Bruce Marable: Removing Bias in the Hiring Process

“I want to work with really smart people and here is a list of schools that this person will have graduated from” said Lawrence, the CEO. “I do not want to interview anyone who has not come out of one of these schools”.

My gut reaction was to simply say, “no thanks” and exit the meeting. Afterall, this CEO was going to be difficult to work with. 

My response back was simply “Confirmation Bias” 

We favor information that confirms our world view and this helps us to reduce any cognitive discomfort that discounts our values and realities. As Entrepreneurs, we are more susceptible to this bias because we are so focused on the task at hand. This reduces our ability to objectively make decisions that are best for the business. 

Lawrence laughed, grabbed the sheet of paper and threw it in the trash. “Ok find me smart people”! 

The truth is the strongest people often surface in the most unexpected ways and your bias clouds your vision of the truth!

Our guest today: Bruce Marable, Co-founder & CEO of Employee Cycle, the all-in-one People Dashboard

Bruce is a Philly-based serial tech startup founder. When Bruce is not helping HR leaders better use data to make smarter workforce decisions, he is making music playlists on Spotify, taking self-care at the boxing gym, or hunting for the best bread pudding around town.   

Today we discuss:

Why Bias needs to be eliminated from your hiring process
How to deliver an unbiased, evidence based interview

Challenge today?

According to Wikipedia, Bias is defined as a disproportionate weight in favor of or against an idea or thing, usually in a way that is closed-minded, prejudicial, or unfair.

We all have bias. It is important to eliminate it for one simple reason… Your company’s success

Why is bias elimination important to the company?

More diverse companies succeed
More revenue
Higher productivity
Cannot properly market to diverse groups of people/customers
Totally different backgrounds bring different ideas 
More diverse individuals create more self awareness, well rounded thought process
Disabilities
Sexual orientation
Ethnicity
Ageism
Re entering workforce
Incarcerated
Parenting 

Rick’s Nuggets

Innate Biases
Overconfidence: Subjective confidence in ideas or decisions
Illusion of control: overestimate ability to control situation or outcome
Anchoring/Adjustment: past experience predicts plans for future
Confirmation: preexisting beliefs- devalue contradictory information 
Cognitive tunnel vision

Curse of Knowledge : experts assume similar content understanding in others
Optimism: See the positive outcomes… delusional optimism

How do we solve the bias issue?

Mindset

Open to People who are different
Everyone is on equal footing
Allow people come in as being perceived as qualified
Vs. unqualified
Reinforce that they are qualified 

Eliminate your assumptions- college degree

Actions

Recruit from a diverse pool of job candidates
Remove all language in job descriptions that may have bias.
Standardize the interview questions.
Perform the same due diligence on all candidates whether that candidate is a referral or not
Give all candidates the same level of respect 
Blind the resume process
Remove bias from likability

Rick’s Nuggets

Customer experience mindset - applicants are your customers
More difficult to say No than yes
Conduct a qualifying call with most
Interview questions
Pre-determined and assigned to the individual interviewer according to the order in which they participate
Must gather evidence to support the decision either way
Feedback & closure

Key Takeaways:

Acknowledge confirmation bias.
Review the language in your job descriptions
Standardize your interview questions

Guest Contact:

LinkedIn  or Twitter