4 ms·

I've long suspected this was the only remotely feasible way to remove bias from recruiting (and possibly interviewing itself) -- I'm interested to see how this

I've long suspected this was the only remotely feasible way to remove bias from recruiting (and possibly interviewing itself) -- I'm interested to see how this will go. Politics about bias and diversity aside, if your goal was to objectively disable people from being biased, the simplest solution always seemed to be to remove their ability to apply any of their biases.

scarmig 8y ago
I wonder how far it goes. In the USA, there are universities that have very distinctive ethnic compositions: UC Irvine is very different from Howard is very different from BYU. Do they anonymize the university name as well? Perhaps translating it to "large research university" and "liberal arts college." Though probably you can get some signals from there as well.
- paulie_a 8y ago
  Personally I've never understood the importance put on degrees in the tech field. Sure it is important for your first job, but after 2 years, who cares. When reviewing resumes, if the person has been in the industry for a bit, the degree is irrelevant. And the fancy expensive school, big whoop. I rarely even read that section. I only care about their recent accomplishments and hopefully they have a good number of past ones.
  - turtlecloud 8y ago
    Because of compounding effects of good habits staring in high school that consequently lead to going to a good school.
    - paulie_a 8y ago
      They could have gone to a community college or Stanford, or been a college drop out. It's not going to sway me. What have you accomplished and will you become a productive and good person to work with is all that matters.
    - L_Rahman 8y ago
      The idea that high school students have good habits that lead them to good colleges that lead to good work behavior is a laughable one. I say this as someone who won the "game" on every count with this. Near-perfect SAT score, perfect high school performance, 100% acceptance rate into the Ivies (Harvard, Columbia, Penn, Cornell). These say nothing about me other than my parenting, background and ability to win games that other people made up. Any intelligence or ability or skill or discipline that I have is in spite of those things, not because of them.
      - _dps 8y ago
        > ability to win games that other people made up A common game bosses make up: "impress me with growth in this KPI by next quarter" Rather than proving it is laughable, you are instead giving the exact reason why (under a certain value system) it makes lots of sense to select for this ability.
        L_Rahman 8y ago
        This is a fair argument and I will concede that if we're thinking about success as the getting high quality compliance for managerial games (which really does make up most entry level work in finance, consulting and tech) then hiring from a top school is highly predictive. Going more meta, starting a median VC-backed company in the Valley is largely playing the same kind of game as in elite private schools and colleges - observing a social scene, identifying powerful players and the ladder to reach them, meticulously performing the necessary social roles in order to achieve funding, cargo cult management styles from the group.
longerthoughts 8y ago
>the simplest solution always seemed to be to remove their ability to apply any of their biases Bias will exist regardless of which information you present, the most you can hope for is shifting and limiting the types of bias that come into play to eliminate useless or harmful bias. Even if you grant anonymity to the applicant, recruiters can still be biased against or in favor of the school somebody went to, what they studied, the organizations they were involved in, etc.
- Z1515M8147 8y ago
  For thia reason I hire based on anonymized data that also discards all place name locations and institutions. The result is quite effective, as you are presented with an applications that show only the bare bones of someone's experiences without context that might bias you.
  - thatcat 8y ago
    Do you continue to ignore this information in the interview phase?
- proxygeek 8y ago
  Recently I've been thinking about inherent biased towards applicants based on their prior work / educational history, in terms of organizations they have been to. I get that it acts as a moderate signal of how tenacious and inherently able that applicant might have been in the past if she went to XYZ school or ABC company. But there will be so many false negatives! A lot of folks who probably would be otherwise capable of the job at hand would be dismissed for not having the right pedigree. Also, past performance is not always the best Intuit if future success. And then of course is the issue of how do you even define success, especially in case if university graduates. How does a Yale or Harvard define our measure success for its students... Probably in terms of potential impact they have on the world or how good their names may look on the rolls 10 years down the line. A lot of the issues, especially in terms of job applicators but also applicable in admissions process, ultimately comes down to information and numeric asymmetry between the organisation and the applicant. If there was a way to somehow capture the readings - however brief - for rejection or selection of applicants or a documented scoring methodology, that itself would bring a lot of change. I would love to know if some resources to further explore the alternative models of applicant assessment which does not place as much importance on the past organisations / schools they have been to. Any suggestions would be much appreciated
laurentl 8y ago
It was tried in France without great success. The law was passed in 2006 but the application decree (which states how/when the law comes into effect) was never published. Consequently, this law was never upheld. Why? Field trials between 2006 and 2009 showed it didn't have a measurable effect and in some cases ended up discriminating more. The experiments' results are controversial (small sample size) but despite pushes in 2011 and 2014 the law seems effectively dead in the water. Anecdotally, I've been on the recruiting end of "anonimized" CVs pushed by outsourcing companies. I was never fully clear on whether this was a legal requirements for them, or if it was a gesture to show inclusiveness and social responsibility on their part (take this with a pinch of salt, most outsourcing companies in France are little better than horse-dealers and will push any warm body your way if they think they can turn a profit). At any rate, most of these were hilariously badly done: using initials for the last name but leaving the first name in full, leaving telling initials (1), or other subtle or less subtle ways to hint at the contractor's origin and gender. (1) e.g. a first name initialed J.L., J.M. or some other variation points to a Jean-something (Jean-Louis, Jean-Michel, etc.) composite first name, which is a clear indication of a "native" Frenchman (and a hint as to the person's age as well)
- hardwaresofton 8y ago
  I really wish there was more published about why it did/didn't work -- I saw the other posts about similar studies that all seemed to fail, but the details seem really scant. It's still unclear whether the problem was with the implementation (the experiment) or the method. If there's spooky action/unintuitive reality at play here it's the job of a good scientific study to pull it out and lay it bare.
- zifnab06 8y ago
  IME, outsourcing companies do this so you have to go through them to talk to the individual attached to the resume, not for any moral purpose. I've been on the receiving end of that one - a recruiting firm was sending out a (poorly) anonymized copy of my resume without my knowledge.

scarmig 8y ago

I wonder how far it goes. In the USA, there are universities that have very distinctive ethnic compositions: UC Irvine is very different from Howard is very different from BYU. Do they anonymize the university name as well? Perhaps translating it to "large research university" and "liberal arts college." Though probably you can get some signals from there as well.

paulie_a 8y ago
Personally I've never understood the importance put on degrees in the tech field. Sure it is important for your first job, but after 2 years, who cares. When reviewing resumes, if the person has been in the industry for a bit, the degree is irrelevant. And the fancy expensive school, big whoop. I rarely even read that section. I only care about their recent accomplishments and hopefully they have a good number of past ones.
- turtlecloud 8y ago
  Because of compounding effects of good habits staring in high school that consequently lead to going to a good school.
  - paulie_a 8y ago
    They could have gone to a community college or Stanford, or been a college drop out. It's not going to sway me. What have you accomplished and will you become a productive and good person to work with is all that matters.
  - L_Rahman 8y ago
    The idea that high school students have good habits that lead them to good colleges that lead to good work behavior is a laughable one. I say this as someone who won the "game" on every count with this. Near-perfect SAT score, perfect high school performance, 100% acceptance rate into the Ivies (Harvard, Columbia, Penn, Cornell). These say nothing about me other than my parenting, background and ability to win games that other people made up. Any intelligence or ability or skill or discipline that I have is in spite of those things, not because of them.
    - _dps 8y ago
      > ability to win games that other people made up A common game bosses make up: "impress me with growth in this KPI by next quarter" Rather than proving it is laughable, you are instead giving the exact reason why (under a certain value system) it makes lots of sense to select for this ability.
      - L_Rahman 8y ago
        This is a fair argument and I will concede that if we're thinking about success as the getting high quality compliance for managerial games (which really does make up most entry level work in finance, consulting and tech) then hiring from a top school is highly predictive. Going more meta, starting a median VC-backed company in the Valley is largely playing the same kind of game as in elite private schools and colleges - observing a social scene, identifying powerful players and the ladder to reach them, meticulously performing the necessary social roles in order to achieve funding, cargo cult management styles from the group.

longerthoughts 8y ago

>the simplest solution always seemed to be to remove their ability to apply any of their biases Bias will exist regardless of which information you present, the most you can hope for is shifting and limiting the types of bias that come into play to eliminate useless or harmful bias. Even if you grant anonymity to the applicant, recruiters can still be biased against or in favor of the school somebody went to, what they studied, the organizations they were involved in, etc.

Z1515M8147 8y ago
For thia reason I hire based on anonymized data that also discards all place name locations and institutions. The result is quite effective, as you are presented with an applications that show only the bare bones of someone's experiences without context that might bias you.
- thatcat 8y ago
  Do you continue to ignore this information in the interview phase?
proxygeek 8y ago
Recently I've been thinking about inherent biased towards applicants based on their prior work / educational history, in terms of organizations they have been to. I get that it acts as a moderate signal of how tenacious and inherently able that applicant might have been in the past if she went to XYZ school or ABC company. But there will be so many false negatives! A lot of folks who probably would be otherwise capable of the job at hand would be dismissed for not having the right pedigree. Also, past performance is not always the best Intuit if future success. And then of course is the issue of how do you even define success, especially in case if university graduates. How does a Yale or Harvard define our measure success for its students... Probably in terms of potential impact they have on the world or how good their names may look on the rolls 10 years down the line. A lot of the issues, especially in terms of job applicators but also applicable in admissions process, ultimately comes down to information and numeric asymmetry between the organisation and the applicant. If there was a way to somehow capture the readings - however brief - for rejection or selection of applicants or a documented scoring methodology, that itself would bring a lot of change. I would love to know if some resources to further explore the alternative models of applicant assessment which does not place as much importance on the past organisations / schools they have been to. Any suggestions would be much appreciated

laurentl 8y ago

It was tried in France without great success. The law was passed in 2006 but the application decree (which states how/when the law comes into effect) was never published. Consequently, this law was never upheld. Why? Field trials between 2006 and 2009 showed it didn't have a measurable effect and in some cases ended up discriminating more. The experiments' results are controversial (small sample size) but despite pushes in 2011 and 2014 the law seems effectively dead in the water. Anecdotally, I've been on the recruiting end of "anonimized" CVs pushed by outsourcing companies. I was never fully clear on whether this was a legal requirements for them, or if it was a gesture to show inclusiveness and social responsibility on their part (take this with a pinch of salt, most outsourcing companies in France are little better than horse-dealers and will push any warm body your way if they think they can turn a profit). At any rate, most of these were hilariously badly done: using initials for the last name but leaving the first name in full, leaving telling initials (1), or other subtle or less subtle ways to hint at the contractor's origin and gender. (1) e.g. a first name initialed J.L., J.M. or some other variation points to a Jean-something (Jean-Louis, Jean-Michel, etc.) composite first name, which is a clear indication of a "native" Frenchman (and a hint as to the person's age as well)

hardwaresofton 8y ago
I really wish there was more published about why it did/didn't work -- I saw the other posts about similar studies that all seemed to fail, but the details seem really scant. It's still unclear whether the problem was with the implementation (the experiment) or the method. If there's spooky action/unintuitive reality at play here it's the job of a good scientific study to pull it out and lay it bare.
zifnab06 8y ago
IME, outsourcing companies do this so you have to go through them to talk to the individual attached to the resume, not for any moral purpose. I've been on the receiving end of that one - a recruiting firm was sending out a (poorly) anonymized copy of my resume without my knowledge.