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>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, th

>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
- tomrod 8y ago
  Score applicants blindly. Adhere hiring decisions to defined generational imbalance correction mechanisms (in the US, "affirmative action"/EEOC/similar state laws).
  - manigandham 8y ago
    No thanks. I am my own person. I don't need or want any "correction" mechanisms because of people I don't know and have nothing to do with. That would be ridiculous.
    - tomrod 8y ago
      You bring up a certainly superficially valid point. You may be your own person, but, from a normative sense, your personage benefits from a long history of both benefits and detriments defined and in place long before you were born, and much bigger than yourself. The goal of these bindings are to remove inherent bias. Some of that is bred into the intercept defined by unchangeable characteristics. Others by the vector field of rewards return for effort, often defined by thar initial condition. The goal with most of these (apparently feared? do I have your emotion right?) corrections is to offset at least the most damning of these.
      - manigandham 8y ago
        Fear? No. It's disgust at the brazen rationalization of outright discrimination based on some holier-than-thou moral attitude by saying group X is better or worse than group Y because of history that has nothing to do with the individual. Why must people be considered as a member of a group instead of their personal character and actions that they're actually accountable for? Perhaps what's most insidious about ascribing group victimhood is that you must also accept the converse, which is group responsibility. Are you suddenly going to be held responsible for any wrongs that your group has ever committed? Are you truly certain that's what you want? You are ignoring that life is not fair, and never will be. We cannot control the bodies and circumstances we are born into. But every individual has the ability to make the most of their opportunity and achieve their goals, and quite a few in history have proven that they are able to accomplish far more by effort and will than any natural advantage otherwise. That is the best we can do, and unless you create some matrix world where we are all exactly equivalent clones of the same capacity, that is all that is possible.
hardwaresofton 8y ago
I think that's more of a problem of degree -- it's hard to pin down where harmful bias starts, but if you can do that, then this makes the anonymization solution even more applicable. The question is whether the school is offering a harmful bias -- people get screened by school, GPA, etc all the time but at the point that society agrees these are harmful then you can just anonymize them out. It gets murkier on the moral/ethical side but I think that's the nature of the problem, not a problem with the solution.

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

tomrod 8y ago
Score applicants blindly. Adhere hiring decisions to defined generational imbalance correction mechanisms (in the US, "affirmative action"/EEOC/similar state laws).
- manigandham 8y ago
  No thanks. I am my own person. I don't need or want any "correction" mechanisms because of people I don't know and have nothing to do with. That would be ridiculous.
  - tomrod 8y ago
    You bring up a certainly superficially valid point. You may be your own person, but, from a normative sense, your personage benefits from a long history of both benefits and detriments defined and in place long before you were born, and much bigger than yourself. The goal of these bindings are to remove inherent bias. Some of that is bred into the intercept defined by unchangeable characteristics. Others by the vector field of rewards return for effort, often defined by thar initial condition. The goal with most of these (apparently feared? do I have your emotion right?) corrections is to offset at least the most damning of these.
    - manigandham 8y ago
      Fear? No. It's disgust at the brazen rationalization of outright discrimination based on some holier-than-thou moral attitude by saying group X is better or worse than group Y because of history that has nothing to do with the individual. Why must people be considered as a member of a group instead of their personal character and actions that they're actually accountable for? Perhaps what's most insidious about ascribing group victimhood is that you must also accept the converse, which is group responsibility. Are you suddenly going to be held responsible for any wrongs that your group has ever committed? Are you truly certain that's what you want? You are ignoring that life is not fair, and never will be. We cannot control the bodies and circumstances we are born into. But every individual has the ability to make the most of their opportunity and achieve their goals, and quite a few in history have proven that they are able to accomplish far more by effort and will than any natural advantage otherwise. That is the best we can do, and unless you create some matrix world where we are all exactly equivalent clones of the same capacity, that is all that is possible.

hardwaresofton 8y ago

I think that's more of a problem of degree -- it's hard to pin down where harmful bias starts, but if you can do that, then this makes the anonymization solution even more applicable. The question is whether the school is offering a harmful bias -- people get screened by school, GPA, etc all the time but at the point that society agrees these are harmful then you can just anonymize them out. It gets murkier on the moral/ethical side but I think that's the nature of the problem, not a problem with the solution.