An Equitable Hiring Experience Starts With This Tool
You’re one of the lucky companies who are hiring - fantastic! If you’ve already posted a job description (with clear salary expectations, we hope) and have a bunch of strong candidates, you’re likely ready to interview. Good news: This is a moment when you have a conscious opportunity to mitigate bias in your hiring process, ensuring you’re thoughtfully and equitably assessing job seekers.
Equitable Hiring Managers Utilize Interview Rubrics
An interview rubric is a simple way to measure candidates against competencies and skills, without the implicit bias creep that can occur when we simply “go with our gut.” Think that’s not you? A study found that hiring managers, regardless of gender, are twice as likely to hire men for roles in science and math. Another study found that candidates with “distinctly Black names” were less likely to hear back from companies.
Talking about and navigating biases can be difficult - none of us want to believe that we have them, or that they impact our thinking. But ignoring the reality of the biases we all hold will inevitably lead to a hiring process that isn’t an equitable one.
Make It Work For You
Here are some simple steps you can take to make and utilize an interviewing rubric that will allow you and your hiring team to implement a more egalitarian hiring process.
1) Consider key skills
What are the most important skills that the person who steps into this role needs to have? We recommend that you pick 4 - 7 skills and then outline what success looks like in each of them. For example, let’s say you need this person to have social media experience. You must then define what social media experience looks like in practice for your organization. Perhaps this includes the ability to adapt materials into various channels. Or maybe you need this person to teach others on your team how to use social media.
2) Lay the skills on a scale
Once you’ve named the skills you want a candidate to have, outline what they look like on a scale of 0 - 3. We assume that zero means the candidate is completely lacking this skill. To bring it back to our previous example: This person has never used social media. A three in this case means the candidate definitely meets the bar of being able to use social media in the way you’ve outlined in step one.
Once you’ve done this, determine what you need. Does this person have to be at a three in this skill to do your job? Or is a two, “almost meeting the bar,” acceptable, since you’re comfortable with and able to train them to a three?
3) Start the conversation internally
You’ve got your rubric, now gather your hiring team! You want to have a diverse group set up to review applications and to support at each stage of the hiring practice. The goal here is to ensure that your rubric is being used as one of many tools that support with mitigating bias.
Once you have these folks assembled, go over the rubric together and ensure that you’re all clear on what the rubric is measuring and how. This step allows the team to ask questions, and also ensures that no one defaults to their own criteria when interviewing candidates.
4) Debrief
Once everyone is clear on the HOW behind your rubric, it’s time to use it. During the interview process, it’s vital to come together after each round and review ratings as a team. This is another pause point to ensure you’re all using the tool in the same way and to weed out unconscious biases. The debrief process also allows you to ensure that the candidates in front of you are meeting an agreed upon high bar, and not just “sort of there.”
Still have questions?
We have answers. Our team is skilled in equitable hiring practices starting with your job description and leading all the way up to your onboarding. Reach out for rubric and other hiring support today.
