Hiring Bias: 13 Unfair Prejudices & How to Avoid Them

Hiring bias is a prejudice in favor of or against one thing, person, or group compared with another, usually in a way considered to be unfair. Whether conscious or unconscious, these biases can seep into your hiring process.

• Conscious bias (or explicit bias) is a bias that people are cognitively aware of. For example, if you knowingly prefer to work with men over women and you hire men disproportionately to women, then your conscious bias is factoring into your hiring decisions.
• Unconscious bias (or implicit bias) is unknowingly stereotyping people or groups without being aware of it. For example, a hiring manager uses their “gut feeling” to make the hiring decision. Chances are, there are unfair biases at play that lead the manager to prefer one candidate over another.

One of the best ways to avoid these biases is to identify and label them so you can see and feel them when they surface, especially when reviewing resumes, conducting interviews, and making hiring decisions in the workplace.

1. Similarity Attraction (Affinity) Bias

It is perfectly normal to want to be with others who you like and feel you have a rapport with. While at the workplace, this desire does not deactivate on its own. Recruitment and hiring decisions are impacted when the hiring manager only chooses candidates with the predominant characteristics or behaviors they possess or personally deem superior.

Note that similarity attraction (affinity) bias tends to lend itself to several classes within the workplace, including gender, generation (or age), and skin color. This is one of the most dangerous biases in the workplace today and a heavy focus of bias-prevention training.

To avoid this bias, consider “blind” resume reviews. Not being able to view introductory information on a resume (such as names, home addresses, and so on), may help curb affinity biases when reviewing resumes. Names, for example, can at times suggest a particular race, gender, or ethnicity. All hiring managers should be able to manage this type of information responsibly, but if you have a concern with one or more members of your hiring team, until those issues are fully resolved, this may be a suitable workaround.

2. Social Comparison Bias

In some organizations, team members with high status in the workplace may desire to protect their position by making recommendations that prevent other high performers from being hired. This can be done in a variety of ways, such as by excluding qualified candidates during the interview process or suggesting someone else for the job, even if they are not the most qualified.

This can also occur with team members that don’t have direct hiring responsibility and is likely to occur between men and women. For example, John does not want Beth to join the Large Customer Accounts Team due to Beth’s reputation for expertise and creative thinking. John may go out of his way to discourage the department manager from bringing Beth on since he’s currently the top performer on the team.

3. Intuition Bias

Intuition hiring bias is the tendency for managers to make hiring decisions based on their gut feeling rather than evidence or rational thinking. This bias can lead to managers overlooking qualified candidates in favor of less-qualified ones or basing decisions on irrelevant factors. While intuition can sometimes be a valuable tool in decision-making, it’s important to be aware of the potential for bias so that hiring decisions can be made based on logic and evidence.

When reviewing resumes and interviewing, even HR professionals spend much of their time “trusting their gut.” Most decisions for hiring people have an aspect to them that is “gut” related; however, utilizing metrics that have been identified ahead of time will help ensure fairness, equality, and consistency in the hiring process.

We recommend utilizing a small team of culturally and educationally diverse people to review resumes, conduct interviews, and help the hiring manager with the final hiring decision. This allows for several perspectives to influence the hiring process. These additional weights and measures test the thinking of the hiring manager, which helps ensure that one person’s biases don’t creep into important hiring decisions.

4. Contrast Effect (Judgment) Bias

The process of hiring new employees is often thought to be an objective one, where the best candidate is chosen based on their qualifications and experience. However, hiring managers may be unconsciously comparing the last resume reviewed to the one currently being reviewed, which can lead to bias in the selection process.

This type of comparison results in targets that are never consistent. It could cause qualified resumes that should make it to a “maybe” or “yes” pile to be discarded due to the elevated skills and experience found in the previous resume.

When you’re hiring for a position, it’s natural to want to compare the resumes of potential candidates. However, avoid doing this too much, as it can lead to making unfair comparisons and decisions. Each resume is unique and should be evaluated on its own merits.

5. Conformity Bias

This is a very common bias that is heavily influenced by group (or team) peer pressure. Managers are concerned about what others may think of their decision, and/or the reasons supporting the decision. Instead of risking team discontent, one conforms to what everyone else wants.

In the hiring process, this can be one of the few drawbacks of having a team of interviewers. It is important to carefully qualify your own decision and then confidently share what you think and how you feel about a candidate being considered by the hiring team. Each team member should be in the practice of keeping personal notes from each interview to utilize during group discussions. This helps discourage “group thinking” or conformity bias within the hiring team.

6. Beauty Bias

Beauty bias is a term used to describe the phenomenon where people tend to unconsciously believe that the most attractive candidate will be the most successful one. This bias can have a profound impact on people’s lives, as it can cause them to make hiring decisions based on looks rather than qualifications.

Using pre-set metrics of qualifications (e.g., minimum education requirements, skill sets, and work experience) can help qualify each candidate against the same set of benchmarks and reduce the possibility of beauty bias.

7. Illusory Correlation Bias

Illusory correlation bias occurs when people believe a relationship exists between two common subjects, when in fact no relationship exists. This bias can often lead to inaccurate judgments and decisions when hiring top candidates.

A hiring manager might believe that there is a correlation between being hired and being successful when, in reality, there is no link between the two. For example, if a candidate is personable and gets along great with everyone on the interview panel, the assumption may be that they would be a terrific sales manager (even though the candidate may have no sales experience at all).

8. Confirmation Bias

Since everyone makes biased judgments, you have to be careful to not ask questions or frame questions in ways that solicit responses that support initial judgments or biases of candidates. This can easily take place within the interview process. Without even realizing it, you may ask questions that are not particularly essential or illuminating and only serve to enhance or reduce the value of the candidate. For example, asking how a candidate’s childhood shaped their career or what former co-workers would say about the candidate.

9. Affect Heuristic Bias

According to Psychology Today, heuristics are mental shortcuts that allow people to make decisions, pass judgments, or solve problems, with little to no effort. This bias represents a reliance on good or bad feelings relating to a stimulus of some sort. Examples of this include if an interviewer sees a tattoo that they don’t like, if a candidate is not an ideal weight in the interviewer’s mind, if a female candidate has a shaved head, and so on.

It’s not necessary for these biases to have anything to do with the job for them to impact the candidate’s ability to be disqualified by a manager exercising their bias. Avoiding this bias can be especially challenging and should be kept in balance by involving other team members in the hiring selection process.

10. Expectation Anchor Bias

Expectation anchor bias is a cognitive bias that comes into play when the resume reviewer, interviewer, or decision-maker permits themselves to believe that a single trait or skill set is all that matters, and the decision-maker “anchors” to that single attribute. This commonly occurs when a terrific employee just vacated a position, and the interviewer looks for a carbon copy of that employee to fill it.

This bias can have a significant impact on the evaluation of a candidate’s resume during applicant screening, interview performance, or decision to hire. The most qualified candidates may be passed over if they do not possess the single desired trait or skill set, while less qualified candidates may be hired based on their possession of that trait. When you become anchored to one trait or skill set, you lose the ability to see the potential in the candidate’s other attributes. This could cause you to lose out on high-quality candidates.

11. Halo Effect Bias

The halo effect is a cognitive bias that occurs when the hiring manager makes judgments about others based on a single, favorable attribute and chooses to focus too heavily on that one positive aspect of a candidate. For example, if a hiring manager only sees the fact that a candidate has a college degree, they may be more likely to hire them without looking at any other qualifications.

In the workplace, individuals may be experts in one particular field. This bias can often lead to an unfounded assumption that if someone is good in one area, they must be good in all areas. However, this is not always the case. Just because someone is a great accountant, for example, does not mean they will be a great salesperson. This bias can be harmful to both the individual and the company, as it can lead to poor decision-making and missed opportunities.

12. Horn Effect Bias

The Horn effect bias is the tendency to focus on a single bad behavior or recent poor performance. It is the opposite of the halo effect bias, which is the tendency to focus on a person’s good qualities. The Horn effect bias can cause people to overestimate the negative consequences of a single mistake and underestimate a person’s overall competence. It can also lead to a distorted perception of an otherwise qualified candidate.

When recruiting and speaking with candidates, this bias can occur when a candidate says something you did not like and, thus, you are ready to boot them out the door. Of course, just because they phrased a response in a way that differs from how you would have, or how you wished the candidate would have responded, does not mean that the candidate is not qualified for the position you are looking to fill.

13. Overconfidence Bias

Overconfidence bias describes the tendency for people to be overly confident in their abilities. In the context of hiring, this means that the recruiter is overly confident in their ability to select the right candidate. They believe that they can look at a person’s resume and determine if they are the best fit for the job. However, this is not always the case, as a person’s qualifications may not be evident from their resume, and the hiring manager may not have the necessary skills to properly assess them.

The pressure to promptly make the right decision often leads hiring managers to become overconfident in their abilities—which can lead to bad decisions that cost the company money, time, and resources. Hiring the wrong person for a position can be damaging to the team dynamic and create a hostile work environment. Additionally, the company may have to go through the entire process again, which wastes additional time and money.

Avoiding Bias During the Hiring Process

There are a few processes you can follow that will help reduce your chance of biases as you consider which new team members to bring on board. Learn more by clicking through the tabs below.

Bottom Line

It’s important to be aware of the different hiring biases that can impact your decision-making when it comes to bringing on new employees. By understanding and being mindful of these biases, you can work to eliminate them from your process and make more objective decisions. Remember—the best candidate for the job may not always be the most obvious choice, so it’s important to take the time to assess each candidate thoroughly.