Eight (8) Examples of Unconscious Bias Hiring Practices: What are the Ways To Avoid?

By Abraham Mmbaga

Unconscious bias in recruitment has been an agenda in the hiring arena and a block towards finding great people. Despite technological improvements, managers have unconsciously found themselves making wrong decisions. Any biased hiring practice does not end up in a misplaced hire but also ruins your brand reputation. The top fact of 2022 indicates that 85% to 97% of hiring managers rely on intuition. About 48% of HR managers admitted that bias affects their candidate choice. Equal treatment among candidates should be a priority.

Here are some of the most prevalent biases encountered during the hiring process:

Affinity Bias

It occurs when a recruiter or hiring manager prefers candidates who share similar backgrounds, interests, or experiences with them. Affinity bias prevents the team from focusing on performance-based hiring rather than the initial impression that might not reflect the actual performance.

Confirmation Bias

A tendency to search for, interpret, and favor information that confirms our pre-existing knowledge and past experiences. In hiring, this can mean overemphasizing information that supports a positive or negative initial impression of a candidate rather than objectively assessing their suitability.

Focusing on qualifications and requirements

Recruiters pay attention to academic qualifications, years of experience and other related stuff as a result ignore a potential group of performing candidates.

Gender Bias

In the modern era, few employers don’t know that a career has no gender. They still treat certain jobs as masculine and feminine.

Ageism

Some recruiters/ hiring managers treat older candidates as less effective as they are not tech-savvy and can’t adapt faster. Similarly, recruiters may perceive younger talents as less effective as they are too young and don’t have enough experience.

Name Bias

Some recruiters tend to treat candidates based on their names. They use names to classify candidates based on the country/ tribe or region they are coming from. For example, Mushi, Chao, Shayo, and Materu represent the Chagga tribe in Tanzania, Kiriungi, Wanjiku etc represent Kenyans and Adebayo represent Nigerians. Such a bias can likely affect the hiring decision.

Halo and Horn Effect

Recruiters and hiring managers consider a single mistake/positive thing to reject or accept a candidate regardless of how well the candidate performed earlier.

Race Bias

Recruiters looking into a candidate’s picture or image on a resume to make a decision is another horrible way to evaluate a candidate. Some recruiters reject candidates because they are people-of-color (POC) such as black, all because of pre-existing judgements. Countries such as the United Kingdom, United States and Ireland have banned adding a photo on a resume. 

To combat bias in hiring, organizations can adopt several effective strategies:

Provide regular awareness training

Educate your team on the best diversity, equity and inclusion practices and performance-based hiring. The goal is to create an environment where talents of different backgrounds can work together regardless of their origin, background, gender, race, sex or whatever.

Establish standard evaluation criteria

Define each role and what is required to be delivered. Establish criteria that should help to find someone who can do the job and provide actual results.

Structured Interview Processes

Implementing structured interviews with predefined questions for all candidates helps minimize subjectivity. The focus should be on the candidate’s ability to deliver maximum results.

In conclusion, unconscious bias in hiring can harm both your team’s diversity and your organization’s reputation. By recognizing and addressing biases—like affinity, confirmation, and race—through awareness training, standardized evaluation criteria, and structured interviews, you can create a more inclusive and effective hiring process. Prioritizing fairness ensures you attract and retain the best talent.