Disrupting Job Title Bias Part 1: For Employers

To build truly diverse teams that don’t just look different, we need to do something different in the hiring process.

In business and especially in hiring, we're all talking about diversity, equity, and inclusion. Companies set affirmative action goals. Job postings include equal opportunity statements that encourage candidates from minority groups to apply. Hiring teams can even utilize software that masks personal data to avoid any unconscious bias or assumptions based on the candidate's name or address. And for the most part, these are all good things. 

But although DEI in hiring has come a long way in recent years, there are still untapped areas of diversity such as job history. Varying the gender and ethnicity of the people we interview can be an obvious, visible way to combat uniformity in the hiring process, but it isn’t the only area where traditional biases have created a barrier to diversity. If we really want our teams to be different —and not just look different—we need to do something different. 

For recruiters and hiring managers, we can challenge ourselves to add this dimension of diversity by looking beyond a candidate’s years of experience tied to a particular job title. 

Three specific steps that talent acquisition teams can apply include:

1. Review resumes with human eyes.

Applicant tracking software is a helpful tool, but without a highly sophisticated level of DEI-conscious programming, using it to set up automatic rejection workflows can set our diverse hiring efforts up for failure. Instead of relying on AI to decide which candidates are worthy of consideration, let’s challenge hiring teams to designate an open-minded human to review all resumes. Yes, this is time-consuming, and there might be a dozen applications that absolutely should be screened out for every one that’s worth a second look. But just as you can’t hire the person you don’t interview, you’re unlikely to interview that diverse candidate if no one has even looked at their resume.

2. Look for transferable skills.

Transferable skills, a phrase that’s been gaining traction in diversity hiring, refers to skills and experience that can be applied to a job or role that isn’t a perfect 1:1 match—and these skills might be hiding in the bullet points below a seemingly unrelated job title. A former retail store cashier can bring customer service skills and attention to detail to an office administrator position. An elementary school teacher has a passion for education, creative problem solving skills, and an understanding of classroom teachers’ needs that can be highly valuable for a variety of roles at an edtech company. An expert user of a digital product could be the ideal salesperson or implementation specialist for the software they used daily in their last role. And if you’re hiring to fill one of many equivalent positions on a team (sales staff, customer service reps, widget designers?), you’ll add greater depth and diversity to your team by selecting candidates with a variety of previous job experience.

3. Be authentic. 

This advice really applies to anyone, anywhere, and can improve all areas of the hiring process. Specific to job title bias, authenticity requires hiring teams to be honest about what they’re really looking for and what the candidate can expect. Don’t put a footnote on your job posts that says “Even if you only meet 75% of the qualifications, we want to talk to you” unless someone from the hiring team really will talk to a job applicant who only checks three quarters of the qualification boxes. Don’t schedule a dozen interviews with diverse individuals when you already know the job is going to an internal candidate; it’s inconsiderate of the candidates’ and the interviewers’ time. And if the leadership at your company looks homogenous, causing hesitation for traditionally diverse candidates, be authentic about some of the invisible differences that give your team strength, as well as about the efforts you’re making to broaden the perspectives that are represented on the team.

Another bonus of authenticity: it underscores that regardless of differences or sameness, we are all imperfect humans, and one thing we have in common is that we don’t always get it right. But by being intentional in our efforts to overcome bias, we can work towards a deeper level of diversity in the hiring process.

- MJ

Life of You

What are some other “invisible differences” that can add diversity to your team, and how do you find qualified candidates who reflect that diversity?