Promoting Workplace Diversity Through Blind Hiring

Human resource is the core of all successful businesses, and choosing adept employees could help give you a competitive edge.

Unfortunately, in today’s business world, bias is everywhere, including in talent acquisition. While most recruiters do their best to avoid having their preferences cloud their judgment of potential recruits, unconscious biases still exist.

In fact, 57% of recruiters who contributed to a survey confirmed that implicit bias is still an issue in their field, according to MHL News.

Such recruiters could unconsciously be disregarding an adept recruit from their workforce based on race, religion or even gender. What does that mean to your company?

The loss of a potentially productive employee could mean the gain of your competitors, especially if they were to employ the same individual. With blind hiring, you can embrace workplace diversity and enjoy the perks it has to offer.

Here’s a short guide on why you should integrate blind hiring into your talent acquisition strategies:

The Benefits of a Diverse Workforce

Employees will always be more productive in an inclusive environment as they feel like part of a family.

Other than that, embracing diversity will mean that you can pool talent from different geographical locations and backgrounds while embracing a variety of recruitment methods such as exploiting temporary placement service. This leads to a higher chance of recruiting the best talent that is out there.

In return, such a strategy promotes innovation since the unique backgrounds of each employee will give your business a different perspective for approaching challenges. For instance, a marketing department that has Asian representatives will have a strong approach when gunning for Asian customers and clients.

Lingual diversity will be the order of the day in your workforce which has the potential to open your business’ doors to new markets while fortifying your customer service.

Blind Hiring Eliminates Unfair Talent Acquisition Practices

Some companies have an ‘old boy’s club’ culture where members from the same college are employed at the expense of more talented recruits. If this is your organization, the chances are that you are lying behind on the competition curve.

In other situations, some people also get employed in their dream jobs through a backdoor entry.

This happens when recruits collude with insiders within your organization to be favored in the recruitment process.

Luckily, blind hiring mitigates, if not eliminates, the chances of intended bias from corrupting your talent acquisition process. It will also reduce the chances of your company going through lawsuits for discrimination when hiring, according to Nolo.

How It Works

To excel in blind hiring, your company has to revamp your recruitment process to one that eliminates the ability of recruiters to form a persona of their potential recruits. This way, you can judge applicants based on skill and merit.

While the process has the potential to eliminate personal identifiers from CVs, it can open doors to even greater things. For instance, you can instead embrace task-based hiring techniques where you test the skills of applicants.

Why Hasn’t Blind Hiring Gone Mainstream?

Despite its perks, blind hiring is mainly prevalent in large companies like Mozilla and Dolby, but not startups and small businesses. This is because it adds a layer of complexity to the standard hiring process, which might be tough for most small companies to achieve.

Additionally, having to take longer to screen applicants or even drafting test tasks can be an uphill challenge for understaffed HR departments.

Referrals have always taken center stage role in talent acquisition. When a trusted source validates that a recruit will play a specific role perfectly, then they are a good fit for your company. Sadly, blind hiring eliminates the use of referrals during the talent screening and hiring process.

Conclusion

While every applicant has something to offer, talent acquisition is about choosing the most beneficial one for your company. Despite its flaws, blind hiring fortifies any business’ ability to do just that.

Consider integrating it into your hiring process to ensure your company is one step ahead when it comes to recruiting and retaining the best talent.