Reducing Unconscious Bias in Recruitment with Crosschq 360

Unconscious bias is the hidden enemy of diversity in the workplace. While commitments can be made to support diversity, and plans and processes developed to implement equitable hiring, as long as unconscious bias can slip in, you won’t be able to achieve your goals.

DEIB (diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging) are critical to current companies seeking to hire top talent. Employees have some freedom of choice in a job market that isn’t meeting demand. This means they can hold out for jobs at organizations they feel aligned with.

Gen Zers in particular demand diversified workplaces and a strong DEIB commitment. Nearly nine out of ten say diversity is something they look for in a company when considering a job offer. 

How do you keep unconscious bias from ruining your DEIB efforts, and develop employee selection methods that rank candidates on skills alone? The interview process is a key problem area for bias, especially if you’re using it as the pivotal decision-making point in your funnel. 

How can you fix the issue? The answer lies in another recruitment process. The reference checking step is where changes can be applied to get rid of bias and increase the diversity of your final candidate pool. Digital reference checking can make all of the difference!

The Interview

The first thing you need to do in regard to interviews is look at how much they account for when you’re weighing candidates. Doing interviews as the main way to make your final decision, with reference checking done as the afterthought before onboarding can be a big mistake.   

Interviews are where subjectivity can do the most damage. Everyone has unconscious bias, whether we like to admit it or not. Just because you “click” or “don’t connect” with a candidate really doesn’t have anything to do with whether or not they would be a good or bad hire. Gut feelings are no substitute for solid data.

You don’t have to ditch the interview altogether. Just don’t let it be the end-all of your hiring decision-making process. Switch things up, put the interview at the end of your hiring funnel, and move another powerful tool up a few steps up - reference checks.

See How to Avoid Unconscious Bias in Recruiting Candidates

The Reference Check

The reference check has gotten a bad rap for years, due to how time-intensive it can be to do it correctly. It’s estimated that for every applicant for a given position that makes it to a final slate, a recruiter will spend 30 to 60 minutes contacting three or four references over a time period that could span weeks.

In a job market where top talent gets snapped up in less than 10 days, that’s valuable time that you might lose your dream candidate. Add to that many recruiters don’t see the information they get from reference checking as highly valuable, and it’s not hard to understand why many companies do as little of the process as possible.

Check out Reference Check Sample Questions Here

However, shunting reference checking to the tail end of your hiring funnel could be another expensive mistake. If you only reference check a candidate you are planning to make an offer to, and the information reveals that they lied on their resume, you may be too late to reach out to your second, third, or fourth choice. 

This can cost your company a lot of money as the position remains unfilled while you scramble to restart the process and find a new candidate to hire. What if there was a way to make reference checking faster, gather better data about your candidates, and move the whole process up higher in the hiring funnel?

Introducing Crosschq 360

Crosschq 360 is a digital reference checking tool designed to streamline and simplify the reference checking process, eliminate unconscious bias, and create a clear set of matching data points across all candidates. This allows you to compare candidates based on skills and other relevant attributes.

Using a digital reference checking tool has multiple advantages over traditional reference checking:

• Reduces the amount of time spent on reference checks by up to 95%
• Drops the number of days required to complete a reference check to three
• Eliminates unconscious bias by asking the same questions about each candidate
• Benchmarks responses by having the candidate complete a “self-reference check”
• Compares scores across all candidates based on matching data points
• Improves quality of hire across your organization while increasing retention
• Makes remote hiring possible without the need for an in-person interview

By digitizing and streamlining the reference checking process, you create a final line-up of candidates that are ranked by best match. You’ll be able to complete the recruitment process faster and get your foot in the door with an offer to your best-choice candidate as quickly as possible. Even if they accept another offer before you make yours, you still have more vetted, ready-to-go matches to draw from. 

Ready to strip away unconscious bias and take your recruitment funnel to the next level? Ask for a demo of Crosschq 360 today.