Kim Vercoulen
Recruitment Consultant
A long time client of ours contacted us for the search of a treasury team lead. Having already recruited 5 team members in the past, we already know the company very well. And I am happy to say that yet again were able to successfully support them in their recruitment process!
An interesting part of their recruitment process is that they always ask us to anonymize our candidate profiles before presenting. This means we remove all of the candidates’ information that can cause bias. Name, gender, nationality, age, and other details irrelevant to the job are left out, while important information, like qualifications and experience remains. That way our client reduces (unconscious) hiring biases to improve diversity in their workforce and to make better match-making decisions. Looking at their very international diverse and skilled workforce, I would say it is a successful strategy for them.
I do want to add one important note of caution: In orde to make a blind hiring policy work, it should be paired with de-biasing strategies at the interview stage, since interviews are generally conducted in an unblind fashion (writes Sean Fath in Harvard Business Review). If you abstain from this, blind hiring will lead to higher interview selection rates for members of disadvantaged groups but will ultimately not increase their likelihood of getting job offers after interviews. One especially promising strategy to reduce discrimination at the interview stage involves the use of structured interviewing, which keeps interviewers focused on job-related questions only and reduces the impact of affinity bias— our natural preference for people who are similar to ourselves— on interview assessments.
Want to know if a blind hiring strategy could work for you? Feel free to contact us for advice on your recruitment process.
