{"id":24686,"date":"2020-01-07T16:52:00","date_gmt":"2020-01-07T19:52:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.pdainternational.net\/?p=24686"},"modified":"2022-05-16T16:54:18","modified_gmt":"2022-05-16T19:54:18","slug":"blind-recruitment-building-diverse-organisations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.pdainternational.net\/en\/blind-recruitment-building-diverse-organisations\/","title":{"rendered":"Blind Recruitment: Building diverse organisations"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>he organisation of the present and the future is diverse: gender, ethnicity, culture, age, professional path. All these elements, previously taken for granted, are at the fore-front in selection processes, with&nbsp;policies&nbsp;that support these practices and increasingly more tools that fulfil this need&nbsp;of the&nbsp;21st century society.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Hiring new talent is a complex process itself. However, when we&nbsp;also want to revolutionise&nbsp;the way we think about people and&nbsp;eliminate&nbsp;our unconscious personal bias,&nbsp;the process reaches new levels of complexity.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A&nbsp;practice that&nbsp;is&nbsp;becoming widespread is&nbsp;<strong>Blind Recruiting,<\/strong>&nbsp;<strong>which consists in eliminating data that specif<\/strong><strong>ies<\/strong><strong>&nbsp;certain characteristics&nbsp;<\/strong><strong>that<\/strong><strong>&nbsp;may cause discrimination, such as<\/strong><strong>&nbsp;the person\u2019s<\/strong><strong>&nbsp;name, gender, age, hobbies and interests, academic background,<\/strong><strong>&nbsp;<\/strong>and so on, and&nbsp;instead focuses&nbsp;on the&nbsp;candidates\u2019&nbsp;experience and skills.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Even though it is very popular now,&nbsp;this practice is not&nbsp;new. It&nbsp;was first used&nbsp;in the 1950s in the US, when the Boston Symphony Orchestra started having blind auditions to&nbsp;eliminate gender&nbsp;bias when choosing its members. The practice extended to orchestras&nbsp;throughout&nbsp;the country in the 1970s,&nbsp;<strong>allowing female representation&nbsp;<\/strong><strong>increase<\/strong><strong>&nbsp;from 5% to 30% nowadays<\/strong>, taking interpretation and musical skills, not gender, as the main factor for&nbsp;selecting individuals.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Using this model&nbsp;in a selection&nbsp;process in an organisation comes with a series of adaptations that result in less discrimination, at least in theory, during the first stages.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As mentioned before, the elimination of data that\u00a0may\u00a0lead to a bias is the first step.\u00a0There is already software\u00a0that does this, such as Gap Jumpers\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2016\/02\/28\/magazine\/is-blind-hiring-the-best-hiring.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">\ufddfHYPERLINK \u201chttps:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2016\/02\/28\/magazine\/is-blind-hiring-the-best-hiring.html\u201d<\/a>, created by\u00a0Kedar\u00a0Iyer, an entrepreneur from Silicon Valley who noticed the same problem when selecting encoders in the IT world, leaving talent out of the equation\u00a0because they did not attend\u00a0renowned universities.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Other ways to&nbsp;incorporate&nbsp;Blind Recruitment is through anonymous skills tests; these can be&nbsp;predesigned tests,&nbsp;chatbots&nbsp;or technical tests, all of which&nbsp;don\u2019t&nbsp;show the information we wish to exclude.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>One of the current needs when hiring new talent is the famous culture fit. When we understand it as a way to find people with the same work ethic, supported by behaviour consistent with the organisation\u2019s goals, it may be a good way to filter out applicants. Now, when culture fit is a way of&nbsp;perpetuating cultural hegemony, without much variety in the&nbsp;kind of people who make up the organisation, then it can become a place with low diversity and results coherent with this lack of plurality of visions.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>While bias can be avoided in the initial stages of recruiting using these techniques, the unavoidable personal interview presents a challenge when trying to keep the selection with as little a bias as possible. This is why&nbsp;<strong>commitment with diversity must be within the organisation\u2019s core values<\/strong>, in addition to having continuous and proper training for the recruitment teams and HR in general, as part of a global strategy of inclusion.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Blind Recruitment theory is pretty encouraging and seems to be a simple solution&nbsp;for a big problem; however,&nbsp;heterogeneous results have been reported. Even when Google uses this technique, among many others, for its selection processes, the company\u2019s representation figures in terms of&nbsp;diversity&nbsp;are not balanced.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That\u2019s why measuring results allows for a better delimitation of the inclusion strategy.&nbsp;Knowing the current company\u2019s&nbsp;structure&nbsp;and how the selection process is done before implementing certain measures will help you understand which practices benefit the organisation\u2019s diversification.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"has-text-align-right wp-block-heading\">Inclusion problems in talent selection come from one source: human subjectivity. That\u2019s why technology and a conscious effort to eliminate preconceptions are strong allies for&nbsp;achieving&nbsp;culturally rich, diverse and constantly evolving organisations, driven by capable human beings and with a diversity of voices that reflect this century\u2019s complex globalised society.<\/h4>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>he organisation of the present and the future is diverse: gender, ethnicity, culture, age, professional path. All these elements, previously taken for granted, are at the fore-front in selection processes, with&nbsp;policies&nbsp;that support these practices and increasingly more tools that fulfil this need&nbsp;of the&nbsp;21st century society.&nbsp; Hiring new talent is a complex process itself. However, when we&nbsp;also want to revolutionise&nbsp;the way we think about people and&nbsp;eliminate&nbsp;our unconscious personal bias,&nbsp;the process reaches new levels of complexity.&nbsp; A&nbsp;practice that&nbsp;is&nbsp;becoming widespread is&nbsp;Blind Recruiting,&nbsp;which consists in eliminating data that specifies&nbsp;certain characteristics&nbsp;that&nbsp;may cause discrimination, such as&nbsp;the person\u2019s&nbsp;name, gender, age, hobbies and interests, academic background,&nbsp;and so on, and&nbsp;instead focuses&nbsp;on the&nbsp;candidates\u2019&nbsp;experience and skills.&nbsp; Even though it is very popular now,&nbsp;this practice is not&nbsp;new. It&nbsp;was first used&nbsp;in the 1950s in the US, when the Boston Symphony Orchestra started having blind auditions to&nbsp;eliminate gender&nbsp;bias when choosing its members. The practice extended to orchestras&nbsp;throughout&nbsp;the country in the 1970s,&nbsp;allowing female representation&nbsp;increase&nbsp;from 5% to 30% nowadays, taking interpretation and musical skills, not gender, as the main factor for&nbsp;selecting individuals.&nbsp;&nbsp; Using this model&nbsp;in a selection&nbsp;process in an organisation comes with a series of adaptations that result in less discrimination, at least in theory, during the first stages.&nbsp; As mentioned before, the elimination of data&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":24119,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[257],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24686","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.pdainternational.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24686","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.pdainternational.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.pdainternational.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.pdainternational.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.pdainternational.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24686"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.pdainternational.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24686\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24687,"href":"https:\/\/blog.pdainternational.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24686\/revisions\/24687"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.pdainternational.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24119"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.pdainternational.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24686"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.pdainternational.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24686"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.pdainternational.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24686"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}