How to combat bias in the hiring process 

Estimated reading time: 6 minutes

Interviewing candidates for roles that have opened up in your company has to be predefined for a truly unbiased approach.  

Hiring managers evaluate candidates based on limited interactions, often relying on incomplete information, where unconscious biases might influence outcomes. This is a risky game, as hiring someone unfit for the role can lead to costly mistakes. Even greater risks lie in overlooking strong candidates from underrepresented groups due to a poor interview process – an issue that is even more urgent today, as diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives face ever-increasing political and corporate pushback.

To help hiring managers avoid these risks, it’s beneficial to outline a structured approach to interviews, where candidates are evaluated based on predefined competencies. This way, managers can make more informed decisions, reduce bias, and increase the likelihood of selecting the right talent for their teams.

What is bias?

Bias is an unconscious tendency of skewed judgment, often leading to unfair assessments during interviews. For instance, an interviewer might undervalue a candidate’s communication skills due to their accent or misinterpret nervousness as incompetence. Bias can arise from factors such as personal perceptions, prior experiences, or giving extra weight to minor details.

Daniel Kahneman describes an example of the halo effect in his book, Thinking, Fast and Slow, with a simple experiment. Participants were asked to guess the Grade Point Average (GPA) of a graduating student. One group received no details about the student, while the other was told: “Julie is a graduating senior at a university. She read fluently at the age of 4. What is her GPA score?” With no information about Julie, an average GPA of 3.3 is a reasonable guess. However, prompted with the piece of information “she read fluently at the age of 4,” the participants guessed higher scores. Similarly, interviewers might overestimate a candidate’s abilities based on minor details like a CV formatted in LaTeX.

Recognizing bias isn’t enough to eliminate its effects – just as understanding an optical illusion doesn’t change how we perceive it. For example, squares A and B in the image below are the same color, yet most people perceive A as darker due to contextual cues.

Image source: Wikimedia Commons.

How to design a non-biased interview process

A well-designed interview process begins before the initial sit-down. First, define the candidate profile – a list of skills and behaviors that a new hire will need to succeed in the role. For technical skills, it might be:

• Knowledge of database performance characteristics.
• Ability to design complex APIs.
• Proficiency with a programming language used in the company.

Beyond technical skills, consider team culture and define expectations in that regard. Does the role require a candidate with strong collaboration skills? Should candidates be data-driven? Should they be able to learn new things quickly? Defining these expectations ensures consistency across evaluations and reduces reliance on subjective impressions.

Once you have a profile, craft interview questions that elicit evidence of these skills and behaviors. While you’re crafting these specific questions, consider what you’d need to hear from a candidate that proves their ability to perform in the role. 

For example, if you’re looking for an applicant’s ability to learn and adapt, you might ask them: 

• Can you share an instance where you had to learn new tools or technologies quickly?
• Can you tell me about a situation when you made a mistake?
• Can you give me an example of when a major change forced you to re-plan an ongoing project? 

Similarly, if you’re looking for collaboration and communication as core characteristics, think about asking: 

• Can you describe a situation where you helped a colleague with a task?
• Can you describe a challenging disagreement with a co-worker and how you resolved it?
• Give me an example of when you pitched an idea to your team.

If you’re looking for someone with business awareness, ask questions like: 

• Can you tell me how your current work affects the end customers of your product?
• Give me an example of when a change you made had a significant business impact. How did you measure it?

Importantly, you evaluate candidates on all skills and behaviors listed in the profile to avoid the Halo-effect.

By focusing on evidence-based questions, you create opportunities for candidates to demonstrate their fit while minimizing personal biases.

Running a bias-free interview

During the interview, your job is to collect as much information pertaining to the role’s desired skills and behavior. Your drafted interview questions should be deliberately broad; that way, they open the conversation and provide opportunities to follow up. It’s totally fine if the candidate’s initial response is vague; at that point, it’s down to you to dig into details to assess the candidate.

For instance, if you were to ask about a time the candidate’s work had been blocked waiting on someone else, their initial answer might be, “Our team was blocked by another team. We needed a change in the API of their service.”

It’s not really what we’re looking for. This answer describes the skeletal context, but it doesn’t provide much else about their actions. Your follow-up questions and the subsequent conversation might look like this:

• Hiring manager: Tell me more. What did you do to resolve this situation?
• Candidate: We organized a meeting and discussed all the details.
• Hiring manager: I understand there were other people involved. Can you please describe the steps you took to unblock your team?
• Candidate: I went to the other team’s code base and checked if they had the data that my team needed. I also briefed my manager on the results of my research and why we require this new field. Then, I asked my manager to lead the conversation with the other team about the timelines for the changes.

This answer might be sufficient. Ultimately, you want to understand whether the candidate’s approach would translate well in your team and if this is the level of seniority you expect from the candidate. The conversation might go smoother if the candidate uses a framework when answering, such as the STAR system. However, not being familiar with it doesn’t make the candidate a bad fit for the job.

If you’re finding that the candidate’s questions lack elaboration, lean on probing questions like these: 

• Describe the timeline of the situation; when did it start? How long did it take to resolve it?
• What was the outcome of the situation? Which of your actions contributed to this outcome?
• What did you learn from this experience? What would you do differently?

Making a decision after the interview

Hiring decisions should rely on documented evidence rather than gut feelings or peer opinions. To avoid groupthink, each interviewer should independently record their observations immediately after the interview, focusing on facts rather than interpretations. Observation is objective and focuses on “what” is happening without adding personal judgment. On the other hand, interpretation seeks to explain “why” or “how” something happens by adding evaluation. For example:

• Observation: The candidate provided only one example of helping peers – doing code reviews.
• Interpretation: The candidate lacks collaboration skills.

The nonviolent communication approach provides guidance on noting observations: speak what you see or hear, avoid generalization, and fact-check your statements.

It takes practice to incorporate this approach. As a hiring manager, encourage interviewers to distinguish between these two types of statements and back up interpretations with specific observations. Ask the interviewers what they observed, and remind them that we don’t judge personalities; we assess fit for the job based on behaviors crucial to the role.

Final thoughts

Personal preferences, which can be biased, shouldn’t be the main reason for hiring someone. The goal of the interview is to gather evidence of the candidate’s ability to perform the job. How you conduct the interview and the process you follow make the difference between “I kind of like them” and an informed decision. 

Remember that when it comes to the interview, the best candidates could be on their worst day, leading to a poor outcome. You never know what a candidate is going through, and with a well-designed process, you should be able to discern their competency for the role despite superficial trip-ups. Design your process well, be humble, and treat people with respect.

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