While most people don’t think of themselves as biased, unconscious biases are part of the human condition. Prior experience and shared characteristics guide decision making when choosing applicants to interview and candidates to hire. Often, our preferences create hiring patterns, even when it isn’t intentional. But AI can help make this form of unconscious bias in hiring a thing of the past.
Unconscious Bias and Diversity Initiatives
Diversity in the workplace promotes innovation. Having numerous perspectives represented can give your business an edge over companies that hire based on similarities instead of understanding the power in our differences. But knowing that intellectually doesn’t mean changing how one hires is an easy process.
People are drawn to the familiar. This includes seeking candidates who remind us of ourselves or someone else we respect, as well as hiring based on preconceived notions about what sort of person is ideal for the position in our mind.
Bias of this nature is often not intentional, and may not be obvious to anyone, including the hiring manager themselves. But these incidental biases can harm diversity initiatives without anyone truly being able to pinpoint the reason why.
Using AI to Combat Unconscious Bias
When you are looking for an unbiased perspective on potential candidates, you may need to turn to something other than a person. AI can provide that outsider’s perspective while almost completely eliminating the risk of unconscious bias. The system can be designed to review candidate credentials to identifying top candidates and can compare who is actually hired against the skills and abilities possessed by others who were in contention but not selected.
It’s the ability of AI to recognize patterns that can help hiring managers and recruiters learn about their own biases. By bringing these issues to the surface, it is easier to develop policies and techniques for increasing diversity in hiring.
Internal Communication
The most important part of understanding unconscious bias is to increase the amount of internal communication around the topic without directing any blame. By definition, unconscious bias is not something of which the recruiter or hiring manager is fully aware. Instead, consider any identified patterns as learning opportunities that can be shared with the business at large.
Since AI analysis can be applied to hiring practices at any level, it can be used to review the biases of employees at any level of the internal hierarchy. Since AI is unaware of the political idiosyncrasies at play within a workplace, its lack of bias extends to those employed in the organization as well. AI will treat the analysis of entry-level employee activities with the exact same regard as those employed at the executive level. This allows analysis to be more complete than those that may incidentally be affected by the human factor of standard techniques.
If you are looking to hire your next employee, or are interested in more information about promoting diversity in your workplace, ITStaff is here to help. Contact ITStaff today and speak with one of our professional recruiters about your specific hiring needs.
