Build a Stronger Team: How to Reduce Bias in Your Hiring Process

Ever hired a superstar, only to see them fizzle out a few months later? It happens a lot – 46% of new hires fail within the first 18 months! Hiring mistakes are expensive – they shake up your team, sap morale, and waste valuable time and resources. Often, biased decisions or overestimating our ‘gut feelings’ are to blame.

You can reduce bias in job interviews by becoming more aware of it and following these top strategies for creating a fair, inclusive candidate experience.

Identify Your Biases: The First Step to Fair Hiring

We all have biases. It's a natural part of human cognition – our brains take shortcuts to make quick decisions. But in the hiring process, these shortcuts can lead to big stumbles. Here's how:

• Similarity bias: We gravitate toward candidates who remind us of ourselves, leading us to overlook equally qualified folks from different backgrounds.

• Halo effect: We get enamored by a candidate's impressive resume or strong first impression and overlook their weaknesses. The opposite of this is the horn effect, where a negative detail disproportionately sways our perception.

• Primacy & recency bias: We tend to remember the first and last candidates we interview more vividly, potentially giving them an unfair advantage.

• Attractiveness: We perceive attractive candidates to be more intelligent and competent.

Bias Buster Checklist

The key is to build your and your hiring team’s awareness of biases and take steps to mitigate them during the job interview process. Here are three crucial actions to keep things fair:

✔️ Monitor yourself: Notice if you're subconsciously treating candidates differently. Are you warmer or more distant with some? Are you asking more or fewer questions? Inconsistencies can indicate bias creeping in.

✔️ Practice active attention: Research shows the more we focus on the person in front of us, the less our brains rely on biased shortcuts. Pay close attention to people’s responses, not just their background or similarities to you.

✔️ Think like a scientist: Create a consistent interview experience for all candidates. Think of interviewing like an experiment, where you need to keep all variables constant to see if meaningful differences emerge between candidates.

Build a Fair and Inclusive Interview Process

Forget those ‘gut feeling’ interviews! Unstructured conversations open the door to bias, which hinders diversity, leads to bad decisions, and perpetuates societal inequities. Structured interviews are the antidote and a vital element of inclusive systems. Research shows they're twice as effective at predicting job performance success!

Here's how to structure your hiring process:

✔️ Standardize: Treat all candidates the same, from prep to decision criteria to follow-up. This levels the playing field.

✔️ Neutral tone: Keep body language and communication consistent across interviews.

✔️ Assessments:

• Work samples: Simulate real-world tasks (mock sales calls, portfolio review).

• Skill tests: Coding tests or grammar checks objectively measure specific skills.

• Behavioral interviewing: Questions can predict future behavior and evaluate things like values and thinking patterns.
  

Sample behavioral interview prompts:

• Tell me about a time when you…

• Think about an instance when you…

• Tell me how you approached a situation where…

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Building a Diverse & Inclusive Culture at Column Five Media

 See how a marketing and advertising agency improved its hiring and onboarding practices, leading to a 40% increase in women applying for jobs! 

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Interview Like a Pro: Practical Tips to Reduce Bias

Follow these three simple but powerful tools for interviewing well with a focus on fairness and inclusion.

1. Use engaged body language

Make sure your body language shows you're listening and engaged. Nonverbal cues are crucial, even on video calls. Our favorite nonverbal technique for signaling listening and interest is called open-square-lean.

2. Sequence the interview

Framing

Start by outlining the interview process to set the candidate at ease – we call this framing. Here are some helpful framing statements:

• “I’ll ask you a few questions, and then you can ask yours in the last 5 minutes. Feel free to email me if we run out of time.”

• “I ask all candidates the same questions in the same order for consistency, so if I sound scripted, that’s why.”

• “I’ll take notes to stay organized and might interrupt occasionally to cover everything. Sound okay?”

This approach makes your actions clear and reduces ambiguity.

Small Talk

We like a little small talk – just keep it neutral to avoid bias:

• Bad: How was the game last night? How was your commute? What did you do this weekend?

• Good: How’s the weather where you are? Can I get you some water? Need a quick break?

Transition Statements

Use transition statements to make the interview feel human and warm:

• Acknowledgers: Help candidates feel seen and heard with phrases like “I hear you” or “Thanks for sharing.” (Avoid evaluative comments like “Great answer!”)

• Shifts: Signal progress with phrases like “Let’s move on to the next topic.” 

3. Ask great follow-on questions

You can boost interview quality with what we call the CAR technique.

Build a Stronger, Bias-Free Team

Your hiring practices shape your company's future. By mitigating bias and implementing these structured interview strategies as an integral part of your diversity, equity, and inclusion program, you'll build a team that's not just strong but genuinely diverse.

Next steps:

• Reduce bias: Implement bias self-assessment and a structured interview process.

• Enhance the candidate experience: Maintain professional neutrality and ask insightful questions.

• Train your team: Invest in regular diversity training.

Check out our Behaviors of Inclusion workshop.