Bias Among Hiring Managers
Posted May 1st, 2017
After a person goes for a job interview, many times the hiring manager will email the person and ask if he or she can friend the job candidate on Facebook. This presents a conundrum to the candidate. If he responds negatively, the hiring manager may wonder if he is hiding something. On the other hand, if he allows the manager to friend him, he opens himself up to scrutiny about aspects of his life he would prefer to keep private.
There are other considerations as well. For example, questions about race, religion and sexual orientation are off limits at a job interview, but may be readily discerned from a person’s Facebook page. But, you may say, so what. It is illegal for a hiring manager to take these things into consideration when reviewing job candidates.
The problem is that seeing these things may unconsciously bias the hiring manager for or against someone. These biases stem from what psychologists call social identity. There are all groups that we identify with, whether we are conscious of it or not. And there are groups that we consider alien to us.
So, we subconsciously tend to favor others who are in the same group as us, and to oppose those in different groups. Race and religion are two prominent groups, and research has shown that people rely on these when they make judgments of other people.
In one study, for example, almost 200 people who were black and Christian played the role of a hiring manager. About one-third of these people said religion played a big part in their decision to hire someone or not. Most of them favored other Christian candidates. Moreover, even when the hiring manager was not particularly religious, the study found that he then relied more on race as a criterion for choosing a job candidate.
However, these decisions were not made overtly. The hiring manager stand-ins did not consciously decide to make their choice based on race or religion. The decisions were the result of these intrinsic biases.
All of this creates a significant human resources issue, highlighting the disparity between technological advances and the legal guidelines covering employment law. It is a situation that shows the need for company policies regarding hiring and social media, as well as further legal scrutiny.
If your company is looking for qualified, reliable people, Bayside Solutions can help you. We specialize in technology-related jobs, and are ready to help your company find the qualified, reliable workers you need. Give Bayside a call today.
