by Camille Perlman
The battle against bias is constant, but its negative effects can be mitigated to some extent if we continue to educate ourselves about it on a regular basis, understand what it is and how it seeps into our lives, and actively engage our workplace to put practices in place that will root it out. Daniel Gonzalez, coordinator of residential life at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, shared several best practices from the Office for Equity and Diversity at his institution. One effective practice is to work toward inclusion, not exclusion. Committees and individuals should check their perceptions and clear the slate of any bias before they begin the selection process or decide who is advancing in the process. Gonzalez shares this example: “If, hypothetically, I’m in a process and we’ve reached the final round and all four final candidates are white, cis, hetero, able-bodied, U.S. citizen men, then I am going to examine that before we finalize that. I am going to examine if there were things in our process that were biased that the committee or I did not notice earlier on. It’s not enough to just examine it after the person is hired; we must do it throughout the process.”
Another practice is to scrutinize if not modify your self-image and to remain aware that we subconsciously seek out people similar to ourselves but should not let this guide our opinions about a candidate. “Think about replacing your self-image,” Gonzalez suggests. “Sometimes this can be difficult. State to the committee that you are also subject to the influence of bias and assumptions. I know I have bias. I know that some of those things I have reflected on, some of my own biases, I try to interrogate more when I know that I am evaluating candidates who may share some of those identities that are more salient to me.” In addition, consider what your plan for ongoing education and reflection will be. “I think many trainings are centered on white people becoming ‘accustomed’ to people who do not look like them. That's unfortunate. Diversity to a white person might be eight white people and two people of color. But to the two people of color, their voice can be drowned out in that scenario,” says Brandon Barile, assistant vice president and dean of student engagement and conduct at Hobart William Smith Colleges in Geneva, New York. “When thinking about training or change, ask yourself ‘how does this create belonging, respect, and empathy for all? Are our recruitment practices being respectful of difference?’" As one example, he recounts how he once interviewed for a position with a school that said they prioritized in-person interviews at job placement events over phone interviews because they could get a better “vibe” of the candidates. “But lots of folks can’t afford to travel,” Barile notes. “Some religious observances don't allow for working on Saturday or Sunday. How are we being considerate of all in our practices? That requires the majority to learn how to be considerate.”
Gonzalez adds that campuses need to consider broader efforts to educate staff against their implicit biases. It’s not enough to educate on best practices after the search committee is selected and begins its work of reading applications and résumés and interviewing candidates. “I think ongoing reflective work is important,” Barile says. “Instead of one training before a recruitment season, what if you did the reflective positionality work throughout the year, weekly? It could be a weekly journal with reflective questions and then group work once a month as a department. The routine of thinking about our bias allows it to be front-and-center (versus subconscious), and we can actively challenge our bias when we're thinking about it.”
Look at what the required core job functions are and what the desired ones are for the position and then frame questions for the candidate appropriately.
Gonzalez highlights more recommendations from Minnesota’s Office for Equity and Diversity to keep search committees on the right path. First, they suggest slowing the process down and planning ahead. Gonzalez explains that this may be hard for people since “you typically feel like you wanted that vacancy filled yesterday.” In addition, the search chair probably feels a lot of pressure, and, as each day passes, everyone is aware that the interim person has to do more work. It is moments like these, he warns, when it’s easy to stumble into a pitfall. “Begin the process slow, and the first step is to make sure your committee is trained and has the resources to look at each application thoroughly and without bias. Also, let your committee know what the milestones are for the search process and do not rush the process for the sake of filling the vacancy. Lay out a timeline, but also say this timeline is still subject to change. For example, if the candidate pool is not diverse enough, you will need to make plans to correct that. This way change is seen as normal and expected by the committee.”
Another recommendation is to diversify and rotate committee membership. “Make sure committee members rotate. Members shouldn’t stay on forever,” Gonzalez says. “At Minnesota, the team is diversified by position and only on the committee one semester at a time.” This is important for bringing in different perspectives and avoiding interview fatigue on the part of the committee. “Reading the same response to a question can be tiring, and you don’t want to ruin a candidate’s chances because the committee is fatigued.” It’s also important to think about what lived experiences there are among the people on the committee. For example, Gonzalez shared his appreciation for a coworker who brought 40 years of experience to one of their interview sessions, and their knowledge of the job and the work environment enhanced the process for all.
Barile shares this insight from a 2010 dissertation by Larry P. Sanderson, Choosing the Next Best President: Organizational Process or Ceremonial Ritual? An Ethnographic Look at the Inner Dynamics of Presidential Search Committees at Two Community Colleges. “Sanderson called out that search committees can easily become ritual if you're just looking for fit. First, be honest – what's the purpose of the search committee? What role do they play? Are they just the welcome wagon for in-person interviews? Are they looking at ensuring that the process is fair and representative? Are they making hiring decisions? Those questions need to be answered first. Then, when thinking about the committee, I always recommend not just appointing people or asking who is interested. First, have a mission statement for the committee and a statement of search values. Then, ask your committee members: why are you interested? How will you connect your choices to our values? How will you enforce our values? What will you do when a behavior or decision seemingly goes against our mission or values?”
The staff at Minnesota also recommend that stereotyping be immediately countered, when it happens, and that the committee should decide how those involved in the hiring process discuss bias in the process. “Set ground rules for how you will interview candidates, but also set ground rules for discussing candidates,” says Gonzalez. “In my experience, the committee recognizes that we all are going to make mistakes sometimes, like saying biased things, but [we] have a collective agreement that the team will mitigate it.” Mistakes that invite bias into the process can take many forms. Maybe someone sees an error in the rubric they used to score a candidate or someone notices that the interview schedule unfairly gives one candidate an advantage. Honest mistakes happen, but the team needs to put them out in the open in order to ensure that no bias was aimed at the candidates. If the team is willing to do this, they have better chances of avoiding conversations around fit, which many sources agree is the biggest act of stereotyping a team needs to counter. “We hear that [question] ‘Is that person a good fit?’ all the time,” says Shana Alston, director of housing at Temple University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. “I literally say ‘What does that mean to you?’” Gonzalez is also bothered by the subjectivity of the idea of fit and says, “I don’t allow it. I got to a point. There had to be a lot of education to get there, you know, to be able for me to comfortably say, okay, we’ve had plenty of training, we need to adjust that and provide the example. Take out the word fit and provide the concrete, objective example.”
April Barnes, executive director of housing and residence life at the University of South Carolina-Columbia, explains that they use Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) – which are quantifiable metrics used to track and measure an employee’s performance in achieving a goal that is key to the organization – to determine fit for selecting student staff, and in her words the results were “fantastic.” “Instead of just hearing they had a great personality or they were so friendly, we had a list of examples of how a candidate met the KPI we set. Woven into the KPIs were qualities we were looking for in a candidate, so we were able to ask, did they give a leadership example?” She explained that it took a lot of work to create their KPIs, and staff had to get used to bringing this new tool into their selection process because it took more time and effort. “But in the end you were able to have the amazing list of KPIs to help you as you were trying to build a staff. You could say, hey, I need somebody with this to fill a space on my team, and you were able to pull that directly from the KPI list.” She continues saying, “Our assistant director, Tiffany Conde, who ran our selection process, was phenomenal in creating this. I think this is a great start to curb bias in the selection process. I think we need to go a step further and train on implicit bias. We also have to do the same thing (create KPIs) for our professional staff members. I was really happy with the process.” The KPIs also helped when candidates asked why they were not hired for a position. “Before our KPIs when we were asked that question, it was trying to read what somebody on the hiring team scribbled in the comments section on the feedback form. You could find something like ‘wasn’t a good fit.’ What does that even mean? There is no way to defend that; it was like our process wasn’t sound,” Barnes explains. “I think it [the discussion about what fit means] is a really big conversation for our field.”
Gonzalez recommends that members of the hiring committee should decide if they have reached a critical mass of applicants by working with the human resources office to determine what the best number is. It’s a delicate balance between the number of applicants and the depth of diversity in the applicant pool. This is one more time to double-check to see if diverse candidates have somehow been eliminated. Ask where the job listing was posted. Did it only appear on the institution’s job board? Was it also listed on job boards or in communication circles where more diverse applicants would see it, such as social media for underrepresented professionals?
Another important recommendation is to develop and prioritize conversation about criteria for the core functions outlined in the job description. Look at what the required core functions are and what the desired ones are for the position and then frame questions for the candidate appropriately. If they are a newer professional in the field, ask about their experiences instead of about specific certifications or academic degrees they have yet to attain. And if there are multiple panels interviewing the candidate, each one should ask different questions. Don’t have each panel ask the same questions centered around the core job functions. Plan ahead for each one to ask different questions. For example, conversation during a beverage break can give insight into who a candidate is. The team needs to know more about a candidate than what benchmarks can be checked off of the core job function list.
And, finally, use as many objective tools as possible, such as redacting names from applications and résumés. Gonzalez is a staunch advocate of this. He explains that they use Adobe software to take out names, addresses, phone numbers, LinkedIn information, preferred pronouns (replacing these with the pronouns "they" and "them"), and names in lists of published work. Then they make a file with these revised documents for each candidate and place it in a shared folder for the committee. He says there have been only one or two times that someone on the committee has recognized a candidate after this information was deleted. Alston and her staff recently started redacting personal information from these documents as well and says they now have more diverse applicant pools.
One effective practice is to work toward inclusion, not exclusion. Committees and individuals should check their perceptions and clear the slate of any bias before they begin the selection process or decide who is advancing in the process.
Structured evaluation templates are another good tool to use. Many teams use rubrics, but it’s important to get input from multiple people as they are being built. Start with a good base set of standards. And throughout the interview process be sure to offer opportunities for candidates to respond with both written and oral responses. This helps keep the process balanced and not weighted unfairly toward those who may answer questions better face-to-face. Mock scenarios are frequently used in student affairs interviews, and Gonzalez suggests thinking about how you can equalize the playing field so it’s not always the best oral communicator who gets the job. At Temple University, Alston and her staff have started using a behavioral interview model to get away from using mock scenarios. The Society for Human Resource Management defines this type of interview as one that “focuses on a candidate's past experiences by asking candidates to provide specific examples of how they have demonstrated certain behaviors, knowledge, skills and abilities.” Alston feels this allows candidates a better opportunity to show their knowledge or skills instead of possibly feeling pressured to act a certain way and give what they feel is the expected response.
Rule setting is a good tool as well. This means defining what the role of the committee is and letting them know what work they will be doing and why and what parts of the work will be carried out by other departments or staff. This includes letting the committee know who or what department will be making the final hiring decision. Gonzalez says that if the work or the roles are not explained in the beginning it can become a “can of worms” later.
Inspired by one of Gonzalez’s conference presentations, Alston and Patricia Kowalski, manager of recruitment and development for housing operations at Temple, started gathering more information on ways to avoid bias in the hiring process. Ultimately, they want to develop a training program for hiring managers and create a sort of toolkit for them. Ideally, this is what Gonzalez wanted attendees to walk away with. As he explains, “Diversity is fundamental to everything we do in our profession. We must address issues of access and climate for individuals who might encounter barriers based on their religious expression, age, national origin, ethnicity, size, or veteran status.” And he stresses that it’s important to know why committee members are doing this work as they move the hiring processes forward. “Know why we must embed equity-minded practices throughout our procedures, including our search and selection processes. The more you reflect on that, the more you know your why and the better you become at engaging your search committee members and peers or other hiring managers in [this work and knowing] that this work is important and necessary work.”
Camille Perlman is the managing editor of Talking Stick.
