Eliminating Biases in Hiring: Structured Interviewing and AI Solutions
Hiring from a diverse and qualified talent pool is essential for organizational success, yet hidden biases often impair interviewers’ ability to assess candidates objectively.
According to the SHRM WorkplaceTech Spotlight discussion between talent acquisition leaders Guillermo Corea, Managing Director of SHRMLabs, and Vikrant Mahajan, founder and CEO of JobTwine, standardized interviewing processes and artificial intelligence can mitigate biases and ensure the best candidates fill roles. Their conversation explored critical data on the substantial expenses that firms face from poor hiring decisions and discussed innovative technologies such as JobTwine that inject greater fairness and efficiency into recruiting.
The Costs Associated with Hiring Mistakes
Botched recruitment takes a heavy toll on companies.
“The average cost-per-hire is about $4,700, but many employers estimate the total cost to hire a new employee can be three to four times the position’s salary,” Corea said.
Moreover, managing underperforming hires saps management bandwidth. “If a wrong hire is made, 26% of a manager’s time is going to be spent coaching a wrong hire,” Mahajan said.
Training, onboarding, and potentially needing to restart the hiring process compounds the inefficiencies of mismatched hires. In fact, companies lose an average of $17,000 on each bad hire, and the U.S. Department of Labor estimated that the cost could be as high as 30% of the employee’s first-year wages, potentially reaching $24,000 for someone with an $80,000 salary. Mahajan noted that these expenses likely underestimate the actual costs, which he estimated as ranging from $50,000 to up to $240,000 across different roles.
These sobering statistics spotlight the importance of minimizing hiring miscues from the outset. Yet, biases often unconsciously distort talent evaluations, leading recruiters to focus on candidates they instinctually warm to rather than objectively assessing each person’s abilities. A striking 48% of HR managers admitted that biases affect the candidates they hire.
Tackling Biases That Impact Interviewing
People naturally gravitate toward those who remind them of themselves and share similar perspectives. In contrast, candidates with different backgrounds or communication styles may be unfairly penalized.
“Humans’ unconscious bias will play a role in any interview, especially if it’s not standardized,” Corea said.
Mahajan discussed this tendency for interviewers to unconsciously “find a replica of ourselves without focusing on…what the right skill set is for the person required to perform in the job role.”
Rather than correcting for these inclinations, typical unstructured interviews even reinforce them. The impact of bias is seen in resumes, as well — white-sounding names received 9% more callbacks compared to resumes with Black-sounding names, for example.
Fortunately, purposeful standardization and technological assistance can counteract these bias patterns.
Mahajan aims to inject greater impartiality into hiring through JobTwine. The platform’s goal is to foster standardization and create a data-oriented process around recruiting and hiring.
Structured interviews powered by sophisticated AI act as a powerful bias mitigation mechanism.
JobTwine’s Platform Offering
Mahajan launched JobTwine after experiencing firsthand the flaws plaguing conventional recruiting as he scaled his health care company, DocASAP. Observing missed talent opportunities and poor cultural fits from skewed hiring decisions, he sought to develop a comprehensive solution. JobTwine offers two integrated products — one for applicants and one for employers. Candidates can access AI-enabled career guidance to sharpen resumes and interview abilities.
The employer portal has centralized screening with automated workflows, which is critical for initially evaluating candidates before top talent advances to structured interviews. Recruiters gain access to platform-generated interview guides, complete with commonly asked and recommended questions for given roles. These structured question sets help normalize interviews, allowing for the equitable comparison of responses. Recording responses enables a retrospective review to catch unnoticed biases, with text and sentiment analysis offering additional insights. With 75% of employers admitting they’ve hired the wrong person for a position, these AI-powered tools can significantly reduce costly mistakes.
Implementing Structured Interview Processes
Mahajan stressed that effective structured interviewing requires significant upfront work in role design. He emphasizes the importance of defining key competencies and developing playbooks around them, including setting the number of interview rounds and developing the right interview questions.
Proper role scoping, skills mapping, and question calibration can prevent interviews from descending into meandering conversations vulnerable to unconscious bias.
Structured interviews centered on core competencies keep discussions targeted while still allowing tailoring for specific positions. AI can assist by ingesting data on successful incumbent employees and proposed role needs to derive an ideal candidate profile scientifically.
“What we’re doing with AI is essentially looking at ... all of your current employee data as well as the future vision of the role and identifying the right set of signals. Then, we’re providing that structure back to you,” Mahajan said.
Technological augmentation thus systemizes and enhances time-tested human resource strategies for the contemporary hiring context, which is rife with ever-subtler yet impactful biases.
Eliminating Biases for Organizational Success
Suboptimal recruiting that falls victim to biases incurs tremendous costs for enterprises and overlooks candidates who may better drive success. Structured interviewing processes and AI solutions such as JobTwine can help organizations realize substantial benefits.
This discussion spotlighted important innovations for leaders to consider adopting to enhance hiring and fuel greater diversity. Scrutinizing existing practices, investing in supportive technologies, and honing structured interview toolkits can pave the path for secure and equitable recruiting against people’s subtle but problematic unconscious biases.
FAQs
What are the main types of biases in hiring?
Some common biases that can impair hiring decisions include affinity bias (preference for candidates most similar to oneself), confirmation bias (seeking information that affirms initial impressions), and attribution bias (making assumptions about candidates based on external traits). Unconscious biases related to gender, ethnicity, age, and cultural background also often influence evaluations.
How does structured interviewing work to reduce biases?
Structured interviews standardize questioning around job competencies so that all candidates, regardless of background, are evaluated equitably on relevant skills. Developing competency-based criteria, crafting uniform questions, recording responses, and training interviewers helps safeguard decisions.
Can technology completely eliminate hiring biases?
Technology cannot fully erase subtle, unconscious human biases, but AI tools can significantly mitigate their effects. Features such as automated screening, anonymized resume reviews, standardized online assessments, and interview data analyses help focus decisions on skills rather than affinity.
What role do HR professionals play in implementing bias-reduction technologies?
HR teams are essential for laying the strategic groundwork on which technologies can assist in mitigating biases, such as by formally defining job competencies and developing structured interview guidebooks. They also oversee technology integration and monitor results.
How can companies measure the success of bias-reduction strategies in their hiring processes?
Valuable metrics include comparing hiring rates across demographic groups, calculating new hire retention and performance, surveying hiring manager feedback, and tracking recruiting costs such as cost-per-hire. Positive trends suggest mitigated bias.
—
This article was written based on Episode 21 of the WorkplaceTech Spotlight.
Thank you to Vikrant Mahajan, founder and CEO of JobTwine, for contributing to the conversation.
Sources:
[Source: WorkplaceTech Spotlight - Ep. 21 - YouTube]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zn1beNq-Dt0]
[Source: Apollo Technical: The Cost of a Bad Hire and Red Flags to Avoid]
[https://www.apollotechnical.com/cost-of-a-bad-hire/]
[Source: Forbes - Breaking Down Barriers: How to Combat Bias in the Hiring Process]
[Source: CareerBuilder - How Much Is That Bad Hire Costing Your Business?]
[https://resources.careerbuilder.com/featured-stories/how-much-is-that-bad-hire-costing-your-business]
[Source: CareerBuilder - 75% Of Employers Have Hired the Wrong Person, Here’s How to Prevent That]
[https://resources.careerbuilder.com/news-research/prevent-hiring-the-wrong-person]
[Source: NPR - White-sounding Names Get Called Back For Jobs More Than Black Ones, A New Study Finds]
[https://www.npr.org/2024/04/11/1243713272/resume-bias-study-white-names-black-names]
SHRM Labs, powered by SHRM, is inspiring innovation to create better workplace technologies that solve today’s most pressing workplace challenges. We are SHRM’s workplace innovation and venture capital arm. We are Leaders, Innovators, Strategic Partners, and Investors that create better workplaces and solve challenges related to the future of work. We put the power of SHRM behind the next generation of workplace technology.