Affinity Bias in Hiring
What is Affinity Bias? Why and How can you keep it out of your hiring process?
Affinity bias is the tendency to favour people who share similar interests, backgrounds, and experiences with us. It can affect hiring decisions by making us unconsciously prefer candidates who are like us or remind us of ourselves, rather than those who have the best skills and qualifications for the job. This can lead to discrimination, lack of diversity, and poor performance in the workplace.
What are some other types of bias that affect the workplace?
Some types of bias that affect the hiring process are:
- Affinity bias: The tendency to favour people who share similar interests, backgrounds, and experiences with us.
- Confirmation bias: The tendency to seek or favour information that confirms our existing beliefs or values.
- Conformity bias: The tendency to agree with others in a group, even if it goes against our own opinions or judgments.
- Appearance bias: The tendency to judge people based on their physical appearance, such as attractiveness, clothing, or body language.
- Attribution bias: The tendency to attribute different causes or motives to our own actions and those of others, often in a self-serving or stereotypical way.
- Gender bias: The tendency to favour one gender over another, often based on stereotypes or assumptions about their roles, abilities, or preferences.
- Age bias: The tendency to favour people of a certain age group over others, often based on stereotypes or assumptions about their skills, experience, or potential.
- Contrast bias: The tendency to compare people or situations with others that are present or recent, rather than with objective standards or criteria.
Few examples of affinity bias in hiring process are:
Some examples of affinity bias in hiring process are:
- A hiring manager prefers candidates who graduated from the same university as them.
- A recruiter selects candidates who have similar hobbies or interests as them.
- A interviewer gives more positive feedback to candidates who belong to the same sorority or membership group as them.
- A employer hires candidates who have the same religion or political affiliation as them.
- A team leader chooses candidates who remind them of their younger selves.
How can you measure affinity bias in my organization?
One way to measure affinity bias in your hiring process is to use surveys or assessments that can reveal your employees’ implicit preferences or attitudes towards different groups of people.
For example, you can use the Implicit Association Test (IAT) developed by Harvard University, which measures the strength of associations between concepts and attributes. You can also use tools like Factorial, which can help you collect and analyse data on your hiring, performance, and diversity metrics.
By measuring affinity bias, you can identify areas where you need to improve your policies, practices, and culture to promote inclusion and equity.
How can you reduce affinity bias in my hiring process?
Some ways to reduce affinity bias in your hiring process are:
- Use a standardized and structured hiring process that defines the job requirements, evaluation criteria, and interview questions in advance.
- Anonymize resumes to avoid bias based on names, education, or other personal details.
- Use diverse hiring panels that include people from different backgrounds, perspectives, and roles.
- Provide training and feedback to your hiring managers and recruiters on how to recognize and overcome their own biases.
- Monitor and measure your hiring outcomes and diversity metrics to identify any gaps or patterns of bias.
You should keep affinity bias out of your hiring process by using objective and standardized criteria, anonymizing resumes, diversifying hiring panels, and providing training and feedback on bias awareness and prevention.
About the Author.
Ratnesh Jain is an entrepreneur, mentor & author.
IIM Ahmedabad alumni with 30+ years of professional and entrepreneurship experience. Past 17 years in Executive search & Growth consulting.
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