Gender Neutral Hiring

In this tiny article, we explore two aspects of Gender-Neutral Hiring – Going beyond Bias and Role stereotypes.

Transcending Bias

My dad Anto Vincent, was the Head HR of Ford International. In many of the manufacturing plants often the workforce in the production departments are largely men. The perception is that this is hard and mechanical work. Often for these positions engineers or diploma holders are hired. He once told me they offered the position to a woman with a slightly different educational background. She was in their organization system for some time, very smart and dynamic and convinced the HR to hire her for one of the plant jobs. I heard she grew up in performance and success. She was often referred to as a role model.

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To actually develop the attitude and expertise in diversity and gender-neutral hiring, we need to have the courage to work on our ‘bias’ that lives deeply embedded in our minds, senses and in our bodies as reactions. In the industries, we have actually broken this quite well. For example, in the night shifts, we find a good number of gender mixes of people working with no gender-specific templates.

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Let us dive a bit deeper into bias. Let us say that you need to hire a successor for an Economic Journal. The founder who is now 80 plus chooses to retire soon. He needs someone who is very rich in experience, in the early 50s, and can invest another 25 years to grow the company to its next level. Let us say in the final shortlist you have two very good candidates – one is Ravi and the other is Sheela. Both are well-experienced and live with their families. Let us say both have dependent parents with them. If we do not even have one thought that crosses our mind that goes like ‘For women, the responsibilities could be higher. For the male maybe their spouse would support’. If something like this or similar thoughts passes through our mind, there is some bias somewhere.

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Here is a practice! Recognize such thoughts and let them not influence or flow into your analysis and decision-making. Pause the thought and say ‘Hey No Bias’. Then connect to both the candidates in a uni -gender way and take a call based on aspirations, realities, talents, experience, and resonance. As far as they take up the responsibility to invest 20 years to drive the Economic Journal to its next level they can be hired. As far as they are willing to work alongside the founder and get groomed for a year and then carry on independently on their own merit, we can choose the person.

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Transcending Role Stereotypes

One of the best practices that are followed during hiring is listing down the competencies needed to perform a role and evaluating based on past data if the person actually has the specific competency. Let us take one competency that I have seen that keeps putting a spike in the wheel in the true living of neutral hiring – networking.

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Let us do an experiment. Let us say you are hiring for a certain role in your company and it requires a person who is very good at networking – internal and external. What images, definitions, and descriptions come to you about networking? What attitudes or qualities do you think the person needs to have to do this networking well?

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If you held the same preferences, standards, or evidence of networking for both genders it is not yet true gender-neutral hiring! We need to bring one another element for consideration. There is a masculine and feminine way of being and doing that applies to both genders. For example, the masculine way of networking is more driven and go-getter types. It is about making connections and pitching. The feminine way could be more subtle, gentler and slower. We cannot necessarily say that the male gender is more masculine. The masculine and feminine ways can be a preference for both genders. So when you are nailing the details of the competency of networking if you have explored it in a wholesome way, that honors male, female, masculine, and feminine preferences then it is gender neutral. This means there is space for someone to do this in direct and subtle ways. This also means some women or men may prefer not to come for fun parties and still they do networking in different ways. As far as the outcomes aspired are manifested we are open to acknowledging that networking is happening.

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This would now evolve into a mature hiring process. Over my 28 years of hiring experience, I have seen many right and good candidates getting rejected because the hiring stakeholder had some fixed notions of the role. They had some conscious or unconscious stereotypes of how the role should be done or ought to be done.

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To develop this maturity we need to develop a fluid mind that sees both gender in an equitable way. It recognizes the differences and honors the masculine gender and feminine polarities. In the JD prepared by the organization there will be a line that says high networking skills. In the interview evaluation, sheet there could be a mention of the networking skill with says for example a weightage of 10%. Now as the interviewer, we need to bring the expertise to break these into equitable ways of looking at various ways of networking and its dimensions and nuances. Whether it is a male or a female who is holding a masculine or feminine style of networking we can accept it all as equally legitimate ways, with no individual preferences. As far as they have demonstrated networking process capacity in their own ways and accomplished exceptional outcomes we should be able to detect their expertise. Further, the next level challenge comes! The interviewer could have done this ‘networking’ evaluation in a gender-sensitive or neutral way. Another stakeholder could have a gender or masculine/feminine way of preference! Now this opens up the capacity to express, dialogue, and convince that this attribute is actually being held when it is there.

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In any work, levels of mastery come through years of dedicated practice. To accomplish the role sensitive and neutral hiring first individual practice and alongside that dynamic communication capacities are to be built so that you can honor these mature ways of hiring.

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This article is written by Arul Dev , Founder CEO of People First.