The Subtle Art of Hiring a Diverse Workforce — Part II — Unconscious Bias
As a recruiter, I’ve always felt extremely concerned by diversity and inclusion. Indeed, recruiters are at the cornerstone between candidates and companies. That’s why Mathilde Kurzawa and myself decided to share content about diversity and inclusion (D&I) to empower our peers.
👇 In this article, I will guide you through a critical topic: unconscious bias.
👂 The first time I heard about diversity was when I read about unconscious biases. I literally had a revelation while reading Anne Boring’s paper entitled “Gender Biases in Student Evaluations of Teachers.” She described feelings I had when I was a student: we are all guided by our unconscious bias somehow while evaluating peers / managers / professors. The consequences are dramatic : students are harsher on women teachers while evaluating them. Hence, fewer women are appointed to research chairs.
What do we do about it?
This behavior is not exclusively linked to the academic world. Since I discovered Anne Boring’s work, the topic never left my mind.
It became an entire source of intellectual exploration. I kept reading research papers about it to figure out what I could change in my professional life to correct my own biases. When the App Association interviewed me in 2019 to talk about WiMLDS Paris, the last question of the interview was : “What do you want to leave readers with?” Here is my answer :
📚 “I would encourage anyone who’s not familiar with the “why” factor when thinking or talking about inclusion and diversity matters to read about unconscious biases. My favorite papers on the topic are: Constructed Criteria Redefining Merit to Justify Discrimination by Eric Luis Uhlmann and Geoffrey L. Cohen and Orchestrating Impartiality: The Impact of “Blind” Auditions on Female Musicians by Claudia Goldin and Cecilia Rouse. After having read those papers, question yourself and wonder what you can do within your workplace or as a citizen to make things change.”
One common mistake that we make is not to be aware we have unconscious biases! Yes, you read it right. WE ALL HAVE UNCONSCIOUS BIASES.
For instance, a common bias is that “we judge people in the majority population on their potential whereas we expect the minority population to actually demonstrate performance to get equally rewarded.” We also tend to decide outcomes first and then unconsciously find reasoning to justify our decisions (Yale study on job discrimination , Blind orchestra auditions).
🤝 As a reader, if you have never read about unconscious biases before, I will strongly advise you to complete the Project Implicit bias test created by Harvard to estimate your biases : https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/.
A similar tool exists in order to identify your bias based out of the skin colour : http://skinclusion.com/
Like many other American tech companies, Facebook wants to engage its workforce for diversity, increase their contact with women and under-represented groups and affirm their desire to “look good” publicly. Even if I don’t want to praise any specific company’s work, Facebook provides insightful training to manage unconscious bias online 👇
This training is entirely free and accessible here: https://managingbias.fb.com/ 👈
⚙️ These tools have been created in the US mostly. Culturally, in the US, you can name the differences, especially the visible ones without being accused of discrimination.
Unfortunately, no similar free resource exists in France. If you know one, feel free to share it in the “comment section” below 🙏🏾📽 You can also watch this short movie released by Pixar to highlight the impact of unconscious bias at work. 📺 Purl, directed by Kristen Lester, features an earnest ball of yarn who gets a job in a fast-paced, high energy, bro-tastic start-up. She tries to fit in… :
🔑 Addressing the unconscious bias topic in recruitment and human resources is key. Indeed, diversity programs are not successful nor increasing diversity because they are using approaches from the past : they rely on the managers’ behaviour… Instead of improving diversity, it tends to activate and emphasize bias.
One fair question you may have in mind is : do people undergoing diversity training decrease their unconscious biases? According to the book “HBR’s 10 Must Reads on Diversity”, “Researchers have been examining that question since before World War II, in nearly a thousand studies. It turns out that while people are easily taught to respond correctly to a questionnaire about bias, they soon forget the right answers.”
One of the effective solutions is to build diversity training on optimistic and positive messages rather than blaming and negative ones. Another good idea is to aim at volunteering managers : do not force your managers to follow such programs if you know they are reluctant.
✅ For instance, I am a big fan of Marc Benioff’s position on Diversity. He is the CEO of Salesforce and exposes his point of view about D&I publicly.
Why do I love it? When THE boss values diversity, people make it a priority : that’s the sad (yet positive) truth. You optimize your hiring process and change your promotion system…etc. It’s not just the boss’ opinion, it redefines the company culture and values. On the contrary, if you rely on people’s willingness to value diversity, they will hide behind the meritocracy argument and nothing will change.
☣️ I would love to go into details about why building a company culture on meritocracy is toxic… but Better Allies™ says it better than I ever would in the article below!
By believing you have a meritocracy and promoting it as a value, you tend to feel more morally just. Which means you’re less inclined to examine your own behavior for bias and prejudice. Which means … get this … you can become indifferent to the challenges faced by members of underrepresented groups.
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Conclusion
📗 The first step we should all undergo is to read and talk about unconscious bias. We should encourage our social accountability fiber to get into the diversity action. This is not someone else’s topic, this is our topic. In France, the Galion Project released a Gender Agreement companies are invited to sign. That’s a start. Yet, we should all make diversity an incarnated priority and it starts by fighting against unconscious bias 👊
