6 Practical Ways Recruiters Can Use Virtual Hiring Software to Reduce Bias in Hiring

Hiring bias has been under intense scrutiny lately. You may have come across various articles that cheer diversity, equity, and inclusion in the workplace, right? The truth is, hiring can be tough. You may want to promote diversity in the workplace, but hiring bias can still loom around the corners like a shadow.

So what are we missing? Is there a way to combat hiring bias for good?

Truth be told, when human bias takes place, it’s hard for humans to combat it themselves. Employers aren’t giving up though. From blind hiring, skill tests to virtual hiring software – there are numerous approaches that one can take in HR to reduce bias. And technology is always there to give a helpful hand.

This is why recruiters today are utilizing virtual hiring software to minimize any hiring bias that  resurfaces during the hiring process.

And here’s how it’s helping them burst the bias bubble.

Write accurate and inclusive job descriptions

Recruiters know that a job description is often the first touchpoint with candidates. It’s how candidates hear your company’s voice and get the gist of what it would be like to work for you. But take a good moment to read your job descriptions. Are your words pulling or pushing candidates away? The best way to find out is to check if you’ve used any non-inclusive language.

Job titles can be biased and gendered. We live in the 21^st century and we still job descriptions with job titles such as “Chairman” or “Councilman”. Instead, recruiters should be gender-neutral and opt for titles such as “Chairperson” and “Council member”.

Luckily, our virtual hiring software can give you a hand with that. It can innovatively help recruiters write job descriptions with full accuracy. All recruiters have to do, is simply write the job title for the position, and EVA-REC will instantly generate the skill sets required for the job – in seconds! This way, recruiters won’t elicit any hiring bias. As they can rely on EVA-REC to use the right language that is proven to communicate more successfully with candidates.

Use talent matching to find the perfect fit

Now that we learned how to write unbiased job descriptions….what about reducing bias in the advanced hiring stages?

Oftentimes, recruiters might rely on guesswork and intuition to match candidates to the right jobs. Why’s that? Either because they don’t have sufficient insights, or they’re extremely under pressure to hire the right candidates fast. If you’re a recruiter who has a wide pool of talent, then you’re most likely trying to determine which candidate has the right skillsets for the job. What you may not know, is that this is the prime time for hiring bias to poke in its head.

Luckily, there’s our virtual hiring software to save the day. How, you may ask?

Through AI talent matching.

Talent matching means that the technology can match candidates to the most suitable jobs in seconds. Simply by taking into account the candidate’s skillsets, experience, and so on, and matches them to the job requirements. It doesn’t just factor in age, gender, and race.

As a result, this can help talent acquisition teams discover top talent without invoking any biased decisions. Because talent matching automatically and objectively matches the right candidates to the right jobs. Our virtual hiring software also provides recruiters with a matching percentage, and gives them the option to rank candidates from highest to lowest match as well! If you haven’t tried it out yet, then you’re truly missing out on this brilliant feature.

Source and screen candidates more effectively

Unlike humans, an AI virtual hiring software can screen thousands – even millions – of resumes in seconds.

But before we get to the screening part, let’s talk a little bit more about the sourcing part. How can recruiters be sure to source candidates fairly and hire a diverse workforce?

It’s simple.

Our virtual hiring software allows recruiters to post their jobs on beautifully branded career pages that convert top talent and turn their company into a talent magnet. What’s more, recruiters can also post job ads to 2,000+ job boards to increase the visibility of jobs and reach a diverse pool of talent. This means, that recruiters won’t be too selective and biased when sourcing candidates.

Arriving at the best recruitment decision entails measuring the candidate’s potential and capability against a selection of criteria. Whether a recruiter is looking to hire a young, enthusiastic Sales representative, who’s fluent in English or Spanish, and is looking to relocate or travel – our virtual hiring software allows recruiters to assign weights to the criteria most important to them. After assigning the weights, the recruiters will notice that each candidate will get a certain matching percentage. This percentage signifies how close the candidate’s qualifications match the job requirements. Not only will this tool help you reduce bias, but it will also help you spot the right talent in a few clicks only, saving up to 90% of your time!

Improves and promotes diversity in hiring

As an HR professional, you already know that a diverse workforce is a better workforce. It increases efficiency, productivity, innovation, and talent.

However, when trying to build a diverse workforce, some HR professionals might make a few biased decisions here and there. Such as favoring candidates from certain backgrounds or schools. And the best way to swerve around this issue is by using virtual hiring software.

Some recruiting teams may introduce biases when they narrow candidates to a more manageable size. However, when used correctly, AI and virtual hiring software can help reduce the impact of those human biases when it comes to recruiting. Simply because the technology and AI will qualify prospects without being influenced by demographic characteristics. Instead, it can help recruiters focus more on measures like competencies, skills, and experience to determine a candidate’s eligibly for the job.

Enhances and boosts collaborative hiring

Collaborative hiring can incredibly help recruiters minimize unconscious bias.

Why?

Because when more voices are added to the recruitment process, a broader range of opinions will be heard. With virtual hiring software, recruiting teams can collaborate, communicate, share feedback and work together in one place. They can discuss candidates, give feedback, and share ratings to enhance decision-making. To simply put it, it improves collaborative hiring, which relatively improves the transparency of the hiring process.

When teams collaborate together, it leads to a higher level of proficiency when evaluating potential candidates. Therefore, recruiters will view candidates from multiple perspectives and opinions to obtain a more complete and thorough assessment. As a result, this mitigates the impact of hiring bias when selecting and hiring qualified candidates.

Use data-driven insights to make accurate decisions

To inevitably stamp out hiring bias, recruiters need to resort to advanced analytics and data-driven insights.

With our virtual hiring software, recruiters can get meticulous and thorough insights that improve their hiring decisions. They can also get fruitful insights on candidates, team members, jobs, questionnaires, and events with an advanced analytics feature. What makes this feature unique, is that it’s flexible, visual, and fully customizable. This means that you can customize the data that you want to appear on the grid view, by simply selecting the insights you want to see.

With this feature, recruiters can also track and get an overview of candidate sources, the total number of candidates disqualified and the candidates hired. They can also get deeper insights on the time saved, cost saved, time-to-disqualify, and time-to-hire. With objective, accurate, and unbiased data at hand, recruiters can inevitably reduce hiring bias.

In short

While hiring bias can be common, it’s not entirely impossible to minimize it.

All recruiters really need is an AI-powered virtual hiring software to help them accelerate their hiring efforts to build a fairer, friendlier and more objective hiring process. This way, recruiters can exceptionally minimize the heavy impact of hiring bias, and improve diversity and inclusion in the workplace as a result.

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