What is Blind Hiring? [With Tips to Build a Blind Hiring Program]

According to a study by Forbes, decisions made and executed by diverse teams delivered 60% better results. While it is widely accepted that a diverse workforce is likely to be more productive, the list of ways in which one can achieve diversity in the composition of the workforce is not set in stone.

But what is certain, is that one of the biggest barriers to achieving workforce diversity is unconscious bias while hiring. And in this article, we cover a highly effective strategy to mitigate the impact of unconscious bias, which is blind hiring.

 What is Blind Hiring?

To put it in simple terms, blind hiring is the process of ignoring information about candidates that can create bias in the minds of the recruiters. Information such as gender, race, religion, marital status, educational institution, social media profiles, and personal hobbies are obscured from the resumes that are sent to the screening recruiters. This is done to reduce bias, both conscious and unconscious.

How Does Blind Hiring Help Reduce Bias?

Whether or not hiring bias can be eliminated is debatable, but blind hiring does go a long way in reducing bias – at least at the screening stage. By blocking out information that can be attributed to gender, religion, and other such details about a candidate, you are effectively removing the possibility of the screening manager being prejudiced against or in favor of a candidate, by knowing these details.

For example, if the details reveal that the candidate is a married lady, and the job description is that of a field salesperson, the recruiter might consciously or unconsciously assume that the candidate will not be able to cope with the job requirements. But if this information is obscured, then the focus will be on the candidate’s skills and experience, and she stands a better chance of her resume being screened objectively.

The downside is that blind hiring might also negate the opportunity to consciously empower certain groups of people. For instance, if you have a goal of hiring more women, then blocking out the gender from the resume might adversely affect this goal. So you need to make a judgment call on what details to obscure and what not to. In this case, if you allow the gender but block out other personal details, it will still serve the purpose, without impacting your goal of hiring more women to increase diversity in the workforce.

How to Build and Implement a Blind Hiring Program?

Here are the most commonly used tactics to successfully implement blind hiring:

Train your recruiters to identify and overcome unconscious bias

Oftentimes, people are not aware that they are biased, because a major portion of bias happens unconsciously. It is highly advisable to invest in training your talent acquisition specialists to understand that such unconscious bias might exist in their minds also, and how to identify and overcome it.

If your recruiters are not well educated and trained about unconscious bias, your success will be limited. This is because after the initial screening through blind hiring, there will be a face-to-face or virtual interview anyhow – and personal details cannot be hidden at that stage anyhow.

Avoid gender-based pronouns in your job descriptions

If you browse a few job descriptions on the internet, you will be surprised to discover how many of them refer to a given role in a specific gender. This is because the recruiters are not sensitive to the fact that using gender-based pronouns makes them look biased. For example, using a masculine gender for a lawyer’s job would deter a woman from applying for a job even though she might be professionally qualified and fully capable of doing well in that role.

Block out information that indicates attributes such as gender, religion, and other details

This is a crucial step in the process, and a common way to get this done is by investing in software that will do it for you. However, it can be done equally well using a spreadsheet, simply by blocking out the columns that have the details that can be attributed to gender, religion, hobbies and interests, and such other details that might feed bias.

Note that social media profiles and college degrees are a source of bias as well

Social media profiles are usually included to add credibility to the profile. However, they also contain personal information, sometimes including private details such as the sexual orientation of a candidate. So, it is best to obscure the social media details from the resume to ensure the effectiveness of blind hiring.

And when it comes to college degrees, there is no guarantee that a candidate from a more prestigious college will do better at the job simply because of having studied there. Skills and experience matter more, and a great way to ensure that no assumptions are based on the candidate’s competence based on where they studied, is to block out the information about the educational institution from the profile given to the recruiter.

Have a standardized interview process

Once the blinding hiring stage is over and the candidates are through to the stage of a face-to-face or virtual interview, it is important to interview in a structured manner. This does not mean that you need to restrict yourself to a mechanical set of questions only. However, your interview questions should not be the kind that differs based on the very attributes that had been obscured during profile screening, since that will defeat the purpose of blind hiring.

It’s Time for Action

Now that you are armed with the knowledge needed to leverage blind hiring successfully, it’s time to put it into action. While you are implementing blind hiring, it is important not to lose sight of the fact that time is a premium resource, and you need to execute with speed and efficiency.

And a great way to execute any recruitment strategy is to have an HR tool, such as a talent acquisition cloud that saves you time and cost. Once you implement your blind hiring strategy while saving time and money at the same time, the ROI on your recruitment efforts will improve multifold.

Ultimately, you want to make great hiring decisions and achieve profitability for your organization through ethical means (and be a talent acquisition superhero in the bargain) and using a tool like RippleHire ATS will help you achieve just that!