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“We give everyone the same interview. It's a standard set of questions to make the evaluation process fair. Interviewers log their evaluations into our HCM [Human Capital Management] system before we discuss as a group who we want to hire. We always objectively pick the best candidate. It just happens to be that most of those people have been white men. It wasn't by design.”
—Clueless white male hiring manager
I'm going to give you a truth that is difficult to accept. Ready?
No matter how old you are, the color of your skin, what gender you identify with, where you were born, where your family came from, or how much education you've received, you are racist, sexist, ageist, and elitist. You ascribe negative personality traits to people who are overweight. You distrust people who practice a different faith than you. You see people with prominent foreheads as more aggressive. You perceive people with close-set eyes as unhappy. You think people over six-foot-two exude leadership qualities. You categorize people by the clothes they wear, the tattoos they expose, their hairstyles, and even their eyebrows. If someone has symmetrical features, you're mesmerized! You will infer multiple positive character traits about them before they have spoken a word to you. All of that is true about you, and it is also true for every person you meet during the hiring process.
It's not your fault. You're not a bad person and neither are they. Study after study shows all humans make rapid instinctive judgments (measured in milliseconds to seconds2) and those conclusions are highly unlikely to change with more information.
Bias definitely exists, 100% of the time, and for every job, no matter what the level, no matter what the job category, and no matter what the company. In fact, there is so much bias in the hiring process that combating it with bias awareness training is impossible.3 Even if somehow I were able to train employers out of all their bias around age, gender, weight, apparel, race, religion, sexuality, and physical features, they would still bring bias to the candidate evaluation. And you would too! Don't believe me? Let's play the You Only Get to Know One Thing game!
Pick which candidate is more appealing to you in each of the following scenarios. You only get to know one thing:
1. Someone who graduated from Stanford versus someone who graduated from community college.
2. Someone who worked at Google versus someone who worked at Yahoo!.
3. Someone referred by an existing employee versus someone who came from a job board.
4. Someone who lives in a house they own versus someone who lives with their parents.
5. Someone who uses a Mac versus someone who uses a PC.
6. Someone with a Gmail address versus someone with an AOL address.
None of these “one things” is evidence of the skills required to do the job, yet you infer characteristics about the candidates based on the institutions they've been affiliated with, the brands they prefer, or your initial read of their circumstances. Maybe the person who went to Stanford took seven years to graduate? Maybe the person who worked at Google was fired in less than a year? Maybe the person who lives at home cares for an ailing parent?
Bias exists in all of us. You're going to be judged in seconds on a wide variety of characteristics that seem arbitrary. Guaranteed. So what do you do with this information? You use it! Understanding that bias is everywhere means adapting your approach to turn their bias into your advantage. Job seekers who embrace the reality of bias will give themselves an edge in every stage of searching for work.
Job Search and Bias Are Inextricably Linked
Throughout the next few chapters I am going to explain exactly how to make a great first impression at every step of the process. I'm going to tell you what to wear and what to say. Get ready to hack some brains. We're going to make bias work for you rather than against you.
Notes
1. 1. Anthony C. Little, Benedict C. Jones, and Lisa M. DeBruine, “Facial Attractiveness: Evolutionary Based Research,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 366, no. 1571 (2011): 1638–1659.
2. 2. Janine Willis and Alexander Todorov, “First Impressions: Making Up Your Mind after a 100-ms Exposure to a Face,” Psychological Science 17, no. 7 (2006): 592–598.
3. 3. Frank Dobbin and Alexandra Kalev, “Why Diversity Programs Fail,” Harvard Business Review 94, no. 7 (2016): 14.