Blind Recruitment Won’t Solve Your Inclusion Problem: A Guide to Inclusive and Accessible Recruitment
When starting my career, I spent one year at a graduate recruitment agency. Over the course of this year, it rapidly became apparent that recruitment was not for me. However, having close exposure to the founders and spending time on the business's recruitment and B2B marketing sides taught me a lot. I learnt hands-on about how recruitment agencies worked on the inside and how they communicated and sold their services to the world.
On a day-to-day basis, behind the scenes, I often witnessed the recruitment consultants' biases. Standard practices included making fun of candidate’s names, refusing to call candidates whose names were perceived as difficult to pronounce, glossing over CVs of applicants not from red-brick universities, and making assumptions about visa statuses. Recruitment was a game, and the winner was the one who made the best match the quickest.
On the other hand, reaching “diverse” candidates was and remains an ongoing pain point for organisations. Most organisations don't know how to reach people outside their small spheres of influence, and when they do, there’s a myriad of issues, from inaccessible interview processes to biased interviewers. When I came across the concept of “blind recruitment”, I was intrigued. Would this be the solution to diversity and inclusion problems in recruitment processes?
I’ve participated in countless recruitment processes for over a dozen organisations throughout my career. In this guide, we’ll explore “blind recruitment”, if it really solves the inclusion problem, and what else you need to know about accessible and inclusive recruitment.
What is Blind Recruitment?
Blind recruitment is a hiring process designed to eliminate biases in selecting candidates for job positions. It involves removing identifiable information from job applications during the application process. Candidates can share their skills, experiences and motivations, but information such as the applicant's name, gender, age, race, educational background, and sometimes even the names of their employers are removed.
The aim is to ensure that hiring managers or anyone involved in screening applications is forced to focus solely on the candidates' qualifications, skills, and experience rather than being influenced by irrelevant factors.
Blind recruitment software tools ensure candidates are evaluated solely on their merits rather than any implicit biases or stereotypes that might affect decision-making. The goal is to create a fairer and more objective selection process, leading to a more diverse workforce that reflects a broader range of backgrounds and perspectives.
Does Blind Recruitment Work?
Blind recruitment tools have their place, but they also have their pitfalls. Ultimately, blind recruitment plays a role in eliminating (some) biases and stereotypes during the screening process but will not and can not address all the issues that make your recruitment process inaccessible or ineffective.
Blind recruitment won’t broaden your candidate pool.
If your job listing isn’t reaching new audiences, you’ll get similar candidate pools, limiting diversity before the application process starts. Too many organisations still rely on traditional recruitment methods or networks, limiting their exposure to candidates from different backgrounds. The talent pool remains narrow without proactive efforts to reach underrepresented groups.
While there has been some shift in recent years, many job requirements may still be more accessible to a specific demographic, inadvertently excluding qualified candidates from different backgrounds or with alternative skill sets.
And finally, if you’re not showing your salary on job listings, you are absolutely part of the problem. When salaries are hidden, they are based on a candidate's current salary rather than what is equitable. That means those underpaid for their work stay that way, and pay gaps continue perpetuating. Don’t take my word for it; read more on Show the Salary.
Blind recruitment won’t eliminate all biases.
By removing identifiable information such as name, gender, ethnicity, and age from the initial stages of the recruitment process, blind recruitment helps minimise unconscious biases that may influence hiring decisions. This promotes a fairer and more objective evaluation of candidates based solely on their skills, qualifications, and experience.
Blind recruitment tools won’t, however, remove all biases. Most blind recruitment processes generally involve open-ended screening questions, e.g. can you tell us about a time when, what are your motivations for, what are your career aspirations in x years?
These questions are required to give the candidates space and opportunity to showcase themselves but are subjectively interpreted by those screening the responses. Blind recruitment can’t fully root out affinity bias (the tendency to favour people who share similar interests, backgrounds, and experiences). Because of affinity bias, we tend to feel more comfortable around people, which still influences the process.
It’s no longer blind when you get to the interview stage.
Blind recruitment can be useful in the early stages of applications but won’t address bias during the active interview stages. Interviewers carry all their biases, and a candidate who has made it through screening isn’t immune to them during interviewing.
These are some steps you can take to ensure that biases are actively taken into account and addressed during the interview stage:
Structured interviews: Using a structured interview format with standardised questions for all candidates helps ensure consistency and reduces the influence of unconscious biases.
Training and education: Training interviewers on recognising and mitigating personal biases is essential. Awareness of common biases such as affinity bias, confirmation bias, and stereotype bias can help interviewers make more objective decisions (find out more about these here).
Diverse interview panels: Ensure diversity of the interviewers themselves to bring different perspectives and reduce the impact of individual biases. This can help counteract homophily, the tendency to favour individuals similar to oneself. To achieve this, do not focus on visible diversity but take an intersectional approach that considers educational background, geographical location, work experience, and lived experience.
Focus on the job criteria: Base interview questions and evaluations on job-related criteria rather than subjective impressions or gut feelings. Clearly define the skills, experiences, and competencies required for the role and frame interviews around these.
Behavioural Interviewing: Behavioral interviewing is a technique that focuses on past performance and actions rather than hypothetical scenarios or personal characteristics. This approach provides concrete examples of candidates' abilities and reduces reliance on stereotypes.
Structured decision-making process: Implement a structured decision-making process that includes multiple evaluation criteria and input from various interviewers. This helps ensure hiring decisions are based on objective evidence rather than subjective impressions.
4. They won’t make candidates feel comfortable
The simple truth is that for people who are experiencing marginalisation, that won’t go away because you ran a blind recruitment process. Candidates will still have their lived experiences and, in some cases, accessibility needs regardless of your recruitment process.
It is essential to include an accessibility statement in all communications about the interview process, indicating that accommodations are available upon request. Beyond asking for accessibility requirements, here are some more steps you can take to ensure accessibility:
Training for interviewers: Some disabilities are visible, others are non-visible. Some things are a disability, even if we don’t know they are. Some people will have internalised ableism that will affect their ability to create equitable and comfortable spaces. Interviewers must be comfortable and confident in creating inclusive interview experiences, including communicating with candidates and knowing how to provide accommodations. Nobody should be interviewing in the first place if they cannot create an equitable and comfortable environment for every candidate.
Venue accessibility: If the interview is conducted in person, ensure the venue is accessible to candidates with visible and non-visible disabilities. This includes wheelchair accessibility, accessible parking, ramps or elevators, accessible restrooms, and access to quiet and private spaces should they be needed.
Digital accessibility: If the interview is conducted remotely or involves any digital components (such as video calls), ensure that the technology and platforms are accessible to candidates with disabilities. This may include providing alternatives for candidates who use screen readers or other assistive technologies.
Communication preferences: Ask candidates if they have any specific communication preferences or requirements related to accessibility. This includes preferences for written communication, sign language interpreters, or other accommodations.
Provide information in advance: Sharing information about the interview format, expectations, and any accommodations available well before the interview allows candidates to request any accommodations and ensure they can fully prepare.
Feedback mechanism: Establish a feedback mechanism for candidates to provide input on the accessibility of the interview process and any accommodations provided. Use this feedback to improve accessibility efforts continuously.
5. Blind recruitment won’t solve your organisation's problems with inclusion and retention
Blind recruitment alone will not address deeper systemic issues within an organisation's culture, contributing to bias and discrimination. You can bring more diverse candidates through the door, but do they have a seat at the table and a voice on the agenda? Blind recruitment addresses one piece of the puzzle but won’t fix your organisation's issues with inclusion.
There is also the risk of tokenism. If blind recruitment is viewed as a quick fix or superficial solution to bringing more diverse perspectives into your organisation, you’ll set yourself up to fail. Candidates who may not previously have landed the job may land the job, but will they feel genuinely included and valued once they’re employees?
Even if diverse candidates are successfully recruited, organisations may only retain them if the workplace culture is there are limited opportunities for advancement. Without a genuine and consistent commitment to creating an inclusive workplace culture, blind recruitment will not have a lasting impact. It should be part of a broader strategy rooted in anti-racism and anti-oppression that includes initiatives to promote equity, accessibility and inclusion at all levels.
While blind recruitment can be a valuable tool for reducing bias in the hiring process, it's essential to consider its limitations and ensure that it's implemented as part of a comprehensive strategy to foster equity and inclusion in the workplace.
This piece was written by Spark Insights’ Founder and Qualitative Research Lead, Ishita Ranjan-Churchill (she/her).