What is Blind Hiring? Everything You Need to Know

What is Blind Hiring

Are you looking to shake up your recruitment process?

Would you like a more diverse and productive workforce?

If yes, then you need to know about blind hiring.

One of the most popular current recruitment trends, many big corporations such as Google, Virgin Money, and Deloitte are already using this method to help eliminate discrimination, boost diversity and find the best talent within their field.

So, what exactly is blind hiring, and why should you invest your time and resources in it?

Keep reading to find out!

What is blind hiring?

As the name suggests, blind hiring is the process of removing information such as a name, gender, religion, and socioeconomic background from hiring to reduce bias. Allowing you to judge a candidate purely on their skills, not where they came from, blind hiring can increase diversity and inclusion and help you find the best person for the job.

What are the benefits of blind hiring?

There are many benefits to choosing this recruitment technique over a more traditional strategy, including:

  • You will remove unconscious bias
  • You will have a larger pool of candidates to choose from
  • You will be able to hire based purely on merit
  • You will enjoy a more diverse workforce
  • You will potentially have a more highly skilled workforce
  • You will save time and money recruiting
  • You will offer an improved candidate experience

What are the best blind hiring processes?

If you would like to incorporate blind hiring into your recruitment process, there are a number of steps that you can take to help achieve this:

1.    Write an all-inclusive job description

Starting at the very beginning of the recruitment process, if you want to hire a more diverse workforce, you need to ensure that your job descriptions encourage a wide range of applicants to apply.

Avoid using gender-based biases within your job descriptions and instead, use phrases such as the “ideal candidate”. You should also avoid an age-related or racial terms that could potentially put off candidates from applying.

2.    Remove demographic information

When looking at resumes, think about what information you could do without removing this data from the process. This may include a candidate’s name, zip code, headshot, and any other clues that will detract from the blind hiring process.

3.    Remove academic information

Although you may think that the academic performance of a candidate is crucial to the overall recruitment process, you should know that the likelihood of hiring a strong performer only increases by 4% when choosing a candidate based on their GPA rather than by random selection.

4.    Collect data on skills

If you are concerned about how you are going to choose the ideal candidate once you have removed all of the above data, you should know that there are several ways that you can ensure you find the best person for the job.

One of the most effective being by carrying out pre-employment assessments that allow you to gather data about your candidates’ abilities, their soft skills, their personality, and their company culture preferences.