Is Blind Hiring the New Recruitment Trend?

I must say that equality and diversity in the workforce have been the favorite topics of discussion among HR professionals and thought-leaders. There are numerous case studies which show that innovation and creativity is the result of a diverse team. This means that promoting workforce diversity is the need of the hour.

I am going to talk about blind hiring practice which is the right approach adopted by many leading companies to promote this concept.

What is Blind Hiring?                                                                                                   

• Blind hiring is an effective way of removing unconscious bias in the recruitment process.         
• It stops a recruiter to make judgments or hiring decisions based on specific candidate information such as name, gender, age, nationality, etc.
• Instead of resumes, hiring managers ask candidates to share their samples of work for judging their skills.

Many large enterprises such as HSBC, Google, and Deloitte are implementing this strategy to provide equal opportunities to candidates to get a job.

Why is it Gaining Popularity?

• At times, recruiters discard resumes based on name, age, gender or other aspects during the shortlisting process.
• This is an injustice to candidates as they are not given the job opportunity which they deserve for reasons not in their control.
• It is also a disadvantage for recruiters as they miss out on quality resumes.

Example: If a candidate has worked in a prestigious organization, you start assuming that he/she possesses excellent skills. This brings bias in your hiring decisions.

These challenges have given birth to the concept of blind hiring to remove personal identifiers from the recruitment process. With the adoption of this practice, hiring managers are beginning to see positive results by getting true talent.

Role of Technology

To put this concept into practice, many companies take out a print of resumes, cross out personal identifiers such as name, age, gender, etc. manually, and puts the resumes back into the system. However, this process is time-consuming and requires a lot of manual efforts.

This is where technology steps in. Using a resume parser software will help companies in implementing blind hiring without much investment of time. A resume parser extracts information from the candidate’s resume and saves it in data fields such as education, experience, contact details, social, personal, etc. When recruiters or hiring managers use this software, they can choose to opt out data fields which they feel promote bias or are personal identifiers. Thus, they get parsed data only for fields which provide information about skills and abilities.

The Takeaway

I feel blind hiring is an excellent way of eradicating bias and favoritism from your recruitment system. The approach is new but will work to keep a check on unconscious bias. Keeping in mind that focusing on candidates’ skills and expertise is what matters, it is important to ignore other not-so-relevant factors.