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Bias recruitment leads to hiring unqualified staff, inefficiency, and low productivity.
Loyalty
There are a lot of ways to bring bias to recruitment, and it is possible to have in every step of the recruitment process. Let's first have a scenario on what bias is:
Applicant #1 : David
-wearing a class ring from the interviewer's alma mater
-has good looks, strong personality, came from a famous family, has political links
-shares same hobbies with the interviewer like football and golf
-average academic achiever
CONCLUSION : Interviewer thinks he is MOTIVATED and PROFESSIONAL, with links and networks that can be useful with the business, and will be a good fit for the company for his good looks and strong personality.
Applicant #2 : Rose
-greets with a big smile and energetic in answering questions
-wore a ring in her left ring finger
-has a soft handshake
-won many academic awards and medals but came from an average family
CONCLUSION : Interviewer thinks on how she can travel if she has a family, questions her capability to lead because of the handshake, but still considers her achievements for the role
Who got hired? David Why? I'll let you be the judge.
'NO' at first sight : We all know that first impressions count. One first look at the candidate and the interviewer can already form opinions based from his/her own perception, within the first few minutes of their meeting leading them to make bias judgements about the candidate.
Word of Mouth Recruitment and Informal Networking : Let's be honest, if you belong with HR, there will be a time that some of your co-workers, friends or relatives will come at you and ask for work, or at least ask for some help to get their friends and relatives into your organization. The word of mouth recruitment comes when the vacancy awareness is only isolated in a certain group and in a way where you recruit friends and relatives of the employees of the company. This kind of recruitment not only excludes all other skilled applicants but also limits itself to a handful of people and fosters discrimination to those people who are not aware about the vacancy.
Emotion-based recruitment : We are all humans and we have emotions. Emotion is one thing that sets apart a good recruitment to a bias one. Interviewers sometimes tend to overindulge with their emotions when interviewing an applicant, it's as if the interviewer is going to be solely based on what the interviewer will 'feel' about the applicant, even when the applicant has all the skills and the qualifications for the job, if the interviewer doesn't 'feel' like recruiting him/her, then the applicant probably won't get hired.
Stereotyping : As a recruiter, you might've interviewed hundreds of applicants in your first month, or maybe even more, so you tend to have this stereotypical judgement or generalization attitude developed among certain types of applicants, which is based from your previous experiences with the applicants that you have interviewed before.
Recruiting a 'Mini-Me' : Time and again, the research shows that interviewers are poor predictors of job performance because we tend to hire people we think are similar to us rather than those who are objectively going to do a good job. Interviewers might have the unconscious bias that 'different = unsafe'
The Good Cultural Fit : This is a type of unconscious bias recruitment. We tend to hire people who conform to 'mainstream' organizational culture, people we feel comfortable with, behavior we're used to, and although the applicant is fit for the job academically and professionally, then we will still have that question, 'Is he going to fit in?'
Discrimination : A recruitment selection based on gender, marital status, age, sex, religion, alma mater, common interests, hairstyle, appearance, names, language accents, etc. This in effect will encourage discrimination in the organization. Research shows that names are one of the biggest factors in considering an applicant. If the name of the applicant sounds 'western-like' or 'white-like', they are most likely to get interviewed rather the name that sounds otherwise. And also if example that the applicant is married and has a family, the interviewer will no longer focus on the qualifications but rather he/she will have big questions floating in his/her head throughout the interview, "how is she going to devote her full concentration on the job if she has a family to look after?", "How can she travel if she has a family?" and so goes to other discriminative factors like young vs. old, third sex discrimination, females over males, handsome over ugly, etc.
Bias Impact on Business :
-Ignoring / Exclusion / Dismissing of high quality candidates
-Losing the top talents and skilled professionals to our competitors
-Missing out on innovative, out-of-the-box perspectives
-Decreased engagement , performance, productivity by current employees who see the lack of diversity and inclusion
-Decreased intereset by future potential employees, who also see the lack of diversity.
-Impacts the reputation of the company in equality and fairness.
I m not expert in recruitment field actually. However, let me mention very common issues which easy to be seen such as gender issues, race, age, personal status (single or married), disability, religion, nepotism and etc. Thanks for invitation.
1. Hampers the accountability of the organization.
2. Hampers the image of the organization.
3. Encourage discrimination in organization.
It demoralize the talented job applicants & degrade organization in the market.
In my humble opinion no company accepts to apply a biased recruitment policy. This will affect not only the relationship between employees instead also the company's reputation in the market.
What may happen is that a certain company needs employees to work for a certain salary range. It happens that all applicants accepted are from certain country or region. Here the company did not intend to have employees from only one country but it was forced to.
Well recruitment of Right candidate is the primary responsibility of hr department in an organization, just i am wonder if hr is biased on his primary step , then how will be other responsibility of hr department worked???? simple that step show the level of hr practices and accountability in an organization.
like orientation , training and development , compensation , employee relation, i just pray fort that type of organization which are biased in key step of hr.
Good answers have already been provided by our well-knowledged professionals!I can just say thanks for all.
Deviates the total purpose of Recruitment. Creates lot of conflicts at various levels and becomes a major cause for the loss of efficiency and profitability.
