A tactic for fairer video interviews

Jacob here. Welcome back to Working Better with Charter, a weekly newsletter featuring our best advice for managing yourself and your team.?

Here are five things to try this week:

Blur your zoom background. In a recent paper in the Journal of Organizational Behavior, researchers found that an applicant’s physical background can influence the viewer’s perception of the applicant’s performance during a video interview, as well as their warmth and their potential work performance. Specifically, applicants with objects in their background that indicated they were parents, such as a framed picture of a toddler, were perceived as warmer and received higher interview ratings. Those with objects that hinted at a political stance received better ratings when the viewer supported the same political party and worse ratings when the viewer supported a different party.

• Applicants: Record your interviews in front of a plain wall or blur your background.
• Interviewers: When you invite applicants to interview for your company, ask them to film themselves with a neutral background or to blur their background.

Show your Gen Z employees how their work connects to the company’s mission. A new report from business intelligence firm Morning Consult found that 28% of Gen Z adults quit or resigned from their jobs over the past year. ?To retain your younger employees, provide a clear link in development conversations between their personal trajectories and the goals of the company. “This generation absolutely is going to ask, 'How is what I'm doing related to the overall company mission?” Maia Ervin, chief impact officer of Gen Z digital marketing agency Juv Consulting, told Charter in an interview last year. “Breaking it down for them shows that you're invested in their personal development because you're increasing their understanding of how the business works. But it also shows that you're invested in their professional development because obviously the role matters to the organization.”??

Make a “not-to-do” list. Research shows that when we solve problems, our minds show a preference for addition over subtraction, even when the right answer involves the latter. Fight that bias by creating a “not-to-do” list alongside your to-do list each day, creating a clear plan for subtracting the things that take away from the tasks you need to prioritize. For example, you could add “checking email from 1:00-3:00pm” to your not-to-do list to give yourself more time for focused work (and an extra sense of accountability in staying out of your inbox during that time).?

Replace your meeting agenda with a list of questions. This both clarifies the goals of the meeting and?makes it easier to tell if the time?was productive: Did participants leave with answers?

To re-engage yourself at work, ask, “What do I want to be known for?” Help yourself feel more connected to your role by determining who you’d like to be within it. Choose two or three of the characteristics that are most important to you, and write down an action that aligns with those characteristics. For example, if you pick “collaborative,” you might think of ways you can crowdsource ideas for projects you’re working on.

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