What Is Blind Hiring
Blind hiring is a recruitment strategy that involves hiding information that could lead to bias during the hiring process. This can be done in several ways, such as removing names and addresses from resumes, using gender-neutral language, or using social media blinders to prevent recruiters from seeing job seekers' online profiles.
The goal of blind hiring is to create a level playing field for all job seekers, regardless of their background or identity. While blind hiring is not without its critics, many organizations have found it to be an effective way to reduce bias and identify the best candidates for the job.
Following are some of the identification details that are eliminated during the process of blind recruitment as it can result in unfair hiring:
- Gender: The factor of gender, sexism, and inequality persist in many countries among workers. There are also cases in many countries where people choose to work with their gender and believe that certain jobs are suitable for males or females.
- Names: Research has proved that some common names are easy to pronounce, which is why they have a better chance of getting hired than others.
- Age: A candidate's age might say a lot about the years of experience. But it is not always necessary to know the exact number of years they spent in a particular company. Likewise, knowing when exactly a candidate graduated is not important.
- Ethnicity: Many candidates prefer not to say about their ethnic background while applying for a job. The reason is that racial prejudices influence the process of hiring. Moreover, candidates don’t mention the country where they have worked before or the school they have attended for similar reasons.
- Personal interests: Many people mention their hobbies as well as interests in their resume, but that is not the right practice. Mentioning interests and hobbies on resumes can interfere with the process of hiring. The reason is that hiring managers can make assumptions based on hobbies and interests that can come in the way of fair hiring.
Advantages and Disadvantages of Blind hiring
Blind hiring had the following advantages:
- Blind hiring promotes greater diversity, as no hiring manager would choose individuals who look like them. It can be an extremely useful tool.
- Blind hiring is scientific as it delivers similar assessments for all candidates.
- Blind hiring also helps the hiring managers in getting rid of the “who do you know” practice.
- Blind recruitment is quicker as compared to other traditional processes. If the processes are set up correctly, then employers can get a chance for particular roles. This process can, in turn, minimize the interview-to-hire ratio.
Blind hiring has the following disadvantages:
- Blind hiring can disrupt your diversity goals, especially when your company is striving to achieve any diversity goals, such as gender balance. Therefore, blind recruitment might not lead to the best results.
- Sometimes it takes a long time to remove the identification details from every available application as it will lengthen the screening stage.
- There are a lot of cases where the candidates like to express themselves with the help of their resumes. For instance, if you are planning to hire a designer or writer, then you should consider the overall quality of the resume. Blind recruitment can create a hindrance in this regard.
- Blind hiring doesn’t allow culture fit as well. It anonymizes the details of the candidates and can prevent you from hiring the best person out there.
Last Thoughts
Workplace inequality and discrimination is still an ongoing issue, but blind hiring is one way to help mitigate it. With blind hiring, employers don't know anything about the job applicants except their qualifications. This way, employers can't make assumptions or judgments about candidates based on factors like their name, age, race, gender, etc.
And since candidates are chosen solely based on their qualifications, it helps to level the playing field and create a more diverse and representative workforce. In addition, blind hiring can also help to reduce turnover rates and improve employee satisfaction. While it's not a perfect solution, blind hiring is a step in the right direction when it comes to creating a fair and inclusive workplace.
