What is the Meaning of Blind Hiring?

 

Blind hiring refers to omitting specific information that could lead to unconscious bias when hiring. Typically, these attributes include name, gender, age, education, or previous employers. This way, the entire recruitment process is based on skills, experience, qualifications and whether the person can do the job.

The primary goal of recruiting the blind is to promote diversity and inclusion in the workplace by reducing the influence of conscious and unconscious bias that can cloud decision-making in the hiring process. By using this method, companies can avoid discrimination that often occurs in the recruitment process, thereby prioritizing the abilities and potential of candidates. By using this method, candidates who are in minority groups or who rarely get opportunities have the opportunity to get a job.

 

Why is Blind Hiring Important?

 

Recruiting teams often make decisions based on impressions from a candidate's resume, which may include personal details such as name or background. Although this is not always intentional, bias can favor one group. Blind recruitment aims to:   

 

• Resume Anonymization

 

In resume anonymization, names, addresses, and even educational information are removed. The names of previous employers were also removed. Recruiters focus on work experience, skills, and accomplishments.

 

• Blind Interview

 

Apart from using resume anonymization, blind recruitment is also carried out using blind interviews.

Some companies will use text-based interviews or even pre-record questions with a video interview where the candidate's voice or image only appears at a later stage.

 

• Skills Assessment

 

An alternative to a resume is to conduct a blind skills assessment, giving the recruiter an idea of ​​the candidate without knowing who he or she is.

In this way, the recruitment team can focus on assessing the skills the candidate has without having to look at the candidate's background.

 

• Structured Interview

 

If it's an office job and when it comes time for an in-person interview, recruiters rely on standard questions and evaluation criteria that focus on competency rather than subjective impressions.

 

What are the Advantages and Disadvantages of Blind Hiring?

 

Blind recruitment offers many advantages beyond just reducing bias. Focusing on skills and competencies helps create a more diverse and inclusive workforce, which can lead to innovation and better company performance.

However, this does not mean that this recruitment method does not have shortcomings. The following are the advantages and disadvantages of this blind recruitment method:

 

The Advantages of Blind Hiring

 

• Reducing Bias and Encouraging Diversity

 

The first benefit demonstrated by blind hiring is its ability to reduce bias in hiring, which can influence employee choices.

Research by McKinsey shows that companies with greater diversity are 36% more likely to outperform their peers financially.

In a blind recruitment process, race, gender, and even educational qualifications can be disguised, and hiring can be based strictly on work experience and skills.

In this way, a highly inclusive hiring process will result in a more diverse workforce.

 

• Focuses On Skills and Competencies

 

Blind hiring emphasizes what matters most, namely the candidate's ability to do the job. By focusing on skills tests, work examples, or relevant experience of the individual, recruiters can be confident in selecting the best for the role.

 

• Improve the Company's Reputation

Companies committed to diversity and non-discriminatory hiring practices are at the forefront of diversity and inclusion, which can be a compelling advertisement for prospective employees and clients interested in fair business practices.

 

• Increase Innovation

 

Diverse organizations will produce more innovative and imaginative teams. Because people with different backgrounds know different things, when they join forces, they bring a mix of viewpoints and input, leading to more creative problem solving and inventive thinking.

 

Disadvantages of Blind Hiring

 

• Limited Information

 

Blind recruiting removes a lot of personal information that can also remove context from an applicant's experience. For example, information about someone who graduated from a top university or worked at a well-known company can be very informative as background information.

 

• Difficult to Maintain in Later Stages

 

Although at certain points anonymity may be compromised, such as when candidates undergo interviews in person.

However, it is impossible not to observe candidates when meeting in person and indeed, one of the potential pitfalls in this process.

So this 'blind' method will be difficult to maintain in the next stage.

 

• Time-Consuming

 

Blind hiring requires more work for the recruiting team because resumes have to be carefully edited. To ensure fairness, new processes may need to be developed for things like assessment of blind skills.

 

• Not a Solution to Vercome Diversity

 

This recruitment method does help reduce initial bias. However, this does not solve most of the systemic challenges that may exist in the company's overall processes or culture. Organizations must continue to support diversity and inclusion beyond just recruiting.

 

How to Implement Blind Hiring in a Company

 

Do you want to implement blind recruitment in your organization?

 

Here is a step-by-step guide to help you get started.

 

A. Identify Areas that Need Improvement

 

First, review your current hiring process to find any loopholes that could allow bias. Do you screen resumes based on education or the prestige of the company you attended?

Do you conduct interviews in a way that allows for subjectivity?

First, understand the places where bias is involved and decide which parts of blind recruiting you will use.

 

B. Use a Blind Resume Screening Tool

 

Many software tools can automatically anonymize resumes by removing name, gender, and any identifying information. You can even train your recruiting team to remove this information manually before reviewing resumes.

 

C. Implement Skills Assessments

 

Skills assessment in recruitment procedures. These tests will allow candidates to prove their ability to perform real-world tasks, thereby allowing recruiters to understand their qualifications without looking at a resume.

 

D. Standardization of Interviews

 

Each candidate is assessed using the same standards. One will use structured questions directed at the skills and experience deemed sufficient to qualify, after setting up an assessment method that allows for measuring responses objectively.

 

E. Train the Recruitment Team

 

Train your recruiting team so they can minimize bias in hiring. The best blind recruiting techniques, awareness and sensitivity training, will make the hiring process unbiased.

 

F. Monitor and Provide

 

Monitor the effectiveness of these recruiting methods, from whether you're getting more diverse candidates to continuing to hire the best fit.

Gather data and feedback to hone and adjust your processes as needed.

 

 Conclusion

 

That was a complete explanation of blind hiring which you can use as a recruitment method in your company.

From the explanation in the article above, it can be seen that blind hiring is used to reduce bias that often occurs in company recruitment.

When recruitment is carried out 'blindly', the recruitment team can focus on the abilities of the candidate, instead of paying attention to their background.

This can provide opportunities to candidates who previously never had the opportunity because of their background.