Achieving equality has been an ongoing issue for organizations for the best part of half a decade now. With our organizations increasingly achieving competitive advantage courtesy of the talented people at their disposal, this is increasingly important. Of course, it’s not as simple as all that.
Arguably the most famous study into discrimination in recruitment was conducted by Chicago’s Booth School. They wanted to test whether ethnic sounding names were discriminated against when applying for jobs. Over a ten month period, researchers sent out over 5,000 job applications to help wanted ads in the Boston Globe and Chicago Tribune newspaper.
The resumes they sent out were identical in every way, except the name of the applicant. Each resume was randomly assigned either a very white-sounding name (Emily Walsh, Brendan Baker) or a very African-American-sounding name (Lakisha Washington, Jamal Jones). The ‘applicant’s with white sounding names received 50% more call backs than those with African-American sounding names.
Suffice to say of course, social media has now muddied the waters even more, with recruiters able to find out all manner of things about a candidate that the candidate didn’t disclose on their application. This was highlighted by a recent Carnegie Mellon study.
They wanted to test whether researching candidates social profiles allowed recruiters to discriminate against candidates in ways that are illegal. For instance, most countries ban employers from discriminating against candidates on grounds such as their age, sex or religion, yet all of these things are readily available online.
The study found clear evidence of discrimination amongst some employers in areas such as sexual orientation or religious background of a candidate.
It’s such a hot potato that the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission met this month to discuss the role social media plays in supporting or encouraging discrimination during the recruitment process. Whilst there have been few concrete cases to this affect, the officials agreed that there is enormous potential for issues to emerge.
The fear has prompted the agency to consult employment lawyers about the impact of social media and how they should better enforce the law and guide employers on the landmines that lurk out there. It’s likely to be an issue that runs for sometime yet, as officials get to grips with the changing landscape and how it affects their work.
EEOC Commissioner Constance Barker, who previously represented businesses, said the agency should “be careful not to expand our jurisdiction” beyond laws it enforces such as Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. She was also at pains to point out however that employees and job seekers should exercise significantly more caution when revealing their private lives online.
Me thinks this one will rumble on and on.
What attempts so far have there been to remedy this – I can certainly see the issue around equality of opportunity, but I also can see the need for an organisation to make the right kind of recruitment decisions. Is the way forwards about people, policies or technology?
I've been recruiting officer, a unionist and a director, and I find it difficult to see what kind of reconciliation is needed of these views. Presumably there is a fair amount of energy, resource and research going into this.
And while there is, of course, a recruitment bias, is this the most significant point in the process of selection? If a man or woman turns up to interview with the wrong face, or who is the wrong sex, etc. how much is the eventual outcome going to be (consciously or unconsciously) the determinant of success?
Be interested in your thoughts on the solution as someone far better versed in the domain of social media?
I guess the first step is accepting you have a problem. I don't know if that many organizations are happy to admit that. There have been attempts to use algorithms much more in the recruitment process, and whilst there are some studies suggesting this might be slightly better, it's still an incredibly nascent field.
As you say, gender discrimination isn't the only issue with recruitment. There are a whole lot of biases that preclude the selection of the 'best' candidate. It's far from a perfect process, but then whatever is a perfect process when humans are involved?
It seems only natural that recruiters will continue to research candidates online, just as candidates will attempt to market themselves in the same way. It's always going to be hard to change what might be discrimination on a subconscious level. All you can do is educate and promote the virtues of diverse ideas.
Very interesting. Pretty hard to do anything about this though I'd have thought. I mean how many of those people are openly discriminating against candidates?
Lets face it, discrimination happens all the time. We make up our mind about someone in a fraction of a second or something, so how is it possible not to make snap judgements about someone?