Diversity remains a priority for recruiters everywhere. First, it’s a matter of principle. Second, it’s simply good business. Companies with high diversity consistently outperform their less diverse peers in both profitability and innovation. No surprise there. Diverse workplaces mean the organization has access to a variety of perspectives to tackle any problem that comes that way.
But it can be difficult to build that diverse workforce. Recruiters of the past would sometimes make the excuse that they simply weren’t receiving diverse applicants, but this isn’t an acceptable answer. Low diversity in new hires is a symptom of a recruitment process that’s failed to provide an equal and inclusive experience.
Such problems appear particularly in how recruiters design their job postings and interviews.
Recruiting teams working to solve these problems must include DEI-focused interview questions. These questions are essential to showing candidates your organization’s commitment to inclusiveness. Choosing the right questions reflects your company values just as such as they shine insight into the candidate. Recruiters are responsible for finding ways to mitigating bias throughout the interview process.
And that’s why today we’re going to explore inclusive interview questions you should consider, as well as potentially biased questions and biased language in your job postings.
Inclusive Interview Questions
When designing your interview process, it’s important to design inclusive interview questions. These are questions that will work for all applicants, and not just those of a given group. And this is certainly harder than it sounds.
For example, the question “What are your strengths?” is a staple of the interview process. It represents an opportunity for the candidate to sell themselves to the recruiter. However, it doesn’t take into consideration individuals that, either due to personal belief or as a matter of their cultural background, may see this as bragging. As such, they become uncomfortable in this situation.
DEI interview questions for employers must account for such situations to create more inclusive interview questions.
Alternatively, rather than outright asking for the candidate’s strengths, consider wording it in terms of experience. What was their experience in the specific areas of their job or previous projects? Then include follow-up questions to obtain additional information.
As such, designing interview questions becomes rather complex. You must account for cultural differences in how candidates may present themselves.
In terms of our “What are your strengths?” for example, the phrasing favors groups comfortable with putting their accomplishments forward. However, groups that value concepts such as humility as part of their culture, may find this significantly harder to answer.
List of Potentially Biased Questions
As we’ve established, it’s important for interview questions to be as unbiased and inclusive as possible. However, that’s not always easy. Bias and exclusive language can be hard to recognize.
That’s why we’ve put together a quick list of potentially biased questions for you to avoid in your own interview process:
- Are you planning to have children? - Any variation on this question is usually sexist and can put pressure on the candidate and also bias the recruiter. This is due to the varying views on family building and as it relates to a person’s work life.
- Are you married? - Again, similar to questions about children, this question can make candidates uncomfortable or even imply that their marital status is somehow a factor in their qualifications. What’s more, this opens the interview to affinity bias should the recruiter and candidate find that they’re both married, single, divorced, etc.
- Are you a digital native? - The phrasing of this specific question favors those born after the tech boom of the late 80s, early 90s. As such, that puts anyone born before then in an uncomfortable position. Any questions related to or adjacent to a candidate’s age are best avoided.
- Have you had to work with people who are different from you? - This particular question may be tempting to any recruiting team looking to build a diverse workforce. However, it implies an assumption that differences between people are inherently negative – that it takes some kind of skill to work in a diverse environment.
- How do you think someone of your background would contribute to our team? - Questions about a person’s identity may lead to the belief that is the primary qualification. It’s an overall uncomfortable question and best avoided altogether. Just because we are working to create a more diverse and inclusive hiring environment does not mean diverse identities should be deliberately sought out as a qualification.
- What is your sexual orientation? - This one is on the nose. A person’s sexual orientation has no bearing on their qualifications as an employee. In fact, including such a question in the hiring process could carry legal consequences. As such, avoid any questions that could indicate this information.
List of Potentially Biased Language in Job Postings
Similar to the interview, it’s important to avoid biased language in your job postings. These adverts represent a candidate’s very first impression of you as an employer. Biased language and problematic language will only drive would-be applicants away from your hiring process.
To help you get an idea of what this language may look like, we’ve put together this list of potentially biased language in job postings.
- Gender-specific pronouns - When we use “he” or “she” in a job description, we immediately favor one group over the other. Any candidate reading the listing will get the impression that you're specifically looking for one or the other. What’s more, it excludes the more than 1 million nonbinary adults in the US. The simplest solution here is to use the neuter pronoun of “they/them” when referring to the applicant.
- Words with gendered connotations - It’s important to remember the words we use are not limited to their textbook definition. Rather, everything we say has connotation – the meaning around the literal meaning.
With this in mind, many words are gender-coded. For example, the terms “strong” and “aggressive” are typically attributed to men whereas terms such as “considerate” or “sympathetic” are typically attributed to women. In a recent study from Appcast, a recruitment advertising company, removing these types of words can increase applications by 30%.
- Gendered job titles - Similar to gender-specific pronouns, job titles that denote gender favor one over the other. As such, avoid titles such as waitress, salesman and stewardess.
- “Clean-shaven” - There are many religions that forbid shaving such as Sikhs and certain sects of Islam and Judaism.
- “Native speaker” - This phrasing excludes anyone that learned English as a second language regardless of their actual skill. Rather, ask for English proficiency – if it’s strictly relevant to the position.
- “Must be able to walk/stand” - This particular phrase is an example of ability bias, and is explicitly discouraged by ADA guidelines as it excludes those unable to walk.
- Superlatives - It is common for job postings to include words such as “top-notch,” “expert,” and even “ninja” in their job descriptions. However, it has been found that these phrases favor male candidates. According to research from Michigan State University, this is because women are statistically less likely to brag about or embellish their accomplishments.
This list is by no means exhaustive. Language is complex and people dedicate their entire lives trying to understand it. It is only important that recruiters are conscious of this reality and take steps to address the language in their hiring process.
How confident are you in identifying biased language? Put your skills to the test and check out our quiz, Can You Spot the Biased Interview Question?
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