3 ms·
This is a good point. There are often differences in how people of different genders (and nationalities, interest groups, classes, educational levels, etc) expr
by CM30 10y ago
This is a good point. There are often differences in how people of different genders (and nationalities, interest groups, classes, educational levels, etc) express themselves regardless of the format, and modulating their voice doesn't really hide that.
For example, I've run quite a few forums before, and I'm pretty confident I (and quite a lot of other forum admins/moderators) could reliably judge someone's gender through their manner of writing and the (non gender related) info in their profiles.
So if you wanted to really remove possible gender 'bias' from the occasion, you'd have to go much, much further. You'd have to give people a way to communicate which reduces their responses to preset answers, that's entirely conducted through text on a screen and make sure all personal information is filtered out as well.
There's always going to be a trade off here. On the one hand, I'm sure the system used in the Luigi's Mansion Dark Moon Scarescraper would completely eliminate any potential gender bias, but that's only because it limits chat to 'over here', 'good job', 'thank you very much', 'help' and 'hey'. On the other hand, an interview in person would give you a lot of information about how well they could do the job (and let you test it), but then you've got psychological biases to deal with.
It's a tough one really.
- sliverstorm 10y agoOf course completely dehumanizing the interviewer & interviewee expressly prevents any degree of culture fit selection, which could be bad for all parties.
- CM30 10y agoAnd that's a good point too. As much as culture fit has a really bad reputation in some places (because people seem to associate the term with 'only hires rich white kids with Harvard degrees'),you need a certain amount of it for a business to really stay cohesive and for the employees to want to work together. I've seen companies where the hiring staff haven't bothered to think whether anyone would actually work well in that specific company and its environment, and the general result has been a heavily divided workforce with very limited communication.
- killface 10y agoNot just culture fit. I hire for a high-end (boutique) software consulting firm. We specialize in scale problems and engineering practice at a level few other firms can claim. Communication is an absolute, 100% must for senior roles. If you can't competently and thoroughly talk about a technical issue, to non-technical people, and do it with a smile and while making eye contact, we're not going to hire you. So in a sense, we're filtering out neuro-atypical people for senior roles. But they fit well in engineering roles. Dehumanizing the interview process will literally make it impossible for us to gauge this skill.
- lawnchair_larry 10y agoPreventing culture fit is actually a feature, not a bug. Culture fit is a synonym for unconscious bias, and most people don't realize it.