We need to make sure that job applications are assessed blindly at most stages in the application to avoid bias.
My understanding is that several places that have tried blinding found that this decreased the diversity of their hiring. Something to be cautious about!
I’m commenting on this a few years late, but for anyone reading this who wants to learn more, here is an excerpt from the book DEI Deconstructed, by Lily Zheng, along with a few references:
The “standard” best practice with resumes in the DEI space is to anonymize them, but I strongly advise caution. Proponents of resume anonymization argue that because the presence of gender and racial cues from names or hobbies can lead to hiring discrimination due to bias,24 removing this information will interrupt it. They advocate for names, hobbies, profile pictures, and any other identifying information to be scrubbed from resumes and in the hiring process. However, research has documented unintended adverse consequences of resume anonymization: namely, that “neutral” characteristics that candidates from disadvantaged communities might face, like unemployment gaps, are perceived even more negatively when identifying information is removed. Additionally, companies that anonymize resumes tend to be more progressive and care more about supporting people’s identities—increasing the damage done when identity is removed from the process. As a result, for the companies that deploy it, anonymization can backfire and result in even greater demographic disparity—opposite its intended effect.25 For organizations that value any aspect of their employees beyond purely skills and competencies, anonymization may harm rather than help.26 While it can be tempting to remove the human element from consideration (and many third-party firms have emerged to meet precisely this demand), consider taking the time to train hiring managers to handle identity with intentionality instead and collecting regular data on outcomes to maintain accountability.
24. Bertrand, Marianne, and Sendhil Mullainathan. 2003. “Are Emily and Greg More Employable than Lakisha and Jamal? A Field Experiment on Labor Market Discrimination.” National Bureau of Economic Research.
25. Behaghel, Luc, Bruno Crépon, and Thomas Le Barbanchon. 2015. “Unintended Effects of Anonymous Résumés.” American Economic Journal. Applied Economics 7 (3): 1–27.
26. White, Maia Jasper. 2020. “Eyes Wide Shut—The Case against Blind Auditions.” NewMusicBox (blog). September 10, 2020.
Hey Jeff, many thanks for reading and for your comment. That’s very interesting and it’s the first time I’m hearing about this. Do you know which orgs?
I do, but none of them have been willing to talk about it publicly. Maybe because it would imply that their hiring bar for employees that would increase their overall diversity is intentionally slightly lower?
That makes sense, thanks. I wonder if the results they got were also influenced by some other practices, for example already looking in a place where there was less diversity, or advertising the job in a way that put a lot of more diverse candidates off, such as not including salary in the JD.
Switching to blind hiring reducing the diversity of your hiring indicates that you’ve likely been (consciously or unconsciously) counting underrepresented group membership towards candidates instead of against them.
My understanding is that several places that have tried blinding found that this decreased the diversity of their hiring. Something to be cautious about!
I’m commenting on this a few years late, but for anyone reading this who wants to learn more, here is an excerpt from the book DEI Deconstructed, by Lily Zheng, along with a few references:
24. Bertrand, Marianne, and Sendhil Mullainathan. 2003. “Are Emily and Greg More Employable than Lakisha and Jamal? A Field Experiment on Labor Market Discrimination.” National Bureau of Economic Research.
25. Behaghel, Luc, Bruno Crépon, and Thomas Le Barbanchon. 2015. “Unintended Effects of Anonymous Résumés.” American Economic Journal. Applied Economics 7 (3): 1–27.
26. White, Maia Jasper. 2020. “Eyes Wide Shut—The Case against Blind Auditions.” NewMusicBox (blog). September 10, 2020.
For anyone that wants to dig deeper, it appears that the Unintended Effects of Anonymous Résumés article is cited in several papers that could be useful to dig into, I haven’t gotten around to reading them yet.
Hey Jeff, many thanks for reading and for your comment. That’s very interesting and it’s the first time I’m hearing about this. Do you know which orgs?
Here’s a relevant thread by Kelsey Piper.
I do, but none of them have been willing to talk about it publicly. Maybe because it would imply that their hiring bar for employees that would increase their overall diversity is intentionally slightly lower?
That makes sense, thanks. I wonder if the results they got were also influenced by some other practices, for example already looking in a place where there was less diversity, or advertising the job in a way that put a lot of more diverse candidates off, such as not including salary in the JD.
Why would you expect this?
Switching to blind hiring reducing the diversity of your hiring indicates that you’ve likely been (consciously or unconsciously) counting underrepresented group membership towards candidates instead of against them.