Why Thinking You're Fair Could Be Your First Recruitment Mistake

Unconscious Bias In Recruitment

You’re a fair person, right? You stick to the rules when playing a game, give up your seat on public transport, you’re tolerant of everyone, whoever they are and wherever they’re from – that kind of thing? Of course.

So would it surprise you to know that, according to science, your own brain – your own subconscious – is working away, adding in a layer of bias in to your actions and decision-making that can easily make those good and fair-minded choices you think you’re making seem, well, unfair?

‘Unconscious’ or ‘Implicit’ bias first appeared as a theory in the mid-Noughties, and was defined as the ‘science of unconscious mental processes’ – with obvious implications for discrimination in the workplace and out of it. It demonstrated that as we process around 99.9% of information at an unconscious level, we’re making judgements of people which, while not necessarily discriminatory, can certainly be unfair. Moreover, they can cause us to overlook talent – without even knowing we’re doing it.

In a recruitment context, that’s obviously an issue. Today, recruiting managers are well-drilled to see beyond skin colour, gender, and the other obvious signals of partiality. But, as Freud would no doubt tell you, your subconscious is a subtle beast, and a bias can manifest itself in many ways. Perhaps it’s the accent of the candidate? Where they went to university? What you’ve decided is their class background? And the bias won’t necessarily be negative – a candidate who has attended an institution you admire might get the nod because you equate its graduates with intelligence, which is surely a good thing, right?

This unconscious ‘pigeon-holing’ happens literally in the blink of an eye – one-tenth of a second is the amount of time it takes us to form a judgement. So first impressions really do matter. This natural affinity bias – when we instinctively lean towards people who share qualities that are familiar to us, and which we therefore find relatable – is ultimately about self-preservation. Whether it is gender, hair colour, style or whatever it is our intuition to seek out what makes us feel safe. But it also means we’re making snap judgements about candidates who could, otherwise, be just what we’re looking for. So by favouring what is familiar, we continue to fish from the same pond. Is the travel industry less fair, and have less potential, as a result?

I’d argue that in the scramble for differentiation and competitive advantage, travel brands need to be doing more than just trying to be ‘blind’ in their recruitment. They should be actively seeking out ways to do things differently – which means drawing their talent from across the entire spectrum of candidates. Why? Because different perspectives lead to different solutions.

So how to get beyond what are, by definition, instinctive and unthought reactions? Recruiters need to be honest with themselves, confront their own bias and then consider each candidate through that lens. Do you have an assumption about what each gender is ‘better’ at? Does a particular accent lead you to question someone’s capabilities? Ask yourself these questions, and even be prepared to bring in diverse views and backgrounds to the recruiting process itself as a way to compensate against those predispositions.

At Wander, we offer a free e-learning course for anyone involved in recruiting to identify and mitigate against bias in the selection process, and help them to develop tools to counteract such impulses, in partnership with our friends at Cognicity. It’s not easy, but by accepting that it takes self-discipline to overcome our instinct for self-preservation we can level the playing field, give everyone the same opportunity to prove they are best candidate and so broaden the talent pool in our industry. And that can only be a good thing.

Ricky Wilkes