The Argument for Blind Hiring

Last month, as part of its work issue, The New York Times Magazine published an article on blind hiring - i.e., an application process wherein the applicant is completely anonymous.

What are the arguments for this? One major example of the need for blind hiring comes from the 1970s. A  high-profile racial discrimination case had been brought against the New York Philharmonic, which was mostly made up of white men. Afterwards, many orchestras began using blind auditions to hire musicians: the musicians performed behind a screen to conceal their identity from the judges. Later on, economists from Harvard and Princeton studied the results of actual auditions and found that blind auditions increased the probability that a woman would advance from a preliminary audition by 50 percent, and between 25 percent to 46 percent of the subsequent increase in the percentage of women in orchestras since 1970s can be explained by blind auditions.

The discrimination that was happening in the orchestra world may also be happening in the tech world: more Black and Hispanic students major in computer science degrees at elite universities than work in tech jobs. This shows that it is not purely lack of interest or training that results in low numbers of Black and Hispanic tech workers.

The New York Times Magazine

A 2015 study gives one reason for why this might be occurring in tech (as well as other fields): researchers sent resumes with either African-American- or white-sounding names in response to help-wanted ads in Chicago and Boston newspapers. They found that a candidate with a white-sounding name received as many callbacks as a candidate with an African-American-sounding name who had eight additional years of experience, and �African-American� candidates from elite universities did as well as �white� candidates from less-selective schools. Whether it is conscious or not, there appears to be a racial bias.

The solution to problems like this may well be blind hiring. A software company called GapJumpers was started with this purpose in mind. It helps employers screen job applications without seeing biographical information (such as an applicant�s name) by designing a test with its client that is relevant to the skills required for a job. Applicants complete the test online, and companies select who to interview from those results. According to GapJumpers, not only has this resulted in increased hiring of traditionally underrepresented groups of people, the employees hired are also more likely to stay at the job longer.

Beauty Bias In Hiring Decisions: It Depends On The Context

A large body of research has shown that attractiveness confers many advantages: we tend to see attractive people as healthier, friendlier, more intelligent, and more competent, which means that attractive people are more likely to be hired and promoted than average-looking candidates, more likely to receive a loan from the bank, less likely to be convicted by a jury, more likely to be elected if running for office, ...   This bias toward attractiveness is pervasive and leads to "attractiveness discrimination"--the differential treatment of individuals based on their physical appearance.

But a new study by Sunyoung Lee (University College, London), Marko Pitesa (University of Maryland), Madan Pillutla (London Business School), and Stefan Thau (INSEAD, Singapore), suggests that attractiveness is not always an asset in the workplace.  They argue that a job candidate's perceived competence is tied to:

• diffuse status characteristics such as gender (men are generally seen as more competent than women) and attractiveness (more attractive individuals enjoy higher status in society, and are therefore seen as more competent).
• the organizational context: when one employee's success positively affects another employee's success (cooperative interdependence), the person making hiring decisions will be motivated to select the candidate seen as the most competent because this candidate would be the most instrumental to personal outcomes.  However, when one employee's success negatively affects another employee's success (competitive interdependence), the decision-maker will be motivated not to select the most competent candidate, because such a person would represent the most capable competitor to the detriment of the decision-maker's interest.

Using four experiments using different samples, selection tasks, manipulations of candidate attractiveness, and manipulations of interdependence, they tested the following four hypotheses:

1. Decision makers perceive attractive male, but not female, candidates, as more competent.
2. When decision makers expect to cooperate with the candidate, they prefer an attractive to an unattractive male, but not female, candidate.
3. When decision makers expect to compete with the candidate, they prefer an unattractive to an attractive male, but not female, candidate.
4. Higher perceived competence of attractive male candidates leads to a higher (lower) relative perceived instrumentality of the attractive candidate to the decision maker when cooperation (competition) is expected, in turn resulting in a higher (lower) selection preference for the attractive candidate.

The results of the experiments support the researchers' hypotheses: "Decision-makers associate attractiveness with competence in male, but not female candidates."  In addition, "cooperative and competitive interdependence result in opposing patterns of attractiveness discrimination.  When decision-makers expect to cooperate with the candidate, they perceive attractive male candidates as more capable cooperators and discriminate in their favor.  When decision-makers expect to compete with the candidate, they perceive male candidates as more capable competitors and discriminate against them."

Read more:
http://www.npr.org/2015/04/20/400929847/why-handsome-men-may-be-at-a-disadvantage-when-it-comes-to-hiring
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0749597815000096