The problem with bias is that some of us think that we’re largely immune to it, and thus fail to account for it. You hear things from hiring managers like, “we’re not willing to lower our standards”, as an excuse for why a team is largely homogenous or, “we let the work speak for itself” – as an example of why this person isn’t biased and doesn’t need to adapt their way of hiring. Both statements hint at a broader, underlying problem of resistance to change and a rationalisation that allows them to not change, when, really, they have already let standards slip, just look at how lacking in diversity your team really is!
Bias, when it does creep in, largely discriminates against underrepresented groups. We’ve noted five major ways that bias has been creeping into your hiring practices, and how to mitigate them.
According to a study from researchers at MIT and CMU, adding developers with higher IQs to a team does not result in smarter teams. It’s counterintuitive, but it’s a great example of ‘Too many cooks.’
A team that ranks highly in intelligence but lacks a diverse skill set (particularly in softer skills!) will be less effective than one that has those skills. Ranking developers purely by their intellect results in a much less effective team. You need that balance. More effective teams:
🛠 Ways to reduce this bias:
It’s very easy to get blinded by candidates who are great coders, even if they lack in other areas. The brain works in such a way that when it’s been impressed it’ll downplay any flaws it senses that run against this assumption. This is called The Halo Effect and it’s a kind of confirmation bias. You’ll look for evidence to confirm what you’ve already assumed, that Technically Skilled Developers = Good Fit For the Company.
🛠 Ways to reduce this bias:
Going into the hiring process, lots of hiring managers will draw up the perfect engineer that could fill the role. This engineer is almost entirely imaginary, and if you go looking for them, you’ll not find them.
While you should think about what would make a good developer (and in particular, talk to your tech team about what their ideal new team member can do) you should never base your hiring decisions exclusively on this imagined persona.
You’ll be setting yourself up for disappointment, unfairly comparing great developers to this imaginary one, and end up having to settle for a developer-only when you really need one, while all the developers you passed on have moved on.
🛠 Ways to reduce this bias:
We all compare ourselves to others, but in the workplace, this can quickly get out of hand. Social Comparison Bias is a phenomenon where we start to dislike someone we think is better than us.
This causes resentment, which is not something you want to be feeling towards a potentially very talented developer who would be a great fit for the team. You’ll also avoid giving them the benefit of the doubt, more likely to see them as overconfident or bossy. As with the horns effect, you’ll start looking for reasons to avoid hiring them.
🛠 Ways to reduce this bias:
At a lot of big tech companies, (including Google and Github) there’s been a notable push to ‘avoid false positives.’ In simple terms, this means avoiding hiring developers who will turn out to be bad. The problem is that this results in more false negatives- turning away candidates who turned out to be great.
Lots of tech companies dismiss this fact as basically harmless. Yet overwhelmingly, the people who face the additional scrutiny that avoiding false positives throws up are people of colour, women and LGBTQ+ people. Hiring managers were not applying this rigour equally, and developers who didn’t match their background were subject to seemingly random rejections.
False Negatives also contribute to a negative employer brand, especially if your company seems to overwhelmingly reject more diverse developers. This results in a feedback loop where the whole situation gets worse.
Remember: you’re not trying to trick ‘bad’ candidates into revealing themselves, you’re trying to find the great candidates!
🛠 Ways to reduce this bias:
We’ve offered some quick fixes in this article, but revising your hiring process across the board is the best way to sort bias before it becomes an issue. Bad practice ends with a vicious cycle where your company becomes less and less diverse with no way to fix it. Overhaul your process and you’ll see a wider variety of developers come through your doors.
Your process should be:
Nobody wants to think of themselves as biased, but everyone is in some way. By anticipating bias you can adapt for it, and make your hiring process and the industry healthier as a whole 🙂
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