UNBIAS

CHAPTER 3What Is Unconscious Bias?

Think about the last time you interviewed someone for a job. How did that go? Were you prepared for the interview well in advance, or did you scan their resume five minutes before they walked in the door?

Did you have a standard set of interview questions that you asked each candidate for the position, or did you ask ad hoc questions depending upon the candidate's response?

Were you in a rush to fill the position because it had been open for far too long?

Did you get a feeling about the person when they entered the room – did you immediately like or dislike someone based upon what they were wearing, the color of their hair, how long or short their nails were, the timbre of their voice, whether they had an accent? The list goes on and on.

Although I don't talk at length about the interviewing process until Chapter 11, you may notice throughout the book that I frequently use interviewing in my examples. This is because interviews are something that every person has had to endure at some point in their career and every leader has been tasked with doing it. Having been a recruiter for many years, I've seen that, for many companies, it is an area where unconscious bias education starts and stops.

Without even knowing it, recruiters and hiring managers may be exercising their unconscious biases, or those of their managers, through the process by which they screen and consider candidates. This is because our brains receive millions of pieces of information ...