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Why Agencies Should Focus on Solving Recruitment Discrimination
Challenging bias is a hot topic. Recruiters who tackle this problem could create reputational advantages for themselves – and for their clients.
How likely is it that you, or one of your colleagues, has experienced workplace discrimination? If you read this with two colleagues, then it is likely that at least one of you has been victimised.
According to recruitment artificial intelligence developers at JaimieAI, discrimination is much more commonplace than many would assume. In fact, nearly a third of staff questioned (31 per cent) believe they may have been the victim of professional discrimination at some point in their life.
And recruitment is the one area of professional life where individuals feel most like to be faced with discrimination.
A quarter of those surveyed (25 per cent) felt that gender played a part in hiring decisions. One in five (21 per cent) thought social status hindered their chances of getting an interview. Staggeringly, more than half (51 per cent) of applicants felt that age played a part in a prior outcome.
The data underlines the extent to which bias and discrimination is a common occurrence in the hiring process.
Recruiters told: tackling bias will increase your value to clients
Last week, we investigated the latest gender pay gap data. The take-away from that news story for many recruiters will have been the fact that enterprises are willing to invest money to end workplace inequality.
On the face of it, that should be the only incentive that recruiters need to invest their own resources in ensuring client businesses provide a fair, modern working environment for their candidates.
In practice, it is rarely possible to gain such a complete insight into clients' working practices and codes of conduct. By their very definition, if a business is implementing discriminatory hiring, it will do its best to keep it hidden.
It is a situation that has created a form of passive acceptance across the whole sector, says JaimeAI CEO Adrian Ezra. "Bias is an intrinsic part of the human character", he suggests. "When recruiters currently ask candidates for demographic information, they inadvertently create space for discrimination to fuel existing biases."
Mr Ezra's company is looking at ways to address this, using recruitment software and artificial intelligence technology. The ambition is to build a hiring system where personal identifiers (such as age, race, gender and even individuals' names) are no longer required for the majority of the hiring process.
The recruitment technology company has ambitions that echo the use of blockchain technology in recruitment. A hiring process where candidates are anonymised. This not only eliminates bias; it also makes personal data much easier and safer to share, too.
Don't wait for robots: you can make the difference
But these are fixes that are – at best – several years away from becoming commonplace. For today, the solutions are cultural ones. Mr Ezra says he would like to see "new models emerge that focus on skills, experience and preferences" over identity.
This, he says, would allow recruiters to directly contribute to a fairer workplace – while also increasing the value offering of their service to clients. "This not only reduces and prevents discrimination, but also increases the overall accuracy of the service."
Mind your language: gendered jobs listings could expose your business
Meanwhile, legal experts have highlighted the impact that gender-imbalanced language in job listings can have on hiring. The commentary provides one clear area where recruiters can have an immediate, positive impact on cultivating diversity during employment.
New research by job search engine Adzuna find a broad trend towards posts which contain so-called gendered language. It found that more than half (60 per cent) of UK industries exhibit clear male bias in the way they list and advertise their vacancies.
When assessing individual adverts, the site found 17 per cent of all listings had used male-biased vocabulary.
In these studies, words like "leader", "dominant", and "strong" are considered male traits. Female bias is considered to be adverts which include words like "affectionate" and "careful".
Speaking to Joanna Parry of Tozers Solicitors explained the significance of gendered language in hiring to Recruiter. "The wording of a job advert should be as objective as possible, and focus on the skills required to undertake the role, rather than asking for specific character traits that could associated with either sex".
In the same interview, Jahad Rahman of Rahman Lowe Solicitors explained that gendered language was allowed, but that discrimination itself was rarely acceptable. "If there is a genuine occupational requirement, then you could say this role is purely for women because of x – let’s say it’s a woman’s refuge centre and then they can justify it. But otherwise it should all be gender neutral. You can’t say: ‘we need a man for this role'."
A poor choice of words could cost recruiters
Rahman went on to explain how poor choice of language in a job listing could expose employers and recruiters to the risk of a claim. "It would go to a tribunal and the applicant would say the reason you didn’t select me was because you just assumed that I wasn’t sensitive or I wasn’t affectionate. By applying those criteria you’ve indirectly discriminated against me."
The risk of a claim goes beyond financial loss. The reputational damage could negatively impact an agency's ability to attract clients and generate income in the future, too. The report's findings emphasise the important duty of care that consultants must exercise as part of their everyday commitment to fairness and best practice.
