DEI Collab: (Not So) Hidden Bias in Hiring
In the wake of high-profile police violence against Black people and subsequent nationwide protests, the United States is facing a reckoning over racial bias and inequality. There is a growing call to reform institutions and enhance diversity in the workforce. Research advocating for diversity in the workforce has risen in recent years, and some businesses are heeding the call. For instance, in 2017, Boston Consulting Group analyzed diversity indexes like the Blau index in part of their research and revealed that “companies with Blau index scores above 0.59 (above the median) have generated 38% more of their revenues, on average, from innovative products and services in the most recent three-year period than did companies below the median.” In the same year, PwC surveyed 500 businesses and found that 91% of respondents agreed that D&I was a priority for their organization. While some business organizations recognize and have started to implement DEI efforts in their current workforce, it is also important for efforts to be made in organizations’ hiring processes. The information below will delineate the stages of the hiring process, the bias present within different stages, and the relation of such practices to John Rawls’ justice as fairness principles.
Before exploring the biases present within the hiring process, one must first understand the hiring process and its various stages. The hiring process, also referred to as recruiting, is the process of finding and selecting candidates for a job. The most common actions taken by a company before a candidate is hired and begins a job can be separated into three phases: planning, recruiting, and selecting.
The Planning Phase
The first phase of the hiring process is planning. In this phase, companies evaluate their needs, translate these needs into job objectives, and list these objectives as a job description. One of the most common biases that arise in this phase is gender bias. Gender bias refers to the differential or discriminatory treatment of a person based on their gender identity. When writing job postings, gender bias may influence, consciously or unconsciously, who ultimately applies to a job because of the words used in job postings. A study by Collier & Zhang utilized Textio to identify common masculine skewed words––principle, assertive, autonomous, and competitive––and feminine skewed words––adaptable, flexible, community, and collaborate. Job postings with male-skewed words and phrases deter female candidates from applying to job postings. The gender bias within job postings contributes to a smaller ratio of female to male candidates in male-dominated industries like STEM and ultimately reinforces the biased perception that women cannot achieve the same success in such fields.
The Recruiting Phase
The next phase of the hiring process is recruiting. In this phase, companies use various placement and advertising tactics to reach job candidates. During this phase, an intriguing bias that arises is institutional prestige bias, or a preference for job candidates who matriculate from prestigious institutions. In the recruitment process, many managers demonstrate institutional prestige bias towards graduates from top colleges. This is especially true for managers who attended top colleges themselves. Research from Indeed found that 37% of managers who self-identified as coming from a top school said they like to hire candidates from top institutions only while 41% of managers who did not self-identified as coming from a top school said they look at education but consider experience more important. When managers use institutional prestige as a proxy for the quality of a candidate, they disadvantage candidates without such background despite their skills or other qualifications. Institutional prestige bias has particularly negative implications for candidates of color since white students are more likely to receive degrees from higher-ranked institutions. In 2018, the median institution for white students ranked approximately 600 places higher than the median institution for black students and approximately 200 places higher than Latinx students.
The Selecting Phase
The final phase of the hiring process is selecting. In this phase, companies review, screen, and evaluate job candidates to assess their alignment to a job. A prominent bias that exists in this phase is ethnic bias. Ethnic bias refers to the differential or discriminatory treatment of a person based on their ethnic group. While reviewing candidate resumes, ethnic bias may influence who proceeds in the hiring process and receives an offer because an evaluator may infer race from names and inadvertently practice racial discrimination. During resume reviews, ethnic bias can affect which candidates get callbacks for interviews based on their name. The National Bureau of Economic Research concluded candidates with white or traditionally American names like Emily or Greg received 50% more callbacks for interviews than candidates with ethnic names like Lakisha or Jamal despite similar backgrounds. The ethnic bias during resume selection hinders ethnic individuals in the labor market since they get fewer callbacks for interviews, and no callbacks further impede these individuals as they have fewer opportunities to practice or improve skills evaluated later in the hiring process.
The cases mentioned above exemplify how bias impedes candidates, however, they do not explore the ethical relation of bias in business. To do this, we can refer to John Rawls’ principles of justice as fairness. In summation, John Rawls’ two principles of justice as fairness are:
Each person has the same indefeasible claim to fully adequate equal basic liberties.
Social and economic inequalities must satisfy two conditions:
They are open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity.
They benefit the least-advantaged members of society most.
The first principle asserts that justice requires equal rights and liberties for all. The second principle allows for inequality of wealth and income so long as it is advantageous to everyone and particularly beneficial to those who are worse off due to the inequalities.
While examining bias in the hiring process, it becomes obvious that these principles are not upheld. Though there has been progress, we certainly cannot claim to have achieved equal rights and liberties for all people as necessary in Rawls’ first principle. Even more conspicuous is the lack of fair equality of opportunity as necessary in the second principle. People with the same talents and willingness to use those talents are not given the same opportunities for a variety of reasons including gender, institutional prestige, ethnicity, and other biases in business. Analyzing business practices and the hiring process in particular under Rawls’ principles of justice as fairness, bias in the hiring process is found to be not only problematic but also in violation of the criteria for justice as fairness.
Research has suggested many ways to rectify the aforementioned biases. For gender bias in planning, companies can use gender-fair language, or flexible and inclusive wording, in job advertisements. For institutional prestige bias in recruiting, companies can standardize the recruitment process to equalize how managers evaluate candidates. For ethnic bias in selecting, companies can utilize blind resume reviews to exclude names and other personally-identifying information. Although these are viable potential solutions to three biases, there are many other forms of bias that can occur within the three phases of the hiring process. While we can attempt to address each bias individually, we can also refer to John Rawls’ principles of justice as fairness to provide ethical guidance to address all biases.
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