We have already seen how gender and race bias affected the U.S. presidential election. People face discrimination in one way or the other; plus-sized people are being treated badly at office, women earn less than men and so on. Bias occurs in America and that is too in an obvious way. Employee recruitment is another instance of bias in apparent form.

Making workplace better by reducing recruitment bias

Widespread of modern technology has paced its way to reduce bias in recruitment process which would consequently filter down to the way the companies are operated so all working employees can experience equality. Organizations are investing in technology such as recruitment software, Artificial Intelligence-enabled applicant tracking software and machine learning to reduce manual element during recruitment. If used rightly, technology can help reducing unintentional bias and aid recruiters to discover their bias so they can be careful about this issue. The process of recruitment provides both the recruiters and the candidates with an intimate experience. And during the process, it is really difficult to bypass personal thoughts, values and attitudes at the door. Even though the HR team is held to superior standards and obey employee equality laws, there might be chances of tiny influences present in their subconscious mind. Our neurons are designed to respond to race, emotion and gender and they are linked by the stereotypes that can distort people’s point of view about others. And to eliminate such implicit bias, technology comes really handy.

Things to do to reduce bias during recruitment

Conventional recruitment system is outdated. This system allows getting the most visible job seekers noticed for their career opportunities while there are many who have excellent track record of amazing performance that hardly fit pre-conceived molds. A candidate matching system is the right solution to this as it emphasizes on what matters the most – the true merits. It is recommended not to overlook the freelance workforce that has a lot to offer but often get ignored by conventional 9 to 5 employers.

Employers can significantly reduce recruitment bias if they stop making decisions depending on their feelings and rather make decisions based on work-related values that the candidates bring to the table. In the IT niche, introverts candidates are drawn to such kind of work. Unprepared recruiters often ignore outstanding track record of the candidate just because she or he couldn’t make a good eye contact or respond properly to the recruiter’s joke during the interviews. And there comes the need of applying technology.

A good solution to this kind of work succeeding is Microsoft’s latest system for interviewing and hiring autistic candidates. This is a great combination of empathetic hiring process and technology which spread out demanding and tedious interview schedules to accommodate according to their needs and lead to huge success in hiring real talents.

Technology can successfully eliminate much of this bias in hiring process as mentioned earlier. Technology-based recruitment process uses sophisticated computer algorithms to sort candidates and match them accordingly. If companies can use them properly, it can result in more precise, less biased list of candidates to be appeared at the interview table.

Bias can’t be removed completely at present scenario. But by making use of proper technology like implementing hiring software, unconscious bias might be eliminated radically.