Removing reumes from hiring process can improve diversity

Some companies are emphasizing skills tests over educational or professional pedigree when assessing job candidates.

When Health Data Research UK, a public-health research nonprofit, sought to improve the industry’s track record of recruiting Black women by starting a new internship program, it removed a key aspect of the screening process: the résumé. Instead of looking at educational or professional experience to choose finalists from the 159 applicants for its program for Black people in health data science positions, the group created a short questionnaire that asked candidates to explain what artificial intelligence was or to talk about a recent piece of technology they were studying.

The result was that more female candidates applied than men. In the end, 30 of the 48 interns that Health Data Research hired were women. The organization is now using the same skills-based recruiting to make full-time hires. “We know that we’ve got this huge untapped talent out there,” says Tammy Palmer, its head of people. “We’re trying to break down that sense that you have to be a certain kind of person, that you have to have been to a certain kind of university, to become a scientist.”

The effort was part of a movement of organizations setting up hiring processes that downplay the importance of academic and professional pedigrees. Testing the relevant skills of potential employees has long been a part of the interview process at many technical workplaces. But using such assessments as a way to reduce the importance of formal credentials is a more recent phenomenon, inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement. Separately from Health Data Research’s efforts, more than 80 companies including Dell Technologies, JPMorgan Chase, and Pfizer have signed on to a multiyear initiative organized by the lobbying group Business Roundtable to reform hiring practices along these lines. Companies are also reexamining their use of algorithms that analyze résumés to cull candidate lists, says Dane Linn, senior vice president of corporate initiatives at Business Roundtable: “There are people that are qualified with the right skills, but they get spit out because they don’t have the degree.”

Applied, a U.K.-based recruiting organization, is one of a handful of companies offering tools that try to create more equitable and arguably more accurate ways to judge potential candidates. It makes software that businesses can use to come up with standardized, anonymous assessments for the initial screening. The clients can then narrow the field by scoring all applicants’ answers against a strict rubric, says Applied Chief Executive Officer Khyati Sundaram. The key, she says, is to address discrimination not through recruiting efforts that explicitly consider race, but instead by eliminating the ways bias has kept people from unrepresented demographic groups from advancing. A tech company, for instance, might send a potential programmer some broken code to fix. A publishing company might ask an aspiring employee to come up with a book pitch to present during an interview. “Let’s create assessments that will be predictive of whether this person can actually do a job,” says Sundaram.

Some people who work on diversity issues argue that this strategy will have limited impact if not paired with other programs that explicitly address entrenched inequities. “Skills-based hiring alone will not solve your inclusion problems. A lot of people tend to conflate diversity with inclusion,” says Francisca Williams-Oni, director of advisory services at Grads of Life, a workplace diversity group that endorses skills-based hiring. “People need to feel like they can bring their whole selves to work, whatever shape or form that may be.”

Applied points to its research finding that companies that utilized a skills-based recruiting process increased the number of women hired into STEM roles by almost 70 per cent compared with national benchmarks. “What we are building here is a fair, level playing field,” says Sundaram.