Blind recruitment – what it is and where we’re at with it

In 2017, a UK ONS survey found that candidates with a traditional Muslim name are three times less likely to get selected for interview than other candidates, even when the rest of the CV is identical. So, when we last upgraded our recruitment system in early 2018, we introduced name-blind recruitment.

But I still hear bias all the time. ‘Only went to university of East London’, ’I wouldn’t take anyone from that organisation’, ‘they’ve only been there three months’

So we are now looking at “work sampling” – giving a candidate a job-relevant scenario as part of the application process and asking them how they would approach the issue.?This tests the skills that the candidate has acquired through their experiences, not our perceptions of their experience.

We’re also looking at shortlisting, though it takes a lot of time and concentration, notably recency effects (where you remember the last candidate you looked at and forget earlier candidates) and decision fatigue (where you treat latter candidates differently in order to get to the end of the task).?These will both increase as the jobs market gets busier and we have more candidates to work through.

To combat these, we are looking at the response of all candidates (in a random order) to “question 1” and score, then move on to question 2 (where candidates are presented in a different random order) and score, and so on.

By comparing how candidates would approach a situation in our organisation, rather than being able to look back at their previous experience and make assumptions, we’re levelling the playing field:

???????For disabled candidates who have had to take time out to rehabilitate or who haven’t had full access to comparable work opportunities

???????For BAME candidates who have been taught culturally not to shout about their personal achievements

???????For parents returning to the workforce after taking time away to raise a family

???????For young people who lack experience

???????For mid-career or older people who are looking to transition across industries/roles

But of course, much of the blindness goes out of the window at the interview stage and you can see the candidate – consider the autistic candidate who has difficulty making eye contact with the hiring panel.?That’s a key reason why we believe there’s still a real role for good training and awareness of unconscious bias.