The current state of hiring is problematic, yet companies do not even see the cracks in it, which appear to be wider than anyone could imagine. During my PhD dissertation on IT recruitment, I discovered an unconscious preference of hiring managers to select candidates similar to themselves by gender, but only for junior-level positions, when the hiring process is unstructured and emotion-based. The junior hiring process is the point where bias is most dangerous because it determines who has an opportunity to get into the company in the first place.
What My Research Actually Found
The moment I started investigating my dissertation topic on hiring equity, I was sure that there would be some form of discrimination in the procedure, but I was not expecting the discrimination to occur so precisely at one level. In the IT recruitment dataset I used for analysis, I found that interviewers exhibited a preference for applicants of the same gender as themselves. However,
it is noteworthy that this bias was not evident in the senior interviewers. As they have been pattern-matching for a very long time and the evaluation criteria are clear-cut at this stage, the bias does not occur anymore. This clearly indicated to me that bias is not an issue of who is interviewing; it is an issue of the structure of the interview itself.
What Unstructured Hiring Actually Looks Like
In order to clearly highlight the difference, it may be important to look at it first-hand. While during the unstructured junior interview, the difference in the questions would be observed from one interviewee to another, as well as the informality of notes taken, while the final decision would primarily be made basing on “I just had a good feeling about them,” in the structured interview, the interviewees would be asked the same questions and evaluated based on the same criteria established prior to the interview.
| Unstructured | Structured | |
| Questions | Vary by candidate | Standardized across all candidates |
| Evaluation | Gut feel, informal notes | Scorecard against defined criteria |
| Decision basis | “Good feeling” | Documented, criteria-based |
| Bias exposure | High | Significantly reduced |
The difference isn’t complicated. It’s just rarely enforced at the junior level, where the process moves fastest.
Why Junior-Level Hiring Is So Exposed
Junior-level hiring is typically done swiftly and based on a gut feeling, which is normally not guided by a standardized scorecard. In situations where there is little objective information for evaluation-a sparse resume, little work experience, and few tangible accomplishments-interviewers revert to using gut feeling, which by default favors familiarity.
That’s the mechanism: unstructured evaluation + limited objective signal = decisions shaped by unconscious pattern-matching rather than merit.
It’s not like the interviewers are doing anything underhanded. The point is that junior interviews are by definition the easiest environment for bias to slip through undetected, since there’s the least data available to test it against.
That makes a difference that may not be immediately obvious, since junior hires are not a small or marginal part of the workforce – they’re the foundation of the pipeline. Those who don’t make it through not only miss out on that one chance but on all the years of compounded experience that could have made them into excellent seniors down the line.
Why This Should Matter to Your Company
But if you are serious about tackling gaps in your hiring process, then the true power lies in the junior level. And here’s why:
- Junior-level bias isn’t isolated; rather, it influences who will even be eligible for future advancement into those pipelines.
- Bias at this stage is invisible in most audits. Organizations tend to scrutinize data on hires at the senior levels, not realizing that hiring at the junior levels (high volume, high velocity) is not.
- The pressure of DEI has shifted. Instead of just reporting their numbers regarding representation, organizations are now being asked to explain where in the process the gap occurs.
- It’s a fixable problem – cheaply, too. Unlike the senior-level hiring process, which involves a complicated and personalized selection process, the junior-level hiring process is a prime example of a high-volume process ripe for structuring.
The Cost of Doing Nothing
There is merit in simply laying bare the cost of inaction. Bias that goes unchecked at the junior levels isn’t just an issue of fairness – it’s reflected in the bottom line.
Organizations are losing great talent even before those individuals have a chance to be evaluated on their merits, which slowly erodes the talent pool. There are costs to the employer brand when the organization’s issues become apparent through things like employee reviews, exit interviews, and other public reporting mechanisms. And the cost of re-recruitment to rectify a talent pool problem years down the road is much greater than addressing the recruitment process now.
None of this requires a complete overhaul. It simply calls for the same careful consideration that companies give to the hiring process at the senior level, but at the junior level instead.
What I Believe Companies Should Actually Do
Based on what the research showed me, I don’t think this gets solved with a training session and good intentions. It needs structural change at the exact point where the bias lives – the screening and interview stage itself. Here’s the approach I’d recommend:
- Scorecard standardization should occur prior to the interview process. Clearly define what constitutes a “good junior candidate” using concrete and measurable criteria rather than after someone has been sitting opposite a candidate.
- Implement anonymous resume review where possible. The removal of any identifying information at the early stage prevents pattern recognition from kicking in prior to reviewing the candidate for relevant content.
- Review past hiring metrics for gender anomalies. It’s hard to improve what you aren’t measuring – an audit of past hiring decisions at the junior level will reveal if this is occurring.
- Conduct specific bias training on junior-level hiring. Unconscious bias training is largely generic in nature. Junior-level hiring bias is a well-known failure mode, and training should reflect this fact.
- Explore the use of AI-based and criteria-based screening. When conducted appropriately, such tools can help to avoid the biases that arise through subjective screening.
How to Know If It’s Working
It’s one thing to fix the process; it’s another to understand if it’s really narrowing the gap. I’d suggest considering a few practical milestones in this respect:
- Monitor gender representation before and after introducing the structured interviews, and particularly for the position of junior.
- Conduct the audit every quarter rather than yearly. The process of junior hiring is relatively fast-paced, and it takes a whole year to incorporate too many biases into the process.
- Compare gender representation among those offered the position with the representation of the applicants’ pool. In case the gap grows from the stage of applications to the stage of offers, this stage requires additional improvement through introducing a structured process.
Inquire directly with the interviewers about how the scorecard affected their decision-making process. The reported friction is usually the first sign of inefficiency in the process.
Where This Leaves Us
One thing that keeps recurring in this research is that nobody hires ineffectively on purpose. The bias found here is not the case of incompetent interviewers. This is a case of a lack of structure in the process, which pushes the interviewer to go with his/her instincts.
Improving junior-level hiring does not mean slowing down the process. My experience shows that a proper scorecard will increase the speed of decision-making since the interviewers will be confident about their choice and will not have to second-guess themselves with each new candidate. The difference is that the hiring process will be able to withstand an external audit of the decision-making in 6 months.
This is exactly what I am working towards through my research, the development of my tool and consulting services. If you recognize some problems described here as relevant for your organization, let’s talk. Learn more at my homepage.
FAQs
1. What is unconscious bias in hiring?
In essence, it is a phenomenon whereby factors other than expertise secretly influence a recruitment process – including gender, cultural background, and even similarities in personalities between the interviewee and the interviewer. This mostly occurs in unstructured interviews.
2. What causes gender bias in the hiring process?
Much of it is about comfort; we get comfortable around people that we feel we know. Without a system in place to identify this tendency, it occurs automatically, particularly if there isn’t any rubric at play to guide the decision.
3. How do you reduce unconscious bias in interviews?
Ask all the candidates the same basic questions and grade them accordingly. Combine this with removing any identifying information during initial resume screening. This is really simple – it just needs to be implemented.
4. What are examples of unconscious bias in hiring?
For example, going for someone who “feels right,” posing more difficult questions to one candidate than the other, and allowing the impression made in the first five minutes to influence the entire process. This is what happens during unstructured interviews.
5. Is blind resume screening effective at reducing bias?
From personal experience, absolutely yes, especially during the initial stages. After all, once you remove names and other identifiers from the equation, you can then begin assessing candidates based on their true merit.
6. What is a structured interview, and why does it matter?
The questions are the same, the criteria for scoring are the same for each candidate, period. The reason why this is significant is that this is precisely how the gap through which gut-reaction biases enter gets closed.
7. How can a company audit its hiring process for bias?
Begin by analyzing the past hiring practices and focus on the results at the junior level only. The point where there is a difference between the candidate pool and the offer phase will indicate the real issue.
8. Does unconscious bias training actually reduce bias?
Without a doubt, in itself, not for a very long time. It normally lasts for only a couple of months. It is much more effective when used as a component of a larger solution – along with scorecards and blind screening.
9. Who can help audit and fix bias in a company’s hiring process?
This happens to be exactly what I do, and it’s grown directly out of my own research into IT recruitment. Feel free to reach out if you want to talk through what that could look like for your team.
