Conscious vs. unconscious bias

Avoiding resume screening bias starts with developing an understanding of bias itself. Bias can generally be broken into two types: conscious and unconscious.

When you think of bias, the conscious form is likely what comes to mind. It involves decision-making based on factors that don’t relate to the position or a person’s qualifications, like gender or race. Someone with conscious biases is aware they have them and can be influenced by them.

Unconscious bias is less obvious. Deeply ingrained prejudices can be harder to identify, though they can greatly impact decision-making. Hiring managers who have biases they don’t realize they have may unintentionally discriminate against certain individuals or groups.

How resume screening bias manifests

Both types of biases can manifest in various forms during the resume screening process. Here are some factors that are often prone to biased judgment.

Demographics

Bias may cause hiring managers to favor candidates who are similar to them, even unconsciously. Favoring candidates with the same gender, race or educational background could be a sign that bias has influenced their judgment.

Only considering candidates from certain demographics can cause a lack of diversity in the hiring process. This can decrease workplace diversity, over time creating a less inclusive and creative environment.

Resume format

Even resume format can be a source of bias. Submitted resumes rarely look the same—often a reflection of candidates’ diverse ways of thinking. But some hiring managers may see these differences negatively.

Personal preferences can lead some screeners to immediately disqualify resumes based on their appearance. Doing so fails to consider a candidate’s skills, experience or other qualifications. Not only can this potentially eliminate quality candidates, but it also limits selected resumes to those the screener deems visually acceptable.

Organizational norms

A hiring manager’s biases aren’t the only ones that can influence the screening process. Some screeners may be influenced by the perceived preferences of their superiors. In these cases, resumes aren’t approved or rejected based on quality, but on the biases of others.

The temptation to find candidates similar to the existing team has the same effect. Hiring managers may approve similar resumes on the grounds that they’ll “fit in” with the company culture. But this approach ignores what a different point of view might add to the team.

Screening criteria

Strict criteria might at first appear to strengthen the screening process—after all, they can guarantee your employees meet your standards for experience and knowledge. But hiring teams can become too focused on the criteria, automatically eliminating candidates with slightly different backgrounds.

Focusing on factors like education level or the number of years spent in an industry can cause hiring teams to screen out otherwise qualified candidates. Such bias may lead your team to miss out on valuable additions. For example, disqualifying a candidate with a decade of experience in similar roles but no bachelor’s degree could do your company a disservice.

How to reduce screening biases

Knowing what resume screening bias looks like is useful when you’re trying to avoid it. But actively working to reduce biases can be more effective. Here are some strategies that can help you make the screening process more objective and fair.

Opt for masked screenings

A masked resume review can help reduce biases based on demographic factors. Screening blind means removing the details on each resume that could influence judgment, such as:

• Name
• Age
• Gender
• Educational information (like degree level or schools attended)
• Address
• Gaps in employment

This technique, also called masked hiring, can level the playing field for candidates. It encourages the screening team to focus on a person’s skills rather than their background.

You can use masked hiring software to hide unnecessary resume details so your team only sees the information they need. Or, consider having an employee who isn’t involved in the screening manually hide personal data.

Take a culture-add approach

Resume screeners often take a culture-fit approach to hiring. They’ll consider whether a candidate has a perspective that complements the team they might be working with. But while their intentions may be good, a culture-fit approach can reinforce biases and reduce diversity.

Replacing culture-fit with culture-add means choosing candidates based on the new experiences and perspectives they can bring to a company. This can introduce fresh ideas to the team and may challenge existing employees to change their own approach, making the environment more conducive to creativity.

Build a diverse screening team

A homogenous screening team can be more likely to share the same biases, leading to a limited candidate pool. Diversifying your screening team can help reduce biases based on factors like demographics or resume format.

When selecting your screeners, consider choosing employees with a variety of experiences, backgrounds and viewpoints. Varying genders, races and ages can bring fresh perspectives to the screening process and help ensure candidates aren’t disqualified unfairly.

Rotating the employees who make up your screening team may help keep biased perspectives from controlling the selection process. Providing unconscious bias training to hiring teams can also be a good way to build awareness of the issue. Understanding their own biased judgment can help individuals develop tools to combat it.

Try a skills test

Some employers have eliminated resumes in favor of skills tests. Under this approach, candidates are asked to complete an assessment that can help reveal their ability to perform the work required by the role.

Skills tests can take a variety of forms. You might give candidates a challenge to solve or have them describe a recent project. The results of these tests can provide a glimpse of their abilities and perspectives without the bias-prone factors of a resume.

Why does bias elimination matter?

Reducing resume screening bias can prevent quality candidates from being overlooked due to their age, race, gender or other factors. On top of this, one of the greatest benefits of a bias-free screening process is that it promotes diversity in the workplace.

An increase in diversity not only helps create an inclusive working environment for your team, but it can also facilitate creativity, innovation and problem-solving. A team where all members have the same point of view can become trapped in the same cycle of thinking. Increasing diversity can give your workforce a boost in creativity.