9 Tips for Reducing Interviewer Bias in Your Recruitment Process

Finding the right employee for your company is challenging in the competitive job market. You need to find the right employee for your company who can efficiently finish the assigned tasks and stick with your business. Suppose the selected candidate is not right for your business. In that case, it can affect your business, and you may need to hire an employee again.

The need to find the right candidate is significant during the hiring process in Bahrain. However, you can quickly lose the best candidate due to interviewer bias which is a significant challenge for any business.

To make your hiring process more effective, you should be aware of interviewer bias and take the necessary steps to prevent it in your company. In this article, we will dig deeper into interviewer bias.

What is Interviewer Bias?

Firstly as humans, we have certain biases by nature. You will have a favorable opinion of a person from your native college. Also, you may like a person based on their appearance and preferences. You may also dislike a person for particular reasons such as race, country and appearance.

If an interviewer has these biases, their recruitment will be less effective and can impact the success of your hiring. If your interviewer doesn't like a person who is an excellent fit for your company, it will be a loss.

In the worst cases, interviewers will show their dislike and frustration towards the candidates due to bias. This can result in bullying the candidates and will hurt your company's credibility. So you should eliminate bias in your hiring process to make it more effective.

Here are the 9 Tips to Eliminate Interviewer Bias in Your Company

1. Use Standardized Questions

Using standardized questions for all candidates during the interview process is a great way to counter bias in your hiring process. So your hiring process in Bahrain will be consistent no matter who the candidate is. You can use telephone interviews as the first round of interviews as there are fewer chances of bias. When conducting telephone interviews, you should ask the same questions to all the candidates in the same order.

2. Use an Interview Guide

Using an interview guide for your business is essential for a seamless employee recruitment process in Bahrain. It ensures you ask the questions effectively with all the candidates based on their experience. You can't ask the same questions to candidates with varied backgrounds and skills. If your company doesn't have an interview guide, you can create one that comes in handy during the interview process.

3. Asses the Assignments Confidentially

Assigning assignments to candidates is a normal process. In most cases, all the candidates will be given the same tasks. When assessing these tasks or tests, keep the names of competitors confidential. All you have to do is evaluate the assignments and check whether they fit the criteria you have in place. This will help eliminate interviewer bias in your company and ensure you will hire the best-performed candidate.

4. Takes Notes During Interviews

If two or more interviewers are present during an interview, each of them should take notes. If the top-level management is overviewing the interview, they can also take notes. Analyzing these notes later gives you a clear view of the candidate, and you will get inputs from many people, which is good for eliminating bias.

5. Try Different Sources to Hire

Make sure your applicants come from various sources instead of a single one. It will enhance the chances of finding the right candidate for your company and help to build a diverse work culture. Having a diverse work culture will help your business in the long term.

6. Establish Criteria for Shortlisting Candidates

Discuss with the hiring manager and leader of the department to establish the criteria for shortlisting the candidates. You should identify the crucial skills and abilities needed by the candidates. These will help you to focus only on the essential skills during interviews.

For example, suppose communication is not a criterion for candidates. In that case, candidates with poor communication and excellent technical skills should be shortlisted. In this case, focusing on communication skills and ignoring the candidate's technical competence is poor hiring management.

7. Organize the Interviews

Too many interviews in a single day can be tiresome and will impact your decisions. Instead, you can batch the candidates and conduct group interviews. Organizing your interviews is the best way to improve the efficiency of your hiring process and eliminate bias.

8. Always on the Point

Enquiring about the candidate at the beginning of an interview will make them feel at ease and avoid nervousness. However, you should reduce such interactions and focus on the interviews. It helps you to focus on the essential aspect of your recruitment process in Bahrain instead of the candidate.

9. Use a Recruitment Management Software in Bahrain

A recruitment management system in Bahrain is the most effective method to eliminate interviewer bias. You can monitor the entire interview process with accurate reports. Your interviewers will need to justify their selection and can quickly identify the chances of biases.

Eliminating interviewer bias will make your hiring process in Bahrain more effective, quicker and successful. You will never lose a qualified employee due to such practices and can build a robust workforce in your company.