5 ms·

I've about to hire and I've been thinking trying to build a process that blinds to as much as possible: gender, race, age, university, previous employers. What

I've about to hire and I've been thinking trying to build a process that blinds to as much as possible: gender, race, age, university, previous employers. What else? If you're doing this, please get in touch, I'd like to talk about how you go about it.

eplanit 11y ago
Being blind to gender, age, and race make perfect sense -- but not University or Employer history. I would want to know if my applicant succeeded at a challenging vs. mediocre school, and if their previous employer was at all relevant in the industry. People can often present themselves well, but their history might reflect inconsistencies.
jlg23 11y ago
Picture, name, address and family situation. The term for that process is "anonymized application" in German speaking countries. In Switzerland they made good experiences with that (German article: http://www.3sat.de/page/?source=/nano/gesellschaft/149883/index.html http://www.3sat.de/page/?source=/nano/gesellschaft/149883/in...). In my opinion, the best way to ensure that you are "blinded" properly: Find someone from a minority who is conscious of the obstacles people from minorities face. Tell that person "I'm a racist, misogynist, idiot full of prejudices. Make sure I can only hire based on qualification." Have that person screen all applications and black out all revealing information. This could be a perfect short-term gig for a 2nd year student in a relevant field (relevant to the social aspects of the hiring process, not the positions you hire for). PS: Explicitly listing the things you do not want in an application in the job post will probably help out weed people who cannot even follow simple instructions ;)
- sokoloff 11y ago
  Why wouldn't such a person that you hired ONLY pass along resumes of minorities (or edit and sabotage the resumes of the majority candidates)? After all, you've hand-picked them to be someone conscious of the struggles AND told them that you're racist, misogynistic, prejudiced, and an idiot...
  - jlg23 11y ago
    Because this is not some hypothetical exercise in bulletproofing the application process but some real world question where we can assume that the person I responded to is able to hire a person that understands what it is all about.
  - retbull 11y ago
    Get an envelope. Put the number of resumes in it on the front. Sign it. Get back that number of resumes. Seriously this isn't a hard problem to solve. This should be standard practice for all businesses though I don't think that it will happen any time soon. All application processes should be as double blind as possible. So 2 people collect the resumes they number then and send it off to the redactor. The redactor send the envelope to HR/hiring manager. Then from that people should be selected. When interviewed people should be administered a test to look for competence if necessary and if not only then the interview should be conducted in such a way that the persons background, race, and gender should be obscured. I understand that much of the value of a person on a team is how well they get along with the people who they work with so this needs to be addressed. Either with some kind of trail period where their coworkers can file complaints but they have to be weighed against their productivity as judged by a neutral party so people can't just vote minorities and/or genders off the island per say. This is infeasible to implement but would be fair.

eplanit 11y ago

Being blind to gender, age, and race make perfect sense -- but not University or Employer history. I would want to know if my applicant succeeded at a challenging vs. mediocre school, and if their previous employer was at all relevant in the industry. People can often present themselves well, but their history might reflect inconsistencies.

jlg23 11y ago

Picture, name, address and family situation. The term for that process is "anonymized application" in German speaking countries. In Switzerland they made good experiences with that (German article: http://www.3sat.de/page/?source=/nano/gesellschaft/149883/index.html http://www.3sat.de/page/?source=/nano/gesellschaft/149883/in...). In my opinion, the best way to ensure that you are "blinded" properly: Find someone from a minority who is conscious of the obstacles people from minorities face. Tell that person "I'm a racist, misogynist, idiot full of prejudices. Make sure I can only hire based on qualification." Have that person screen all applications and black out all revealing information. This could be a perfect short-term gig for a 2nd year student in a relevant field (relevant to the social aspects of the hiring process, not the positions you hire for). PS: Explicitly listing the things you do not want in an application in the job post will probably help out weed people who cannot even follow simple instructions ;)

sokoloff 11y ago
Why wouldn't such a person that you hired ONLY pass along resumes of minorities (or edit and sabotage the resumes of the majority candidates)? After all, you've hand-picked them to be someone conscious of the struggles AND told them that you're racist, misogynistic, prejudiced, and an idiot...
- jlg23 11y ago
  Because this is not some hypothetical exercise in bulletproofing the application process but some real world question where we can assume that the person I responded to is able to hire a person that understands what it is all about.
- retbull 11y ago
  Get an envelope. Put the number of resumes in it on the front. Sign it. Get back that number of resumes. Seriously this isn't a hard problem to solve. This should be standard practice for all businesses though I don't think that it will happen any time soon. All application processes should be as double blind as possible. So 2 people collect the resumes they number then and send it off to the redactor. The redactor send the envelope to HR/hiring manager. Then from that people should be selected. When interviewed people should be administered a test to look for competence if necessary and if not only then the interview should be conducted in such a way that the persons background, race, and gender should be obscured. I understand that much of the value of a person on a team is how well they get along with the people who they work with so this needs to be addressed. Either with some kind of trail period where their coworkers can file complaints but they have to be weighed against their productivity as judged by a neutral party so people can't just vote minorities and/or genders off the island per say. This is infeasible to implement but would be fair.