How to Ensure Compliance and Prevent Bias in the Recruitment Process
Check references online to ensure compliance and prevent bias and discrimination in the recruitment process.
Did you know that 85% of board members and 95% of CEOs are white men? Sure enough, if you look at a list of all the CEOs of large U.S. companies, the name John more times than all women’s names combined. The reason is that people tend to make decisions in favor of the status quo, and men named John happen to meet that criterion.
When implicit biases influence our decisions, we become vulnerable to compliance issues. We also risk ending up in a lose-lose situation where qualified candidates lose an opportunity, and our businesses miss out on valuable talent.
Best Practices for Ensuring Compliance
Fortunately, humans are smart! We can overcome our biases and ensure compliance and prevent bias through a range of tools and strategies that allow us to look at candidates more objectively.
Check References Online
It is crucial to conduct unbiased reference checks if you want to ensure compliance and prevent discrimination. However, this is a tricky task for the human brain to do alone. After all, reference checks are primarily subjective. However, unlike humans, computers see the world in numbers and data points – and they could not care less about age, race, or gender.
Jointl is an example of a free reference checking software that uses a robot to rank your candidates for you. The robot uses advanced AI and machine learning technology to convert subjective reference responses into balanced scorecards.
It is always better to check references online than by phone if you want to ensure compliance and prevent bias. For starters, references are more likely to be honest when a screen shields their identity.
Also, online reference checks are faster; it only takes a few seconds to get consent from your candidates and send surveys to their references. Since online reference checks are so fast, you can also request multiple references on each candidate to score against each other.
What else can you do to ensure compliance?
Bias Awareness Training
Biases lose power when we are aware of them. Every company should prioritize bias awareness training to maintaining harmony in a diverse workplace. Recruiters need to go through bias awareness training to ensure compliance and make the right hiring decisions.
Create a diverse applicant pool
Your potential applicants are not exempt from bias, even if it is to their detriment. A 2011 paper in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology found that job descriptions which contain stereotypically masculine words such as “strong,” “dominant,” and “competitive” attract men and deter women. Meanwhile, job descriptions that use words like “compassionate,” “supportive,” and “interpersonal” will draw in more female applicants than male. Find alternatives or use a mixture from each category if you would like your job description to attract both genders equally.