Most companies will purchase one interview training program and use it for everything – from entry-level positions to hiring a vice president. Through my doctoral research on the subject of IT recruitment, I have learned that such logic does not apply in this case. While the training that significantly improves the quality of senior-level hiring makes absolutely no difference for the junior-level hiring process, due to the fact that the process of hiring junior candidates works differently.
About This Research: This blog is based on my doctoral research on the subject of IT recruitment, where I looked into gender bias within the framework of unstructured interviewing for junior candidates. You may find more information about the research and me here.
Why Standard Interview Training Is Built for Senior Hiring
The design of most unconscious bias trainings was based on the process of senior hiring: multiround interviews, panel format, calibration meetings, and review of the documentation before making the offer. This process structure is what makes it all work: any instinctively biased assessment is corrected by the next and the following interviews; the calibration meeting forces candidates to defend their logic. The training is just a tool to improve judgment, which is made in a process with numerous checks along the way.
It is also important that the involvement of HR or the hiring committee in the process is standard for senior hiring positions because of the position and high salary. In other words, it is the control that is doing all the work of reducing the risk of bias, not the training at all. From 20+ years of experience in recruiting top talent into Fortune 1000 companies, I can testify that it is true.
What Actually Changes at the Entry Level
Entry-level recruitment does not follow such a pattern. There is just one person in charge of screening, interviewing, and decision-making, usually within a tight schedule, without having any panel discussion, and certainly without any calibration process. There is no additional opinion in the room that could notice the interviewer’s bias – the first impression is the decision.
This very situation is what my dissertation uncovered: interviewers subconsciously prefer applicants of the same gender, but only in the junior positions, where there is no interview framework and the decision is based on feeling and not criteria. Awareness about the bias will be hardly useful when it comes to the next interview without the interview structure. One may be fully aware of the bias but still prone to it in terms of the interview framework.
Where Bias Actually Concentrates – And Why Training Alone Can’t Reach It
It isn’t uniform throughout the recruiting process. It exists at the point of weakest structure and weakest oversight, and that, for most companies, is the entry-level interview. Hiring for senior positions is overseen precisely because it is obvious that something matters. Hiring for entry-level positions is rushed precisely because there are so many and the individual risk seems so small.
But here’s the dilemma: the people you hire at the entry-level are the same people who will comprise the company’s bench for the future, and where the majority-favoring blindness multiplies the quickest, because it happens every time you go through the hiring process. I wrote about how this works in some more detail in this piece on why junior-level hiring is where gender bias hides.
Senior Hiring Training vs. Entry-Level Reality
When the two processes are contrasted, the difference becomes very concrete. This does not mean that the intentions of hiring managers at the entry level are any worse than those of higher-level managers; rather, it is because they lack the same safeguards. This is clearly seen from the following table.
| Senior Hiring | Entry-Level Hiring | |
| Interviewers involved | Panel or committee | Usually one person |
| Process | Multiple structured rounds | Often, a single, unstructured conversation |
| Calibration step | Standard practice | Rarely exists |
| Decision review | HR or leadership sign-off | The manager decides alone |
| Where training helps most | Sharpens judgment inside existing checks | Has no checkpoint to sharpen |
This is why the same training budget produces different results depending on where it’s spent. If your organization is serious about closing this gap at the leadership level, the fix isn’t more training content – it’s building the structure that entry-level hiring is missing.
What Actually Fixes Entry-Level Bias
Training is still important, but it needs the scaffolding beneath to actually have an effect. From my experience, here are some suggestions to bridge the gap in practice:
- Have a second interviewer join each junior-level loop. One additional voice is enough to disrupt the natural one-opinion default that allows implicit bias to flourish.
- Have a scorecard with criteria to be used before the interview begins. When you know beforehand what “good” means, you make it less likely to fall back on gut instinct later.
- Standardize the questions across all candidates interviewing for the same job. Structured answers are a very different beast from impressions.
- Have resumes anonymized at the initial screening. I went into the details of why exactly in a separate piece on blind resume screening and hiring bias.
- Have each candidate rejected and moved forward, justified with a brief explanation. The act of writing down the reasons is what really uncovers the bias.
None of those requires large investments in money. All they require is someone high enough up to insist on using them, exactly what a fractional CHRO addresses.
How to Roll This Out Without Overhauling Your Whole Process
You do not have to re-engineer your whole hiring process to solve this problem. Take the following steps initially:
- Pilot the scorecard and second interviewer step for your next two entry-level recruits
- Combine your existing bias training with this structural solution in the same quarter, not separately
- Analyze reasons for rejecting/approving quarterly, rather than for individual decisions
- Inform hiring managers about the criteria in writing before the first interview, not after the candidate has made the right impression
Those organizations that show some progress look at it as a process change with training, and not vice versa.
Signs Your Entry-Level Hiring Needs This Fix
- One interviewer makes all the decisions alone regarding junior positions
- There’s no consistent scorecard that applies to all candidates for the same position
- There are no documented rejection reasons
- Your completion rate regarding your bias training is great, but your entry-level hiring results have not changed
- Nobody owns entry-level hiring results like people own senior hiring results
If two or more of these are familiar to you, the problem is not the training, but the structure around it. That is definitely a discussion you should have with someone who knows how to fix it.
The Fix Isn’t More Training – It’s More Structure
Interview bias training is not a waste of funds – it is just that the focus of the training is misplaced if entry-level hiring is where the problems lie. There is no need for more training – there needs to be more structure within the entry-level hiring processes, akin to the one in senior-level hiring, namely, an outside eye, set criteria, and a rationale behind each decision. I have been building such systems for 20 years in growing organizations, and this is precisely the type of gap that Skillpoint solves. If your entry-level hiring outcomes haven’t moved despite training investment, let’s talk about what’s missing.
FAQs
1. Does unconscious bias training actually work?
It is most effective when it is placed on top of an already structured process, which is what the majority of senior hiring is. Awareness alone is not enough to sustain itself through the stress of an unstructured junior hiring interview.
2. What’s the difference between a structured and an unstructured interview?
In structured interviews, identical questions and rating procedures are used for each applicant. Unstructured interviews, on the other hand, are conducted in an open discussion format without any preconceived framework – just like what my research found to be susceptible to lower-level biases.
3. Do structured interviews actually reduce hiring bias?
Yes. The use of standardized questions and criteria for scoring prevents an excessive influence of a gut feeling on the decision-making process. The most influential solution to eliminate discrimination during entry-level interviews is the use of standardized interview questions.
4. What is interviewer bias?
Interviewer bias is a situation where the assessment is influenced by the unconscious biases of the interviewer as opposed to the merits of the candidate. It is mostly found in areas where there is no control, for example, at entry-level interviews.
5. How can companies reduce bias in job interviews?
Include a second interviewer, have a standardized scoring system, ask all applicants the same questions, and demand an explanation for each decision in writing. The latter is far more important than training.
6. Does blind resume screening reduce hiring bias?
It reduces bias significantly at the initial screen by removing identifying details before a resume is reviewed. I cover the evidence in this study.
7. Why is entry-level hiring more prone to bias than senior hiring?
I have discovered that during interviews, people tend to subconsciously select applicants from their own sex, especially in entry-level positions. Those hiring committees made up of senior personnel catch a lot of that.
8. Who should be responsible for fixing bias in a company’s hiring process?
A person with the power to mandate scorecards and a second interviewer is compulsory in all teams, rather than just one department. This usually falls outside the purview of an HR generalist, which is where the fractional CHRO comes in.
9. How long does it take to reduce bias once you add structure to interviews?
It is observed that most organizations notice the impact on the recruitment process within two to three recruitment cycles once scorecards and the second interviewer are introduced for entry-level positions.
