Every organisation wants to hire the very best people.
Most also genuinely want to build diverse leadership teams, improve candidate experience and create a recruitment process that attracts exceptional talent.
Yet many businesses are unknowingly creating barriers that discourage exactly the people they are hoping to hire.
Recruitment bias isn’t always deliberate. In fact, more often, it’s embedded within hiring processes that have evolved over many years, and with the rise now of AI – that in many instances isn’t being correctly managed, together with budgets and time being tight in most organisations, it’s easy to see how we are in the situation that we’re in:
Businesses need great talent – talent is there in the marketplace – but the dots in many instances are just not connecting.
As an executive recruiter, I spend most of my working life talking to senior leaders. One thing has become increasingly clear: some of the strongest candidates simply won’t apply if the recruitment process sends the wrong signals. Even if they are out of work.
Recruitment Bias Doesn’t Always Look Like Bias
When organisations think about unconscious bias, they often picture the interview stage.
In reality, bias can appear much earlier in Job Descriptions, the language organisations use to describe themselves, application forms, recruitment technology and communication [or lack of] throughout the hiring journey.
Individually these may seem insignificant. But the usually appear collectively, and they can dramatically reduce both the quality and diversity of the talent applying.
The Candidate Experience Starts Before Someone Applies
Many executive candidates are not active job seekers.
Many are successful in their current roles and don’t need to change roles, or are busy churning out the results operating under significant pressure – they do not have timeto scour job adverts.
Every interaction with your organisation influences whether a candidate chooses to engage.
Questions they may subconsciously ask include:
- Is this organisation genuinely values driven?
- Does this organisation genuinely value different perspectives?
- Is this recruitment process unnecessarily complicated?
- Does this business understand modern day leadership?
- Will this role add credibility to my CV?
If the answer to any of these questions is unclear, many exceptional leaders decide that there is not a match, and they simply decide not to apply.
The organisation never even knows they exist.
Could AI Be Reinforcing Existing Bias?
Artificial Intelligence is transforming recruitment.
CV screening, candidate matching, interview scheduling and skills assessment are becoming increasingly automated.
Used well, and AI can improve efficiency and remove repetitive administrative tasks.
Used poorly, and it risks reinforcing historical hiring patterns. AI technology only learns from the information it is given. If historical recruitment decisions contained bias, AI may simply become more efficient at repeating those same decisions.
This is particularly important when recruiting senior leaders, where qualities such as judgement, adaptability, commercial thinking and leadership capability cannot be measured through keywords alone.
And for exceptional leaders, this is a two way street – a business has to have a compelling story to entice talent into a business.
Displaying ‘500+’ applicants for niche roles, is demoralising, and degrading at worst.
The smallest sniff of AI, and many talented candidates will disengage.
AI should support better hiring decisions – not replace them.
Diversity Is About Better Business Decisions
The strongest leadership teams aren’t successful because they all think alike.
They’re successful because they bring different experiences, perspectives and approaches to solving complex problems.
Therefore, creating a more inclusive recruitment process isn’t simply about meeting diversity targets. It’s about improving decision-making, innovation, customer understanding and increasing business performance over the longer-term.
When organisations widen access to exceptional leadership talent, revenue increases, and everyone benefits.
If you are responsible for executive hiring, consider asking yourself:
- Could our recruitment process unintentionally be discouraging exceptional candidates?
- Are our Job Descriptions attracting or excluding talent?
- Are we relying too heavily on technology to assess leadership potential?
- Is our candidate experience reflective of our employer brand?
- And be honest; would the very leaders we want to hire actually enjoy going through our recruitment process?
Sometimes small changes create disproportionately large improvements.
Continuing the Conversation
This topic formed the basis of an in-depth discussion on the Gallop Executive Unicorns & Dark Horses podcast with senior executive leader Steph Roberts, where we explored unconscious bias, candidate experience, AI in recruitment and practical ways organisations can create more inclusive hiring processes.
If you’re reviewing your executive recruitment strategy or looking to attract exceptional leadership talent, I hope the discussion provides some useful food for thought.
You can watch the full podcast here
