Did you know 35% of women are less likely to get a job interview if the hiring manager learns they have children at home?

Or that in comparison to white job applicants, applicants of color from all backgrounds had to submit about 50% more applications per callback, as per a study?

The above statistics paint a clear picture of how rampant bias in recruitment is today.

Factors like having children or belonging to a certain gender or race have little to no logical impact on job performance, yet they influence a lot of biased hiring decisions!

That’s why it’s imperative for organizations to incorporate strategies like blind recruitment into their hiring practices.

In this way, only what is relevant to the job in question is in the spotlight, that is, skills and qualifications.

What is blind hiring or recruitment?

When we talk about blind recruitment, we’re referring to a process where applicants are given a level playing field to reduce hiring bias. 

How? By depriving recruiters of information that could indicate factors like age, race, gender, and more.

When such personal candidate information makes its way to a recruiter, unconscious or conscious bias can creep in and unfairly determine a candidate’s future. 

This ultimately leads to overlooking crucial factors that actually matter, like, experience, skills, expertise, and qualifications.

However, with a blind recruitment process in place, these biases can be minimized and contained, ensuring a fairer evaluation of candidates.

💡 Fun Fact In a study, the science faculty of research-intensive universities were given identical applications to assess for a lab manager position. Only the names on the applications differed – one male, one female. And guess what? The male-named candidates were rated as more competent and deserving of higher salaries than their female counterparts! This study makes a strong case for blind hiring!!

Advantages of implementing a blind hiring process

It’s a no-brainer that organizations stand to gain significantly by actively combating recruiting bias, which can negatively affect their organization’s functioning.

By adopting a blind hiring process, organizations can benefit in the following ways:

1. Reduced unconscious hiring bias

A blind recruitment process ensures that recruiters have no access to personal information, such as the candidate’s graduation dates, marital status, names, photos, etc.

When this information cannot feed their preconceived notions, unconscious bias is eliminated, ensuring candidates are judged solely on merit and qualifications.

2. Improved diversity in the workplace

Implementing a blind hiring process ensures a more diverse workforce, where people from diverse backgrounds, with the right skills, experience, and qualifications, are hired. 

This not only improves the organization’s diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), but also fosters innovation and creativity, ensuring overall organizational success.

3. Better quality of hires

When the scope for various types of hiring biases is decreased, the focus shifts back to the candidate’s experience, skills, qualifications, work ethics, and how well they fit the role. 

Such hires will see a better alignment between them and the job requirements, thereby improving the overall quality of hires and driving company success.

4. Enhanced employer brand

As per a Glassdoor study, more than 3 in 4 employees and job seekers report that a diverse workforce is an important factor they consider when evaluating  job offers.

Additionally, a hiring process that promotes fair candidate evaluations boosts the employer brand, making it easier to attract top talent!

Possible disadvantages of a blind recruitment

Like everything, blind recruitment too has its flipside, which hiring teams must carefully consider before diving headfirst. 

While the intent behind blind hiring, i.e., fighting hiring bias and ensuring fair hiring, is great, the reality is slightly more nuanced.

Therefore, hiring teams must consider the following possible disadvantages:

1. Limited impact beyond initial candidate screening stages

While great care is taken to prevent bias during the early stages of the recruitment lifecycle, its impact is unfortunately quite limited. 

Bias can still very much creep in during later candidate screening stages, such as face-to-face interviews, where recruiters and candidates interact directly.

At this stage, hiding indicators of age, ethnicity, or other personal traits is quite difficult, and can directly influence the hiring team’s decisions. 

This is why implementing structured interviews can go a long way in limiting the extent to which hiring bias can impact the later candidate screening stages.

2. Challenges for DEI hiring targets

Does your organization have specific goals to hire individuals from certain genders, ethnicities, or age groups to meet certain DEI reservation/ quota policies?

If yes, in such cases, blind hiring may end up becoming a counterproductive practice! 

By removing identifiers, it becomes a lot harder to track or ensure that such diversity targets are being met.

3. Time-consuming process

Manually obscuring specific information from each candidate’s profile can further significantly lengthen an already extremely lengthy hiring process!

Extended hiring timelines never do any good, in fact, they often contribute to a negative candidate experience leading to candidate drop-offs.

4. Reduced focus on individual and cultural fit

Assessing whether a candidate’s values and personality are congruent with the organization’s culture is imperative.

Cultural fit is often determined by assessing personal interests, hobbies, and values, i.e., traits and attributes that go well beyond skills and qualifications. 

But with blind hiring processes in place, access to such information is limited, making it difficult to evaluate a candidate’s compatibility with the company’s culture. 

This can ultimately lead to gross mismatches, resulting in low employee satisfaction and higher attrition rates.

How does blind hiring work?

To break it down for you in detail – 

Blind recruitment works by concealing certain personal details irrelevant to the job, such as names, dates of graduation, marital status, hobbies, etc. 

This concealment of personal information can be done either manually or using blind recruitment tools.

Hiring teams then assess these anonymized profiles solely based on their work, experience, and skills, giving candidates a fair chance to let their qualifications and expertise speak for them.

The following are some effective ways to implement a blind hiring process:

1. Implement blind resume screening

Blind resume screening ensures that candidate details indicating demographics are blacked out or omitted before being shared with the hiring team.

Now recruiters have no knowledge of the personal details of the candidates whose profiles they’re reviewing. 

This therefore allows them to focus entirely on whether the candidates meet the job requirements. 

This creates a genuine opportunity for candidates to showcase their skills.

Blind resume screening prevents ageism, racism, sexism, and other biased hiring decisions.

Additionally, it also widens the candidate pool, as a more diverse set of candidates to be considered.

2. Formulate & implement diversity hiring strategies

If the goal is to reduce or eliminate bias from the hiring process, hiring teams must formulate practical strategies to promote diversity in hiring beyond the pre-screening stages.

Some effective diversity hiring strategies include:

• Creating inclusive job descriptions,
• Tracking diversity metrics,
• And implementing diversity-focused recruiting programs, among others.

These efforts ensure that the fairness introduced in the initial stages of blind hiring is sustained and carried forward through the rest of the recruitment process.

3. Conduct structured interviews

Structured interviews are a super effective way to reduce hiring bias in the later stages of recruitment. 

These interviews involve asking all candidates the same set of pre-determined questions in the same sequence and evaluating their responses against the same criteria.

This thereby ensures that all candidates are assessed fairly, and that no particular candidate gets easier or harder questions. 

Plus, it guarantees a standardized approach to candidate interviews that levels the playing field.

By keeping everything fair, square, and consistent, structured interviews maintain the essence of blind recruitment.

4. Leverage blind recruiting software or applicant tracking software 

Imagine manually anonymizing resumes for every single applicant??
That is a recipe for a time-consuming, painstaking, and error-prone process. 

This is exactly where blind recruiting tools like Applied, MeVitae, and ZappyVue (helps with conducting fair and structured interviews) come into the picture.

These tools help reduce recruiter workload, leaving hiring teams with significantly more time to focus on other important tasks.

Additionally, they help ensure consistency and accuracy in implementing blind hiring. 

It goes without saying, with the right tools in place, blind recruitment becomes both easier to execute and effective.

5. Ensure regular training 

It should be a routine and mandatory practice to conduct regular training sessions to promote the importance of diversity in the workplace. 

These sessions help hiring teams recognize and prevent unconscious hiring bias from influencing their decisions and give all employees diversity training.

Regular training reminds recruiters to remain mindful and deliberate in their efforts to avoid bias, supporting the benefits of blind hiring practices.

Training should focus on the impact of bias on hiring decisions and how to maintain fairness throughout the hiring process.

6. Embrace data-driven hiring

Data-driven hiring is critical for any kind of effort directed toward improving overall organizational recruitment practices. 

In this context, it provides crystal-clear insights into specific hiring metrics that reflect the effectiveness of blind hiring efforts. 

These include diversity metrics such as candidate demographics, quality of hire, application-to-interview ratio, hiring funnel drop-off rates, etc.

These insights help identify gaps in your blind recruitment strategies and determine ways to further refine and improve these. 

As we wrap up…

Hiring biases are a constant threat to fair and just recruitment practices.

These biases have the potential to negatively impact the overall quality of hires and the success of an organization.

Therefore, implementing practices such as blind recruitment is critical for creating a fair and unbiased hiring process, while identifying the right candidates for the role! 

These practices shift the focus to what truly matters, i.e., skills and experience, all while promoting inclusivity and workplace diversity.