Bias in Interviews and How to Avoid It
By Harry Garman
WHAT IS INTERVIEW BIAS?
In this series of articles, we aim to look at best practice for interviewing and how you, the interviewer, can best determine how a candidate is likely to perform once in the role. Throughout these articles we will analyse a number of factors that affect the quality and validity of interviews, covering areas such as effective interview formats, scoring matrixes and how to ask quality questions. In this piece we are going to look at interview bias, breaking down different types of bias that occur on the interviewer’s part and how we can avoid them.
WHY DOES BIAS OCCUR?
One of the greatest issues surrounding interview validity stems from interviewer bias - when the interviewer’s opinion or expectation effects their objectivity. Most interviewers would argue that they are completely fair and impartial and have no pre-set opinions upon entering an interview scenario. Alarmingly this often isn’t the case because of the type of bias that affects the interview, unconscious bias. This type of bias happens outside of your own awareness and affects your objectivity without you even knowing it. Research into the types of bias that occur during interviews however has provided us with the tools we need to identify where this bias is occurring and strategies to overcome this.
TYPES OF INTERVIEW BIAS
Confirmatory Bias – Can you make a judgement on someone in the first 30 seconds of meeting them? Well don’t, it is nothing to be proud of. Often interviewers wear this statement as a badge of honour, the implications of it have a negative effect on the rest of the interview. Confirmatory bias occurs when someone asks questions and focuses the interview to confirm their first impression of the candidate. Research in the past has found candidates identified as “more attractive” by the interviewers are seen as having more relevant characteristics to the role. This bias does nothing but confirm an initial impression and will not predict their future job performance. Making your mind up in 30 seconds is nothing to be proud of. Instead enter every interview with an open mind, keep your questioning impartial and wait till they are settled into the interview before you really begin to form an opinion.
Confirmatory Bias
Can you make a judgement on someone in the first 30 seconds of meeting them? Well don’t, it is nothing to be proud of. Often interviewers wear this statement as a badge of honour, the implications of it have a negative effect on the rest of the interview. Confirmatory bias occurs when someone asks questions and focuses the interview to confirm their first impression of the candidate. Research in the past has found candidates identified as “more attractive” by the interviewers are seen as having more relevant characteristics to the role. This bias does nothing but confirm an initial impression and will not predict their future job performance. Making your mind up in 30 seconds is nothing to be proud of. Instead enter every interview with an open mind, keep your questioning impartial and wait till they are settled into the interview before you really begin to form an opinion.
Stereotypes
A stereotype is a generalised belief about a particular group of people founded on no evidence. If you interview someone and you stereotype the interviewee this negatively affects your decision-making process about the interview. As we take even more important steps toward diversity this bias becomes ever more important as we see previously unrepresented groups gaining positions thought to be out of their reach. Stereotypes are founded on opinion, not fact and therefore have no use in predicting future performance of candidates. To identify and eliminate your stereotype views you need to be aware of both your implicit and explicit stereotypes. Enter every interview without the groups and categories your ideal candidate should belong to.
Projection Error
This is a common interview bias that is often hard to identify, but if you have ever said after an interview “they remind me of myself” or “I see a lot of myself in them” then it is highly likely you are guilty of this. Projection error occurs when the interviewer expects their own skills and knowledge in the candidate, therefore the candidate that most resembles them is most likely to be successful. This is often something senior managers and Directors are guilty of; they might be hiring for a role they have never worked in but if the candidate resembles them, they are ideal. It is important to consider whether just because a candidate resembles yourself in skills, background and knowledge will that make them successful in the role?
Horns and Halo Effect
The horns and halo effect occurs when one single characteristic creates an overly weighted negative or positive impression of the candidate. An example of this would be reading that a candidate attended Oxbridge, you may view this as highly positive and a deciding justification for hiring that candidate, this single characteristic however does not determine their ability to perform the role. The opposite of this would be upon meeting a candidate seeing they have a visible tattoo and deciding they are not right for the role because of that, not taking into account the highly relevant skill set and qualities they have to the role. Respectively this is the horns and halo effect.
Anchoring
Upon reading a favourable CV we all set our expectations high for that candidate to perform in interview. This expectation often leads to us making a positive evaluation about the candidate, missing key indicators that they might not be as strong as their CV suggests. Vice versa a candidate with a less favourable CV who you decide to interview anyway may perform far better than expected, the issue is that expectations means their interview is already burdened with caveats as to why they are not suitable for the role. To combat this every interview should be conducted in a “clean slate” format, imagine you haven’t seen their CV, let the candidate relay their story and then evaluate their ability.
Contrast Error
Finally we have contrast error. We are all guilty of comparing candidate to each other and not to the person-job fit and person organisation fit, which is what our criteria should be based around. Contrasting candidates experience and skills deflates and inflates your evaluations of them in a way that doesn’t determine their suitability to the role. To avoid this, contrast the candidate’s evaluation to your scoring matrix.
Interview Best Practice: How to Avoid Bias
Being aware of bias is only half of the battle, you need a way to see in black and white that you are being objective, and the way we would suggest that is by developing a scoring matrix. A scoring matrix is essentially a ranking document where you list the key competencies, skills and characteristics that you are looking for from your candidates, it is important to have a variety of items to assess. Firstly, you must consider the “person-organisation fit”, this identifies whether the candidate’s values, beliefs and behaviours match your organisational culture. An example of this criteria would be entrepreneurial, ambitious and organised. Secondly, you must consider the “person-job fit”, this looks at the knowledge and skills the candidates have that match those required to perform well in the role. An example here would be have previously sold software products into enterprise clients, have they managed a cross functional team of over ten or have they worked in a scaling business. Any assessment you make of the candidate should be based on these criteria and these alone, diverging from the matrix makes you open to prejudice and possible bias.
Summary
As we can see unconscious bias is far more prevalent in interviewing than we realise. Everyone is guilty of doing at least a couple of these interviewing errors Fortunately there are ways to avoid making these mistakes, by making sure every decision you make is based on reason and evidence rather than opinion. The purpose of an interview is to determine a candidate’s suitability to the role and their likelihood to perform well in this position, that should be the conscious thought throughout your mind during the whole process.