There is a legacy of underrepresentation, especially in the tech industry. Building a diverse team can prove to be challenging. Even if a company sets out to tackle their diversity issue, their attempt often falls short due to unconscious biases that lead to unfair hiring practises. 

Unconscious biases are learned stereotypes that are automatic, unintentional, deeply ingrained, universal, and able to influence behaviour. It can introduce unintentional discrimination and result in poor decision-making. 

In the context of the hiring process, a candidate’s resume picture, their name, or their hometown could influence your opinion more than you think. In short, unconscious bias influences your decision – whether positively or negatively – using criteria irrelevant to the job. 

Unconscious bias can occur at many stages throughout the recruiting process. For example, a recruiter may unconsciously write job descriptions that appeal more to a certain group of people. A recruiter looking for an IT developer might advertise a role as a “Java Ninja”, which could discourage women from applying because the title uses more masculine language.

During the candidate screening process individuals might also experience affinity bias, a specific type of unconscious bias that occurs when someone with a certain background is favoured. An instance of this might include a hiring manager seeking candidates with an MBA from a particular school. At the company level, bias can even extend to citing a company’s culture fit as a reason to hire a certain type of person, i.e. hiring only younger workers. 

We are here to address and prevent those biases from taking root in the hiring process.