indicated that African American and Asian-American job applicants who conceal their race on their resumes are more likely to be invited for an interview. In light of this, how can recruitment teams assist candidates to eliminate bias during the hiring process?

To help us address this question, we consulted with hiring managers, recruiters, and business leaders. From training hiring managers and teams against recruitment bias to performing blind skills challenges, you may establish an effective hiring process that avoids prejudice in your recruiting department by following a variety of strategies.

Here are fourteen methods these leaders use to reduce bias during the hiring process:

Educate Hiring Managers and Teams Against Bias in Recruitment

To increase the number of candidates from underrepresented groups, it is vital to eliminate bias in the hiring process. A method for eradicating bias is to ensure that all hiring managers receive training and are held accountable if they exhibit bias during the interview process. In addition, organizations should develop inclusive recruiting criteria to ensure racial and gender diversity on interview panels.

If your company has difficulty assembling a panel with this level of diversity, you have other issues to address. Masking resumes is one solution to the problem of reducing bias, but it does not address the underlying problems within your organization. A vital step in reducing this barrier is to ensure that all hiring managers undergo training to eliminate bias and implement intentional inclusion.

Ensure Employment Requirements Are Truly Free of Bias

The foundation of a non-discriminatory hiring procedure is defining and agreeing on the position’s requirements. Answering the following questions is part of determining the position: What does success look like for this role in your industry, organization, or team? What are the “must-have” and “nice-to-have” skills, abilities, habits, and experiences for this position? In what circumstances is a steeper learning curve acceptable? The best methods for minimizing prejudice in the hiring process can only be effective if the position’s requirements are crystal clear!

Utilize Gender-Neutral and Other Descriptions in Job Postings

The recruiting department must develop an exhaustive job description. Avoiding gendered language and utilizing gender-neutral language in recruiting ads can help expand their reach. Women are less inclined to apply for positions with a lengthy list of “ideal” characteristics, according to research, since they don’t want to waste their employer’s time if they don’t match precisely. Masking names and gender when checking resumes can also prevent gender bias.

Conduct Sample Work Tests

The work sample examination is one method for reducing bias in the hiring process. It is the process in which the candidate must pass the real-time work he will be assigned. Considered to be markers of future work performance. Evaluating numerous applicants’ work sample tests enables you to determine the ideal individual. In a sense, requiring applicants to work on real-time work or difficulties coming from that produces a more valuable perspective for the employee. Instead of employing individuals based on illogical criteria such as gender, experience, and personality, the recruiting process can be standardized so that efficient people can be hired.

Implement Software to Protect Candidate Identity

Companies who are serious about minimizing bias in their recruitment processes may consider investing in technologies specifically intended to accomplish so. In my previous work as the leader of Diversity Talent Management for a major technology firm, we created software to anonymize candidate profiles by removing gender and racial indications. This programmed also allowed us to gather insight into how candidates from diverse backgrounds performed at each hiring step. This led us to create focused activities to combat bias during the telephone screening and on-site interview phases.

Despite the fact that no technology is flawless, the ability to systematically counteract bias in the hiring process is advantageous for candidates and eventually assists employers in selecting the most qualified individuals from a more diverse applicant pool.

Develop Your Hiring Teams’ Equality Practices

Do not disguise candidates. Develop reporting and accountability matrices for the applicant pipeline. Develop your hiring teams’ fairness practises. When applicants’ identities are concealed, individual DEI development and staff training cannot occur. You cannot mitigate bias if you are unable to identify and fix it. The global workforce is heterogeneous. It’s time to face up to this fact.

Use Artificial Intelligent Resume Scanners

Increasing numbers of human resource departments are becoming cognizant of the (sometimes unintended) biases that arise during the employment process. The advantage of utilizing artificial intelligence to evaluate resumes is that the software is oblivious to the physical appearance of any applicant. The technology focuses on identifying candidate qualifications in order to identify the best candidates. This eliminates the involvement of humans in application selection, at least for the initial interview stage. Nevertheless, if bias becomes pervasive inside the department, it may be time to have a talk about the value of diversity and inclusion in the workplace.

Provide structured interviews to assist interviewers in providing fair evaluations.

The majority of recruiting errors are attributable to poor interviewer judgement. The fundamental issue is that we are influenced by various prejudices while evaluating other individuals. For instance, we subconsciously like candidates who resemble ourselves. A widespread human blunder against which we have little control, but which is terrible for diversity. We adopted structured interviews to assist interviewers in making more accurate assessments of prospects, and we haven’t looked back. In structured interviews, all candidates are asked the same preset questions, and their responses are evaluated based on the same predetermined standards. Every applicant must be afforded an equal opportunity to perform during interviews, and their ratings must be based on facts. This imposes a stronger, more favorable emphasis on the candidate’s actual words, rather than their accent, appearance, or handshake.

Cover Relevant Information on Resumes

Our recruitment staff conceals information on resumes that could reveal a candidate’s race or religion. The college or university attended is one of these factors. Others attend black colleges and universities, all-girl institutions, or religiously affiliated universities, although the majority attend regular public universities that do not identify their race or religion. All of these factors could create a prejudice, but my HR merely conceals the institution while leaving college career highlights and accomplishments visible to hiring employers.

Conduct Anonymous Assessments

Equality and diversity are important to our culture, and we are certain that our recruiting process is free of any biases. To ensure that candidates for open positions are evaluated solely based on talent, we initiate the application process based solely on the candidate’s email address. In the great majority of instances, HR is uninformed of the candidate’s race. After successfully completing the assessment, a multi-cultural panel conducts the interview to ensure that race is not a factor in the final selection process.

Read More: How to Find the Right People to Work for your Company