New White Paper: The State of Hiring 2022: Mitigating Unconscious Bias during Hiring and Selection

It is no surprise that most hiring managers and decision-makers with understaffed, burned-out, and overworked teams view a structured hiring and selection process as time-consuming. Instead, they often unintentionally favor instinct or intuition for its quick approach—making the hiring and selection process susceptible to the effects of unconscious bias.

Unconscious bias is generally defined as the automatic associations people make between multiple characteristics and social categories, such as race, age, gender, disability, and attitudes/beliefs. These biases are often generated from prior experiences and influence how we interact with people in those groups, especially in situations where quick decision-making is needed.

In hiring and selection, unconscious bias can significantly impact an organization's ability to hire diverse and qualified candidates since its automatic and elusive nature makes it hard to recognize and address. Hiring managers and employees alike are susceptible to unconscious bias and may unknowingly make decisions and choices, both personally and organizationally, that can exclude individuals based on a single characteristic or trait. Thus, unconscious bias could derail an organization’s ability to hire diverse talent in an equitable manner.

To better understand the impact unconscious bias has on hiring and selection and its long-term impact in the workplace, Wiley recently surveyed 5,000 working professionals. Our findings will provide you with concrete actions your organization can take to combat unconscious bias in hiring and selection.

Although widely discussed, unconscious bias remains an abstract concept for many. In fact, while 77% of respondents reported having familiarity with the concept, only 12% rated themselves as being extremely familiar with unconscious bias.  Our findings indicate that when people have a higher degree of familiarity with unconscious bias, they also can more easily identify it and therefore contribute to a solution.

Organizations that address unconscious bias are likely to gain access to qualified candidates, have a greater ability to retain existing employees, and create a diverse and equitable workplace environment.
Download our new White Paper, The State of Hiring 2022: Mitigating Unconscious Bias during Hiring and Selection, to learn more about the tangible steps you can take to address and combat unconscious bias in hiring and selection today.