Stuff I'M Thinking About

As a manager and company director I have conducted hundreds of interviews for roles at all organisational levels, including for CEO. It’s not an easy job, and one that requires great care lest the process provide an unsuitable candidate. This largely comes down to the process, how well it’s run, and whether bias is accounted for and managed effectively.

The purpose of the recruitment process is to identify (and hire) a candidate who meet the requirements of the role. When there is bias it can cause suitable candidates to be excluded from consideration, and unsuitable candidates to be included (and hired).

We want every suitable candidate to have a fair and even chance of progressing through the process, and for every unsuitable candidate to be ejected as soon as practicable.

This post is a collection of notes and observations on the subject that I’ve made over the last few years.

The Right Person

Getting the right person for a role, any role, can make or break a team, and sometimes an entire company, so it is the recruiting manager’s job to find someone who meets the requirements for the role, while also eliminating any bias that might affect the result.

The process needs to be designed so that we not just assess candidates against the requirements, but also avoid errors of bias. Simple in theory, not so in practice.

The Recruitment Process

Like many hiring managers, I didn’t get any formal training on how to hire staff, or how to avoid biases. I learned by osmosis. The process, based on early panels I was part of, seemed to be to pick the top three candidates based on their CVs, interview them, rank them, and hire the best one. Rejecting all three was never an option, and if there were concerns about the ‘top’ candidate, the debate was usually around their weaknesses, and whether these would actually be an issue if they got the job.

As I have undertaken more training in the area, and recruited more people directly myself, I’ve learnt about how to run a good process, and the many factors that can introduce bias.

This bias can take many forms, and it is definitely an area that is worth understanding. There are three main areas where bias can impact the recruitment process: personal, systemic, and process.

Personal biases

Forms of personal bias include racism, sexism, genderism, ableism, and ageism. Everyone is biased to some degree and we must recognise this in ourselves, acknowledge it, and counter it as much as possible. If we only hire people who are like us we are missing out on the significant benefits of diversity—gender, cultural, and thought—in our organisations.

Excluding people based on factors not related to the role is immoral and illegal.

Let’s start with an example.

I recall hearing a conversation in the 80s between managers who were talking over morning tea. They were joking about not wanting to hire and train woman for operational roles, ‘because they might have babies’. The reality was that many of these woman, after maternity leave, would come back to work at the company, while it was the men who went off an OE, never to return. Bias.

In the early 90s I looked after some rental properties for a friend who was overseas, and other landlords warned me to avoid certain people groups as tenants. Bias.

I did not take their racist advice, and I note that the worst tenant I ever had was a young white guy from a privileged background. (I am a white male from a privileged background.)

This is a common problem—assuming that all people from one country, religion, race, educational background or gender are the same.

Going below the surface of a particular bias can be revealing—why do we believe what we believe? Reality is different, and in the end, people are people in all their richness.

Alongside personal biases there are cognitive biases, which are faults in the way we think. These are less obvious which is why they can be so insidious.

The halo effect comes into play when we have a favourable first impression. A candidate may be impeccably groomed and speak in an articulate manner, leading us to believe that they are better than less well-dressed or less articulate candidates.

I once interviewed a very thoughtful and slightly reticent candidate for a role. The other candidate was certainly able to put on a performance in the interview, and created a favourable first impression as a result of the way he engaged with me. I tended towards the latter candidate until I realised that the team really needed someone who would think things through carefully before acting. These differences became more marked in the second round of interviews. This issues was pointed out to me by a woman on the recruiting panel. Diverse panels are important too.

Conformation bias occurs when we have pre-existing beliefs about a candidate. We might believe that a candidate, on paper, would be good for a role, but we continue even when they interview poorly and cannot back up their CV with good examples.

I was once on a panel that interviewed a candidate that looked fantastic on paper, but a single red flag in the way he worked arose at the end of the interview. This was confirmed during a reference check. The recruiting manager still wanted to hire him because he was “so good on paper”, yet his method of working would have undermined the existing team considerably.

The sunk cost fallacy will cause us to overlook issues and continue with a candidate because of the time we have already invested. This could apply in the above example, where we’d gone to market three times already, or to any candidate that has got to the later stages of the recruitment process. Better not to hire to fill a seat.

There are many more cognitive biases, and it is worth spending time to read and understand which ones are most likely to apply in your case.

Wikipedia is a good place to start exploring sources of personal cognitive bias.

Systemic Biases

These can be harder to spot as they are part of the fabric of your day-to-day work life.

A lack of accessible facilities for wheelchair users is an obvious and blatant one—one that in many cases is being dealt with by local building regulations and national laws. But those only give a minimum standard. Only one accessible toilet for five floors? Why not make them all accessible, and gender-neutral too, for good measure?

We must have accessible toilets, doors that are wide enough, and so on. But that is just the tip of the iceberg.

The physical environment of an office can create biases in the minds of recruiting managers. For example, a quiet candidate might be ruled out because the company has a noisy open-plan office.

Team fit is another form systemic bias. Usually the assessment comes down to how well the person gets on with hiring manager, and how well the manager thinks they will get on with team. If the candidate comes from a very different background—a different country, culture, has english as their second, third or forth language—these can all skew that assessment. That’s a form of bias, but it also may show up our own inability to establish a working relationship with someone who is not like ourselves. We might need to do some work on ourselves.

The science is clear – diverse teams do better.

Process Biases

1. A two-sided process

The recruitment process should enable both parties to determine if there is a match. That this is a two-sided process is sometimes overlooked, and this introduces bias when no space is given for the candidate to make their assessment of the opportunity.

If a candidate cannot get a measure of the role, the manager, and the company, they might turn down an offer for what would have been a good match on both sides.

They might interview badly because they weren’t given enough context about the role and company.

2. Advertising and Job documentation

I have seen a great many jobs that use adjectives like ‘extensive’ to describe the level of experience. There is a running joke in the tech sector about jobs that ask for ‘X’ years of experience in a particular technology, when ‘X’ is greater than the number of years that technology has existed.

Use of terms like extensive, or a specific number of years is an attempt, I’m sure, to filter out unsuitable candidates, but what does ‘extensive’ mean? Because it is open to to interpretation, it may introduce bias to the process. Each candidate will have their own understanding of extensive. Is two years working full time in a particular area ‘extensive’. Five? What if someone did have experience, but no results?

Some job descriptions are simply functional requirements: a list of the skills we want to be applied to certain functions. Some job descriptions talk about why the job exists. The best ones talk about the values of the company and how the role will contribute to the success of the company.

Using clear and simple language not only makes it easier for all candidates to understand about the role, but it helps them differentiate themselves and better prepare for the interview, making our job as a hiring manager easier.

If we use lots of industry specific jargon and technical terms, this might put off out-of-industry candidates. Many roles are actually problem-solving roles that require limited domain knowledge, and good candidates can quickly learn a new domain. Great problem-solvers treat learning a new domain as just another problem to solve.

Good advertisements and job documentation reduce bias by making the job open to anyone.

3. Screening

The screening process is a huge source of potential bias. When I am recruiting, I read the cover letter and CV for every candidate. Hiring is one of the most important tasks a manager has, and this is the point of first contact with the candidate. I always read every application myself.

Yes, it takes time to read them, but there are valid shortcuts. For example, if the role requires residency then that is an easy unbiased shortcut. If you require applicants with a law degree (for a legal role) that is another shortcut.

Be very careful that any shortcuts are only about the requirements of the role.

One shortcut that can cause bias is keyword search because not everyone uses standardised job descriptions in their CV. Also, some people just aren’t as good at writing, and I’d hate to miss a good candidate because the failed to put a particular word in their CV. This is even more of a problem if you use (and expect) people to use particular industry specific language.

Of course, a very good candidate will tailor the written application, but assuming that all good candidates will do (or can do) this is a form of bias.

I am not convinced that large language models (AKA AI) will be helpful in this area. In the end they are just an algorithm, and only as good as the person who wrote the code or created the model.

I add an extra step to my screening process, which is to call the most interesting candidates for a screening chat over the phone. This is to catch any borderline candidates that might be ruled out because of some minor issue or gap in their CV. Beware that a chat over the phone might introduce bias too. For example your candidate may lip-read, may have a thick accent, or have issues using the phone. By the way, you also have an accent that may be hard to understand.

Be prepared to adapt quickly, and in a professional manner.

4. Candidate Care

From the moment a potential candidate reads our advertisement, and through every interaction with us, we are selling the role, ourselves as a manager, and the company. If this is not well designed, it can introduce bias to the recruitment process.

One of the best application forms I’ve seen had a section for the candidate to state any accommodations that would help them during the process. This is to avoid problems that, were they not known, result in the candidate being disadvantaged in some way.

This should be the norm, as many candidates would benefit if the recruiting manager knew about issues they might have.

Some examples:

• I am in an at risk category, and would prefer masks to be worn by all parties in the interview.
• I am neurodiverse, and often struggle with noisy and stressful environments
• I require a support person.
• I have a service animal. I am letting you know this as a courtesy.

One caution though. This should not become another source of bias; “this candidate requires accommodations, therefore that counts against them.”

When there has been an accommodation, it is good to explicitly ask ourselves the question during the evaluation process: has my assessment of this candidate been influenced by the accomodations we made?

5. The Interview

It is a fact of life that some people do not interview well. I have coached a number of people over the years in this area, and in some cases even practice doesn’t help, but that does not mean there is anything wrong with the candidate.

We should have a structure for the interview, but this does not mean we cannot adapt how we treat each candidate based on their needs.

I once had a candidate who was obviously nervous, and after a couple of questions he just clammed up. I suggested we take a break to go and get a coffee. I told him that the need to have a break would not impact the interview. After the coffee I went over the first two questions again, and things went much better.

Rushing an interview can introduce bias too, because the candidate can tell (even if just unconsciously) that we are in a rush.

Leave space for the candidate to answer your questions. A slow answer is not an indicator of anything, apart from the fact that they are thinking. You know what a good answer is because you are the recruiting manager. They may take a little more time. We are not looking to hire ourselves, with all the knowledge and context we have built up, all ready to go!

I always allow up to 90 minutes for a 60 minute interview, and I never schedule them back to back. Wherever possible, I let the candidate pick the time (for a list of options). Some people are better in the morning, others may have family commitments, or limited access to public transport.

The aim in the interview is create the best space possible for us to collect information about the candidate, and for them to be as relaxed as possible and to do the best they can.

Start with structured questions that measure the candidate against the requirements for the role. The questions should be used for every candidate, and each question should have examples of what a good (and bad) answer looks like.

It is OK to ask different followup questions of any candidate.

Notes should include what the candidate said, not how you felt about the answers. Notes based on how you felt can introduce bias during the review phase when you compare notes and impressions with the other interviewers.

6. Deciding

As I said, we are measuring candidates against the requirements of the role. When it becomes clear that they do meet those requirements, we should say no.

When the interview has been completed, the panel will meet to discuss each candidate. These meetings can be another source of bias.

Many of the personal and cognitive biases from above can also occur in a group context.

One particularly obvious thing that can cause bias is the most senior person giving their opinion first. I like to have everyone decide yes or no prior to the meeting, and to state that up front first, without saying any of the reasons why. People then have a lot less invested, and they can then go on to explain the reasoning behind their decision. The most senior person should speak last. This avoids the problem of junior staff changing their decision to match what the boss said.

7. Dirty Tricks

There was a news story in 2023 about a company that gave candidates a hot drink, and if they did not pick it up or offer to take it back to the kitchen, they failed the ‘culture test’.

There are other tricks, like asking candidates questions that have nothing to do with the role. These are unfair and a source of bias. The assessment should be as transparent as possible.

I make it clear to candidates beforehand that I do not ask silly or confronting questions. If a candidate asks for the questions in advance, I supply them to all the candidates. I note that some companies always supply the questions to candidates as they’ve found that this is fairer, particularly for those who are not good at thinking on their feet. Unless thinking on your feet is the sole requirement of for the job.

Closing Thoughts

This is not an exhaustive post by any means, it was intended as a springboard for discussion and contemplation.

Bias is not something we can fix, forever, overnight. It is something we have to continually work at every time we recruit, and from the moment we open our eyes in the morning until we shut them at night.