Overcoming unconscious bias - Hiring
Hiring is the one of the most important decisions a manager makes as hiring mistakes are costly, impact the team's culture, motivation and engagement. When hiring new team members, managers can take concrete set of actions to overcome specific types of biases.
- Availability bias - Narrowing down the candidate list based on the available job description and specific skill set and avoiding factors like language, origin, gender etc.
- Fundamental attribution error - Take time to question your first instincts as these are not always accurate especially when you are under time pressure to close the hiring.
- Similar-to-me bias - Evaluate complementarity and supplementarity of the candidate vis-a-vis the current skill set of the existing team
- Stereotype-based Biases - Image the candidate belonging to a different social group and verify if your decision would still be the same
- Horns & Halos - Ask for specific instances of achievements and do not assume
