Don’t you love “The Voice“? Blake and Adam’s banter over why a contestant should pick one over the other. The jokes, the art and the contestant’s ultimate joy over being selected.
Or just looking at Adam. Or Blake.
While “The Dating Game” likely pioneered the concept of blind auditions, “The Voice” has absolutely highlighted the relevance in modern society. As studies abound about unconscious bias – as well as the known biases we all have – should we not be taking notes from a singing competition to enhance our candidate pools?
Several studies have shown that racially diverse organizations outperform industry norms by 35 percent. Have gender diversity? That will give your company a 15 percent boost. And teams with diverse backgrounds generate more innovative ideas.
Yet there continues to be evidence of hiring bias.
The American Sociological Review published a law firm hiring bias study in 2016. It showed a male’s resume that signaled pedigree – such as classical music or sailing as hobbies – “received nearly four times as many callbacks as ones that didn’t”. In another 2016 study published in the Journal of Social Issues, two qualified candidates were described to participants. One candidate had strengths that signaled maturity, the other youth. 70 percent chose to hire the younger candidate.
While some organizations have made great strides with their internal diversity initiatives, many have not. But doesn’t it really all start with how you attract and select talent?
In the recent issue of Inc. magazine, 4 blind recruitment tools were highlighted. Here’s the rundown for you to check out:
- BLENDOOR – “Like a mash-up of LinkedIn and Tinder, Blendoor scrubs profiles of identifying details (photos, names, graduation years) and presents them to recruiters. More than 400 companies – including Facebook, Twitter, and Google – have signed on”.
- INTERVIEWING.IO – “Engineers flock here to flaunt their skills with live technical interviews. Roughly 60 percent of candidates advance to onsite interviews with clients that include Uber, Twitch, and Asana”.
- GAPJUMPERS – “Skewing to more technical positions, the recruiting platform creates a timed skills challenge tailored to each position, and then puts anonymous candidates through the paces. Those with the best scores advance to interviews”.
- TEXTIO – “This Seattle-based startup, which counts Cisco and Microsoft as clients, has a laser focus on using data to help companies write job descriptions that avoid inadvertently turning off certain applicants”.
In the fight for key talent, technical skills and promoting a desire to attract a more diverse pool of candidates, why wouldn’t an organization want to turn their chairs in order to find talent they might never have considered?
Then the talent can pick the best place to nurture their careers (Team Blake all the way)!
hrQ is a national HR search, Interim HR Staffing, and Human Capital Consulting firm. Your people equation. Simplified.
Kathy Rapp is the President of hrQ where she helps companies find groovy HR Talent for permanent or interim roles and has amassed a rockstar human capital consulting team doing work across the country. Prior to joining hrQ Kathy booked more than 15 years of diverse HR leadership experience working in F500s and start-up organizations. A connoisseur of the intersection between pop culture and business, Kathy believes many talent insights can be gleamed from the succession planning lessons experienced by Van Halen and AC/DC.
The post Turn Your Chairs With These 4 Blind Recruitment Tools appeared first on Fistful of Talent.
