Is Subconscious Bias Affecting Your Hiring Decisions?

What is subconscious bias?

Subconscious biases are implicit biases that often cause you to form preconceived notions about others. In the workplace, these stereotypes can impact hiring decisions without you even realizing it, preventing you from hiring the best employees for the job.

Many hiring managers unwittingly harbor an education bias that affects their hiring decisions. For example, a hiring manager who graduated from a prestigious university might subconsciously judge applicants’ college education by their school ranking.

Other common hiring biases include applicant attractiveness, height and even personality (e.g., whether they match the hiring manager’s temperament).

How an employer’s education can affect their hiring bias

Education bias may not be the first hiring bias that comes to mind. However, studies show it’s a real phenomenon. Research from the job site Indeed discovered that bosses who attended a top-ranked college preferred hiring employees who graduated from a prestigious institution. Specifically, 37 percent of managers who went to a “top” school said they prefer hiring candidates from highly regarded universities — compared with just 6 percent of managers who didn’t attend a prestigious university.

On the flip side, 41 percent of managers who didn’t graduate from a top-ranked college said they consider candidates’ experience more important than degrees when making hiring decisions. Just 11 percent of managers who attended prestigious schools echoed that sentiment.

“It’s a worrisome trend that a manager’s personal experience and background has such an influence on hiring decisions,” said Paul D’Arcy, former senior vice president at Indeed. “This type of bias can prevent companies from finding the diverse talent needed for their organizations to grow and thrive.”

The research revealed that the bias toward top college graduates is most prominent among managers hiring for entry-level positions and executive roles.

How employers act vs. what they believe about education

Despite their desire to bring in employees from highly regarded schools, most managers agreed that attending a highly rated school doesn’t translate into being a top performer. Just 35 percent of all bosses Indeed surveyed said top performers generally come from top schools.

Instead, managers said the ability to work well with others, strategic thinking and self-direction are much more indicative of high performance.

This finding “shows that we need to pay more attention to hiring practices,” D’Arcy explained. “It is often an unconscious bias that leads managers to hire people with similar backgrounds, but that means many talented and qualified candidates are being overlooked.”

How non-educational hiring biases play a part

Where a manager went to school isn’t the only bias affecting hiring practices. Greg Moran, founder and former CEO of predictive hiring software company Harver, believes many hiring managers fall prey to subconscious biases about factors like physical attractiveness, height, weight and charisma.

“Overt bias is exceedingly rare, but unintentional, abstract bias can occur,” Moran said. “It’s human nature; employers use their gut reactions to job candidates and hire people like themselves that they get along with. This can be dangerous because employers don’t even realize there’s bias in their hiring process.”

On an individual level, we all hold different biases for different reasons. For example, perhaps you’re interviewing a candidate who looks like a former colleague. Your brain might subconsciously associate the interviewee with your ex-coworker, projecting specific personality traits and flaws onto them.

It’s natural to want to hire for a cultural fit and work with people who match your energy. However, choosing employees on “gut feelings” alone can be a damaging hiring mistake. Additionally, if you don’t address your subconscious biases based on physical characteristics, you might miss out on the most qualified candidates.

How to remove bias from your hiring process

An unstructured hiring process facilitates subconscious bias, so structuring and defining your company’s precise hiring process for various jobs is crucial. For example, identify and target the critical competencies necessary for an open job, create appropriate job descriptions, and structure your hiring process around those needs.

Consider the following straightforward tips that can help remove bias from your hiring decisions and improve your hiring and recruitment processes.

1. Involve multiple people in the interviewing process.

Rare is the job candidate who loves sitting for several rounds of interviews. However, a series of interviews serves a vital purpose. When multiple people get to know a candidate, various hiring biases will dissipate. For example, an HR staffer might pinpoint a CEO’s subconscious education bias and give the candidate a fairer evaluation.

2. Conduct reference checks.

A prestigious degree doesn’t say everything about a person. Maybe the job candidate from Harvard misses deadlines more often than the candidate from a state school. You can discern this crucial distinguishing factor through reference checks. The state-school candidate’s references may tell you the candidate always hits their deadlines, while the Harvard candidate’s references say the opposite. Factor in what you learn to work against your hiring bias.

3. Train your hiring team to recognize bias.

Hiring bias might seem abstract, but there’s science underlying it. In fact, more than a dozen hiring biases with various characteristics have been studied at length. You should learn about these hiring biases and teach everyone involved in your hiring process about them. Beyond that, teach your hiring team how to identify and act against hiring biases. A meaningfully diverse team could be the result.

How to approach having a more diverse team

The above steps can help you counter hiring biases and foster a more diverse team. Additionally, consider the following best practices:

• Get professional help. Seek the assistance of a full-time HR staffer to plan and direct your hiring process. Additionally, many companies prefer to outsource HR functions to streamline recruitment and hiring. Check out our reviews of the best PEO services to start your search. (Read our Justworks review to learn about one flexible and affordable option.)
• Create anti-discrimination policies. Add clear anti-discrimination policies when creating your employee handbook.
• Become an inclusive company. Incorporate inclusivity into your company values. Add these tenets to your vision statement and mission statement, and create a diversity training program so all team members are on the same page.
• Celebrate diverse occasions. Celebrate occasions that center and elevate marginalized groups. Ensure you get input from employees who belong to these groups as you plan.
• Implement employee recognition programs. Create performance benchmarks and recognize the employees who meet them.
• Create an equal performance evaluation process. Monitor and analyze job performance with the same metrics for all employees.
• Create safe spaces. Create safe spaces where employees from marginalized groups can report discrimination with promises of action — and without fear of retaliation.

Subconscious bias in hiring

Subconscious bias in hiring can damage a company’s reputation and bottom line. If hiring managers make decisions based on individual experiences, stereotypes or other implicit biases, they might miss out on high-quality employees who can offer unique contributions to the business.

While subconscious biases are common, practicing self-awareness and actively removing biases from your hiring process will ensure the best results. Every applicant deserves a fair chance to thrive.