Gender advantages in the modern recruitment process

Firstly, this is NOT an opinion piece. I am confident that everything that I am about to say is evidence based. I will reference researchers and authors where they apply. I have included at the bottom the link to the facial emotional recognition research.

It is often said, anecdotally, that it is no longer important what you know, but who you know. However, it is my experience, and the experience of researchers, that we are now living in an age of How you know, or more correctly put, how you communicate what you know (Thoreau, 1817).

To lay my bone fides, I have been studying Behavioral and Evolutionary Psychology for the last 5 years. I often apply the field of psychology to my day to day work. In simple terms psychology is about why people react in a specific way. In the case of Behavioral and Evolutionary Psychology it is the study of how our environment and how the process of evolution directly affects how we behave.

In addition to that I also have a academic background in Human Resource Management (HRM). It was one of the majors in my Masters, I hold diplomas in HRM and also Frontline Management. I spent 21 years in the Army specialising in the leading of men (and women), and understanding how to motivate them to do things that they didn't want to do. Since leaving the army I have held many leadership roles. Finally, I have sat on both sides of the table in hundreds of job interviews. This gives me a foundational understanding of how people perform and react to the experience.

Now, that's why I might be qualified to speak on this subject.

As the article title implies I have come to realise that there is a significant gender advantage in our current recruitment processes, and that advantage is to women. I am going to lay out why I think this is the case. (You will note that I am using the word "advantage" instead of "bias", because the word bias in our modern world has developed a gender slant to it i.e. people are using the word bias and men together so often that we are now associating bias with men. I find advantage a more positive and more illustrative word in this context.)

To understand this, and for me to present the argument coherently, I need to talk about evolution. But I will keep it simple. Most people are not aware that there are two components of evolution; being, Natural Selection, and Sexual Selection. In simple terms natural selection is where a driver in the environment, such as access to a certain food, creates an adaptation in a species. As an example, access to meat for our ancestors allowed us to develop larger brains. Those hominids that didn't have access to meat kept their smaller brains and eventually died out (or were killed by us bigger brained cousins. Or bred out in the case of Neanderthals). Sexual Selection is where an adaptation happens in one gender in a species to provide a reproductive advantage over others in that gender i.e. get the guy, or the gal. When this adaptation is found in one gender and not the other this is called Sexual Dimorphism. An example would be, men are taller than women because women were attracted to taller men, for protection, and so women have bred tallness into men, by selecting them to breed with. I just put that very simply but there is far more to the science if you want to research it.

Now let's get more specific. Back in our evolutionary past, men lived dangerous lives, far more so than women. Men's role was to collect high value food, and provide protection, from animals, and other humans. And so men adapted sexual dimorphisms to allow them to do that, stronger, faster, taller, better problem solvers. Women did not need these adaptations, because they had different roles, raising children, preparing food, making clothing. All good so far, the two work hand in hand. But remember that I said that men led dangerous lives. They often died. Therefore, any woman "attached" to that man, through children and dependence, has just lost her protection and resourcing. And so women developed a number of Sexual Dimorphism adaptations to counter this situation. Some of these adaptations were in the social field, because strength in numbers was the protection response to a woman losing her male partner.

Women who developed inter-social communication skills gained an advantage over those that didn't. This adaptation saw women develop the skills to communicate effectively with other humans, but it also gave them more subtle skills, such as reading the emotions of other humans, develop bartering skills, building network skills. And because men often benefited from these skills they chose to breed with women who had obviously advanced skills in this area, thus enforcing those adaptations in future generations of women.

Both men's and women's brains have been analysed, to see which parts "light up" when stimulated in different situations. Women's brains light up when given social and communications stimuli. Whereas men's do not, or at least not to the extent that they do in women. And so women became master communicators, at least compared to men, who had no need to develop these skills to such a high level (Gangstead, 2000, Buss, 1997).

Lets bring in some Behavioral Psychology for a moment. Research conducted by Wingenbach, T et al (2018) has found that girls have far more advanced emotional facial recognition skills than boys, they state:

"There has been much research on sex differences in the ability to recognise facial expressions of emotions, with results generally showing a female advantage in reading emotional expressions from the face."

"Facial expressions are an important means of communication, as they can carry inter-personal information, enabling promotion of bonding as well as the development and regulation of interpersonal relationships. Facial expressions can be used to communicate emotional states to others and to regulate the environment by indicating people’s intentions and actions. For example, an angry facial expression communicates dominance and rejection facilitating avoidance by observers. In contrast, a fearful face conveys submissiveness which facilitates approaching behaviour. Thus the ability to recognise facial expressions of emotions helps to understand the emotional states, intentions, and behaviour of other people and plays an important role in everyday social interactions."

"Overall, females showed more accurate facial emotion recognition compared to males and were faster in correctly recognising facial emotions. The female advantage in reading expressions from the faces of others was unaffected by expression intensity levels and emotion categories used in the study."

This research backs up work done in the Evolutionary field by numerous researchers, including Gangstead (1998), who found that in all social settings women were far more effective at "reading the room", reading the faces of others, identifying other peoples emotions, motivations, communicating their own emotions, and are able to more quickly develop deep emotional bonds with others, especially other women.

And so, it has been readily accepted that women have far more advanced skills in communicating, developing bonds, identifying emotions in others, and being able to speak about themselves in personal terms far better than males. These skills are also reflected in written communication.

Lets get more specific again. Leading human resource agency Human Resource Director reports that 78% of human resource employees are women, and that the same number occupy CHRO positions. HRM is the second most female dominated profession after nursing (95%). It has been found that when a group dominates an environment that the traits of that group will be reflected within the environment i.e. in male dominated environments the environment is masculine, in female dominated environments the environment is feminine. It can then be assumed that the modern HRM profession is a feminine environment, creating female dominated outcomes, with female dominated thinking.

Lets get even more specific. Recruiting in all organisations is now driven by HRM departments, units and/or HR advisors. We have just identified that the HRM profession is a female dominated profession, and so we can also assume that something, such as recruitment, that is managed by that profession would also be a female dominated process. Throughout the recruitment process these influences are driving the actual processes of recruitment, but also the individual decisions being made within that process.

Now, if we assume that everything that I have outlined above about Behavioral and Evolutionary Psychology is correct then it is quite easy to acknowledge that women will have an advantage over men in both the written application process and more specifically in the interview process. Because women are adapted to quickly read other people, identify their motivation, and understand their emotions they are able to adjust their own behavior and answers to meet those awareness's. In Evolution Psychology this is called Mirroring. The person reflects back the other person to them, and we effectively connect with ourselves, being reflected at us. Women do this exceptionally well, men do not.

An example of this is in intimate relationships. You will often hear a man say to his male friends, about a new relationship "she is amazing, she likes the same music as me, she is a fan of the same sporting team, she even thinks like me". It is not that she is these things, it is just that she has "mirrored" him, and he thinks that she is. The female in many complex species are adapted to mirror, it is not just humans.

So as you can see women have a natural and distinct advantage in job interviews, over men, through evolution. But it can be made even worse, by the HR processes and advisor. We have agreed that the HRM profession is a female dominated one. Often (almost always) the HR advisor is the "independent" third person on the interview panel. They also play a role in developing or screening the interview questions. So their profession's bias is put into those questions, in this case the female bias. They may not decide the actual questions, but they will direct the type of questions. This bias is seen through the more recent trend to not have technical questions in interviews, but rather psychological questions. These are questions that get an interviewee to speak about themselves, their own strengths and weaknesses and how they respond in any given situation. Examples are:

• “Tell us Something About Yourself”?
• "Tell us why you want to work at ..."
• “What Sort of Impact are you Looking to Make Here and How Will you Make it?”
• “What are your Biggest Strengths and Weaknesses?”
• “Are you good at Conflict-Resolution?”
• "Talk about a time when you developed a professional bond with a colleague"

As you can see these questions play to the strengths of women. If you took a man and woman, with the same qualifications, experience and expertise, and asked them these questions then the woman would give far more effective responses every time. And because she has developed a bond with the interview members her responses are heard in the affirmative but the man's are either heard in the neutral or the negative, depending on the gender of the interview panel members. Remember that bonding that has been going on.

And so, if the interview questions are technical, about the role, the person's experience in similar roles then there will be ONLY a natural (evolutional) advantage for female interviewees. If the questions are psychological then that advantage will be emphasised.

I will caveat all the above with the comment that there are exceptions to the rule, that is why they prove the rule, they are exceptions. There are men that are superior communicators, but this article is about the overall gender/s, and not the individual.

My purpose in writing this article was to highlight, what I think is a growing issue in not just the recreation industry, but in all industries which women are attracted to, such as the professions. In my specific industry women dominate similar roles to myself. I have analysed my LinkedIn connections, of which I have 2000, and the majority in similar roles are women. If our recruitment processes are being dominated by one specific group, then that process will ensure that the group is reflective of those influences that created (recruited) it.

If you work in HRM you should be aware of this bias, and what drives it. And most certainly you should not be enhancing that advantage by making your process gender skewed, or even worst having it heavily biased towards one gender by introducing mechanisms that enhance that advantage, such as psychometric testing and psychological questions in interviews.

If you have gotten this far then congratulations, and this is where I will make it personal. I fully expect to get "dumped on" for this article, but hopefully my setting out of it in the way that I have will ensure that anyone thinking rationally will agree.

Authors edit. Some might ask about online interviews and their impact, in relation to what I have highlighted above. Online interviews "dampen" both the interviewees and the panel members natural abilities to "read" other people. However, this applies to both sexes equally. Therefore, a women being interviewed online will still have the same advantages over a man being interviewed online. However, a woman being interviewed online compared to man being interviewed in person will have her advantages diminished, but in my opinion not enough to be considered equalised.