Take a deep, long look at your talent acquisition process. Can you be sure there is no unconscious bias in your recruitment process?
CIPD is the UK professional body for HR and people development professionals, and it provides this helpful guidance below;
CIPD research has shown that just 28% of UK employers train all interviewers on legal obligations and objective interview practice. Less than a fifth make efforts to remove bias through testing the words of job adverts or checking that tests are valid, reliable and objective.
Unfortunately, no one is immune to bias, so recruitment processes should be designed to reduce the influence of bias and illuminate discrimination wherever possible, while getting the most suitable candidate for a role.
Employers should embed inclusive practices in their recruitment process. However, it is not always clear on what makes a candidate ‘suitable’ and there is potential for bias to creep in the decision making process.
Recruitment can be a very subjective process, demanding that hiring managers make key hiring decisions under time tight timescales and often under pressure to appoint – and this can be the perfect storm, making it particularly susceptible to bias and in fact, there is strong evidence to suggest that marginalised groups face discrimination in recruitment.
A few tips to help Talent Acquisition Teams avoid unconscious bias whilst recruiting, in accordance with CIPD guidance
Create recruitment processes which are clear, objective, structured and transparent processes which are fairer for candidates, supporting more equal outcomes, and enabling employers to attract more diverse talent pools.
Even small process changes can have a big effect on who applies, who is selected, as well as improving the candidate experience – a critical component that fits in any hiring organisation’s employer brand.
Person Requirements
- Make role requirements clear, specific and behaviour-based
- Remove biased language from job adverts
- Avoid mandating diversity statements
- Avoid a requirement for ‘cultural fit’ or ‘organisational fit’
*Instead of … “you are a natural leader” … try … “you have held people responsibilities”
* Bias language refers to words associated with identity-based stereotypes, such as masculine or younger-age stereotypes. Language ‘decoders’ are available online to help identify this language (Eg, words such as ‘compassionate’ and ‘empathetic’ are stereotypically feminine language)
* Diversity statements are intended to communicate that employers care about equality and diversity, but the evidence about the impact is inconsistent. That said, there is no evidence to suggest that the diversity statements increase the likelihood that marginalised groups will be hired and more importantly, the impact of diversity statements depends on the actual, real and genuine diversity of the employer.
*Avoid a requirement for ‘cultural fit ‘ or ‘organisational fit’ .. especially when this is not explained further. This may look for how closely candidates’ beliefs and behaviours align with the employer’s norms and culture. However, in practice, the reality of that often means how similar candidates are to existing employees. Organisations should use objective criteria for hiring instead.
Job Specification
- Offer flexible working by default
- Make salaries non-negotiable and include them in the job advert
- Advertise the specific benefits and policies available
*The CIPD has a handy Job Description and Person Spec that can help with this.
*Advertise jobs with specific flexible working options by default wherever possible. Offering flexible working from day one is keeping in line with the latest legislation. Roles offering flexible working attract more interest.
*Publishing salaries on job adverts increases pay transparency and equality in pay, helping to level the playing field, and, in my opinion, attract a higher response.
*Advertising key benefits on policies, particularly those that promote inclusivity and exceed legal minimums, such as parental leave and pay, annual leave allowance, sick pay including for dependants and pension contributions.
*See below for the CIPD template of a well-designed job advert.
Attracting Diverse Candidates
- Place job adverts where they are more likely to be seen by marginalised applicants
- Focus outreach efforts on marginalised groups
- Provide candidates with clear expectations, timelines and communications
- Proactively ask applicants if they need reasonable adjustments during the recruitment process
*To try to reach marginalised groups, tailor placement of some job adverts to, for example, Divesifying.io, which covers all characteristics. Mumsnet is useful to reach women, particularly mothers returning from maternity leave or a career break. There are also job boards that focus on particular protected characteristics, such as ethnicity, eg BME Jobs or Ethnic Job Site, disability, eg Evenbreak and sexuality, eg LGBT jobs, as well as for older workers, Restless.
*Example of a checklist to send to candidates for reasonable adjustments during the recruitment process. Start by asking this question: “ Do you require any of the following adjustments to the interview process?” ..
- Extra time during tasks or video applications
- Assistance if the assessment or test in on a computer, such as closed captions
- Sharing interview questions no screen (or on paper if interviewing in person)
- Have an accessible car parking space reserved
- Hold the interview at a specific time of day (please suggest)
- A British Sign Language Interpreter
- Anything else – please describe
*Section 60 of the Equlaity Act – note, it is unlawful, except in certain circumstances, to ask about disability and health before any job offer. However, employers are permitted to ask pre-offer health questions to make reasonable adjustments to interview and assess, establish if candidates can perform tasks intrinsic to the work involved, and monitor diversity in the workplace.
Application Process
- Anonymise applications
- Avoid asking candidates about the dates of their employment history
*Remove identifying information from CVs and application forms before hiring managers review them. This includes name, contact details and can extend to removing ‘cues’ such as universities attended and education dates to tackle risk of age discrimination. The evidence is mixed on whether anonymising candidate information increases risk however.
*See below for how using CVs can get in the way of inclusive recruitment.
Selection Process
- Reduce bias in automated sifting
- Include more marginalised candidates in the shortlist
- Avoid using social media to sift applicants
- Make scheduling interviews easy, accessible, and flexible
- Use structured interviews
- Use skill-based assessment
*Avoid asking applicants about criminal record information during the application process
*When auto-sifting, evaluate whether these methods are biased by comparing the results of a manual sift, eg a sift based on postcode can introduce bias against certain socioeconomic or ethnic groups. Or screening for specific keywords can introduce subjectivity and bias.
* Avoid looking through candidates’ social media profiles to learn about them before the interview. Incorporating social media candidate searches can undo any positive action already applied in the recruitment process so far and to use objective criteria to evaluate candidates.
*When arranging interviews, it is useful to consider that many candidates may have time and budgetary constraints, including working hours and caring responsibilities that may prohibit their availability. If candidates require flexible interviews or reasonable adjustments, this should not influence the assessment of the candidate – employers should be wary of offering both options, but inadvertently favouring in-person interviewees.
*Structured interviews involve asking a predefined set of questions, in the same order, to all candidates. Responses are then scored using consistent criteria, eg a question might ask whether a candidate is knowledgeable about a a particular risk. They could be scored on how many risks they identify and other related risk factors.
*Having more than one interviewer has shown to lead to fairer and more accurate results.
*Skill based assessment tests have been found to be better predictors of performance on the job when compared with traditional approaches such as tests or reviewing job experience. Care must be taken to design skill assessment with thought, to avoid any further bias.
Candidate Evaluation
- Make decisions about candidates in batches
- Use calibrations for hiring decisions
- Avoid mandatory diverse interview panels
*Make decisions about candidates in batches – this involves reviewing multiple candidates in parallel, rather than one-by-one, comparing with each other before making a decision about an individual.
* Calibration involves having multiple decision makers come together to jointly review and discuss and compare scores, this helps ensure a consistency in assessment.
Post Offer
- Share and collect feedback from all candidates
- Proactively offer reasonable adjustments to all new jointers
- Encourage candidates to reapply
*Providing clear feedback after interviews is likely to increase accountability for hiring manager decisions, as well as improve the candidate experience. Collecting feedback anonymously from candidates would help to identify and resolve problems in the recruitment process, that might not have bee obvious otherwise.
Monitoring & Measuring
- Set diversity targets for recruitment
- Collect high-quality data to monitor outcomes
Elements of a well-designed job advert
How using CVs can get in the way of inclusive recruitment
This information has been provided by CIPD and is in accordance with their guidance, as at October 2025.