

Boateng, D., 2021. Effect of Bias on Selection and Recruitment. Academia Letters,.

Collings, D., Mellahi, K. and Cascio, W., 2017. The Oxford Handbook of Talent Management. 1st ed. Oxford, United Kingdom: Oxford University Press.

Hunt, V., Layton, D. and Prince, S., 2015. Why diversity matters. [online] www.mckinsey.com. Available at: <https://www.mckinsey.com/~/media/mckinsey/business%20functions/people%20and%20organizational%20performance/our%20insights/why%20diversity%20matters/why%20diversity%20matters.pdf> [Accessed 2 September 2022].

Machado, C. and Davim, J., 2022. Sustainability and Intelligent Management. 1st ed. Charm, Swisterzerland: Springer.

TEDx Talks, 2017. Unconscious bias: Stereotypical hiring practices. [video] Available at: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCFb4BiDDcE> [Accessed 1 September 2022].

Vernooij, C., Stuijt, J., Hendriks, M., ten Have, W. and ten Have, S., 2022. Organizational Behaviour and Change Management. 1st ed. Milton: Taylor & Francis Group.