Unconscious bias and short-termism are costing our industry’s recruitment process
PHD's Stephanie Douglas-Neal argues that media agencies are being let down by unconscious bias and short-term thinking when it comes to hiring the next wave of talent.
A vast body of research demonstrates that all hiring processes are biased and unfair. Unconscious ageism, sexism, and racism all play a role in whom we hire.
Given the core of our business is understanding people and audiences, and how to better engage with them, a representative workforce is key. Therefore, we need to take practical steps as an industry to ensure we address barriers within our recruitment processes if we want to create the optimal talent pool within our organisations.
Only by removing gender, age, cultural and cognitive diversity discrimination, can we ensure quality output as an agency.
The expert view
A recent Harvard Business School report demonstrates that unconscious biases have a negative effect on our judgment, causing us to make sub-optimal decisions favouring one group of people over others. If these biases are left unchecked in the recruitment process, they can shape a company or even industry norms.
The local industry implications
Recently catching up with an external recruiter, I was shocked to discover that while half of all applicants for media roles are from South-East Asia, an overwhelming majority of hiring managers cite a “lack of sophistication in their marketplace” or a “need for local market experience” as reasons to not even interview these candidates.
This occurs even though all applicants had already been pre-screened by recruiters.
I understand that in a lean workforce, we all want someone to hit the ground running, but the Australian marketing landscape isn’t that complicated or sophisticated in truth. The implications of this practice, along with the others that arise from unconscious biases, include:
Unfilled roles
- Resultant turnover – the frequency with which I hear ‘I haven’t had a manager for six months’ as the reason for people looking for work is very concerning
- Cost of churn
- Lack of diversity
So, what are the steps you can take as a hiring manager to reduce these unconscious biases? Where do you start? If you’re an HR manager or recruiter, how do you influence this within your organisation?
Be open to your own unconscious bias
Everyone has some, be open to and conscious of yours, in order to make efforts to overcome them.
‘Blindfold’ resume review
Provide hiring managers with resumes stripped of demographic information, focus on only the candidate’s specific qualifications and skills, and facilitate a scenario where they can make judgment calls without their unconscious biases coming into play.
Test their skill level
Give a quick-work sample test that is relevant to the daily tasks the candidate will be expected to undertake. Those candidates who pass, get an interview.
Better structure and standardise interviews
Unstructured interviews – those without consistent and defined questions, whereby a candidate’s suitability is supposed to somehow reveal itself through the conversation – are unreliable at predicting candidate success.
A more standardised approach focuses the conversation on the factors that have a direct impact on job performance. This also allows for the development of a scorecard that ranks candidates on a pre-determined scale. Not only does this help to provide candidates with more specific feedback, but it helps your hiring managers in the process.
Train your hiring managers
The average age in our industry (for media agencies) is 28. We cannot expect junior managers to just jump into a room and wing it successfully.
Train your hiring managers on your recruitment process. Too often the HR function is a facilitator of the process, rather than leading and ensuring quality control and consistency. In an industry where good talent is hard to find, having good candidates with the desired experience is crucial for the business.
Likeability isn’t enough justification for candidate selection
We are a people-based industry and likeability (both internally, with colleagues, and externally, with clients and partners) is important. There is no reason that this can’t be built into your scorecard as one of the skills/criteria we rate candidates on. It cannot become a non-specific, catch-all however.
Hopefully, by keeping some of these simple recruitment steps in mind, hiring managers and businesses can better understand and take control of their own unconscious biases. This will ultimately allow them to source a richer, more consumer-representative workforce necessary to deliver clients solutions that better engage their consumers.
Stephanie Douglas-Neal is executive director and head of HR at PHD.
Stephanie, whilst your argument in clearly in good faith, it nonetheless conveniently chooses to ignore what the vast majority of the data on unconscious bias testing actually tells us (namely the test:retest ratio is poor, and makes results hard to validate across the individual), likewise, does not in fact tell us anything about how supposed unconscious bias has any real impact on real world action (assuming of course that you believe the results of any testing)
Similarly you clearly confuse unconscious bias and conscious bias. For example, your comment on applicants from SE Asia, the fact the hiring managers know they are from SE Asia is a CONSCIOUS decision. For a bias to be unconscious, how can it be measured? How can it be surfaced? How can it even be known?
You might point to ‘Harvard data’ (where one would assume you refer to the work of Mahzarin Banaji), however the work of Banaji (and her co-creator on the IAT, Anthony Greenwald) has been debunked time and time again (including a 72,000 result-strong meta analysis from 2016 clearly showing no causal link between unconscious bias on behavior.
I get it, i really do, no one wants to appear to be engaging in any form of discriminatory behavior. But with unconscious bias, we’re chasing shadows. We cannot ignore the wealth of data that exists that calls into question this topic. We have to have that conversion.
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Refreshing to hear.
The word not a cultural fit is also one that lends to bias. Lets stop using it and focus on a more accountable system.
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The workplace is not one giant, social experiment. Fit is important to company culture and the argument that staff structure should represent consumer structure is rubbish and unachievable: you don’t have to be ‘one’ to understand ‘one’, that’s what research, insight and perception combine to deliver.
The system works just fine; the smart companies will hire the people who are right for them and their clients, and will prosper. If it takes SE Asians to achieve that, it will happen, if it’s not happening already.
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I’m afraid that your attitude is creating a very negative image for your organisation. You have completely failed to acknowledge the rise of Asia and multiculturalism in Australia. Who you consider is “right for you and your clients” is rather your own preference and bias, not really an indication of true talent. In fact, talent don’t necessarily have to fit into your own imagination. Again, when you say “you don’t have be one to understand one”, it’s just your own perception, kind of like … guessing what people really think based on your gut feelings. If you think you can achieve long-term success by sticking to your “conventional” hiring practice, good luck to you! I myself don’t hope to be one of your employees/colleagues one day.
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Cite
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Hi Spell,
Thanks for flagging the error. I have amended.
Vivienne – Mumbrella
Spot on. Hire people improve a culture, not to fit it. If everything fits it goes stale, hire to enhance.
‘Train your hiring managers’ is also of such monumental importance. Panels who can over ride a hiring managers decision work. Seriously they can. Rogue hiring managers who create boys clubs, or girls clubs, or lack an understanding of how to enhance a culture will ruin your business. Set up a panel and coach hiring managers as to why they should or shouldn’t take a hire…
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