Racism has no place in the workplace, and no person with a decent sense of ethics and professionalism would ever exclude someone from a position because of their race. Unfortunately, that’s not enough.
While explicit racial bias still exists, hiring managers often fail to recognize their own implicit biases. The result is that the hiring process is often inherently racist, and people of color are at an inherent disadvantage.
How does this problem get fixed? Sadly, implicit bias isn’t something that employers can cast aside like a bad habit. Removing it takes work, and doing that work is the first step.
Anyone hiring or managing others should be aware of implicit prejudices to recognize where they might be a problem and then work on themselves.
Next, it’s important to change the process of recruiting and hiring. Here, the idea is to remove as many opportunities for implicit racial bias as possible.
Identifying Your Racial Bias
Ask the average person if they are racially biased, and they’ll likely deny it. Suggest that they may be influenced by racism when recruiting and hiring, and they’ll probably be offended.
Despite this, there’s much evidence out there that even well-intentioned people have unconscious biases that impact their hiring choices. The only way to fix this is to acknowledge it, then work on it.
The Paradox of Meritocracy
One of the biggest indicators that racial bias will be an issue is the denial that it’s a problem. In other words, when people are convinced that they only hire based on merit, they cannot recognize the bias that exists.
Methods for Recognizing Internalized Bias
Every hiring manager should strongly consider taking the Implicit Association Test that Harvard University offers. This test helps people to see how and where their unconscious biases can become an issue.
Additionally, this is an area where it is imperative to seek out external feedback.
Specifically, hiring teams must learn how people of color have experienced their hiring process. It can also help to understand how they are treated on the job. You can know for sure that if racism is an issue among employees who have been hired, it’s also impacting prospects.
Anonymize the Hiring Process
There’s a new trend in recruiting and hiring that is known as blind hiring. This hiring method involves anonymizing as much identifying information as possible from applications and resumes. The goal is to force managers to look at applicants based solely on their experience and capabilities.
How to Implement Blind Hiring
Blind hiring can be harder to do than many people realize. Some businesses choose to use third-party recruiting firms or applicant tracking systems that have already incorporated blind hiring just to make the process a little easier.
It may be possible for your company to do this without software or help from another business, but it will be challenging. Essentially, you must identify what information could lead to assumptions about an applicant’s racial identity.
There’s more to that than obscuring race information. Hiring teams can make an assumption about race based on:
- Name
- Address
- Name of high school or college
- Previous employer
- Awards and honors
Imagine that you are hiring for a software developer. For the blind application, the hiring service would introduce you to candidate number one, who has a bachelor’s degree in computer science and five years of experience in web and software development. They also won three major academic honors while in school.
That should be enough information to determine that the candidate has met your criteria. At the same time, no racially identifying information has been used. Thanks to that, it is nearly impossible for racial bias to have influenced how you reviewed the application.
Standardize the Interview Process
Affinity bias is the tendency to relate to and get along with the people we perceive are most like us. Even though people may not do it intentionally, affinity bias may be influenced by race. An interviewer may unconsciously assume interests and experiences in common with a candidate of the same race.
As a result, interviewers may find themselves having more personable, conversational interviews with people of the same race. Ultimately, this can influence them to favor candidates of the same race.
The best way to avoid this is to standardize the interview process. Essentially, interviewers should stick to a script of questions that everyone who applies for the same position is asked.
Check Your Diversity Numbers
You can’t say that you’ve solved the issue of racial bias in recruiting and hiring if you don’t have a diverse staff. Yes, the changes you implement can take some time to show results, but there need to be aggressive goals to eradicate biases in meaningful ways.
Keep in mind that it isn’t just racial minorities who are impacted by this. Diversity is important to most people. The vast majority of workers indicate that it is important to work somewhere committed to diversity, equity, and inclusion.
One way to truly assess this is to use an objective third party. This outsourcing takes away any potential for bias in reporting about diversity.
Additionally, a qualified third party can better analyze your data to offer a diversity report that truly reflects what is happening in your organization today. For example, that diversity report may uncover that while you have hired a diverse staff, diversity isn’t reflected in management or executive roles.
