I recently came across this recently in an article on bias in hiring practices: "Accounting for Unintended Bias Even among the most well-intentioned of individuals, the possibility of unintended bias is present. That is, without knowing that he or she is doing so, those responsible for hiring may favor someone that looks like us (for whatever definition of us is relevant). The hiring managers may select a superbly qualified person who looks different in contrast to an adequately qualified person who looks the same, but the bias is most likely to come out in a choice between two nearly equally qualified individuals. Steps can be taken to reduce the likelihood of unintended bias as a general rule, these steps involve separating the dimensions on which an individual is evaluated from personally identifying (and irrelevant) characteristics. Of course, such a separation is not always possible (e.g., when an individual's ability to work in a team is being evaluated), but it is possible more than it is practiced. The impact of such steps can be quite significant. For example, in hiring musicians, symphony orchestras require applicants to audition. All auditions are live, but some orchestras conduct them with the applicant behind a screen that prevents the judges from seeing the musician. In doing so, the music that the applicant plays the relevant part of the audition is separated from the irrelevant characteristics of the applicant s sex, race, and age. Goldin and Rouse find that the use of screen increases by 50 percent the probability that a female musician will be advanced from certain preliminary rounds and increases by severalfold the likelihood that a female musician will be selected in the final round." Goldin, Claudia, and Cecilia Rouse. 2000. Orchestrating Impartiality: The Impact of Blind Auditions on Female Musicians, American Economic Review 90(September):715-742. cited in: Building a Workforce for the Information Economy (prepublication copy) http://www.nap.edu/html/IT_workforce/ Prepared by: Committee on Workforce Needs in Information Technology Computer Science and Telecommunications Board Board on Testing and Assessment Board on Science, Technology, and Economic Policy Office of Scientific and Engineering Personnel National Research Council NATIONAL ACADEMY PRESS Washington, D.C. The report also contains a number of other fascinating statistics. For example, according to (Schmidt and Hunter, 1998) years of education and years of job experience correlate poorly with measures of actual on-the-job performance: 0.10 and 0.18, respectively. Schmidt, F.L., and Hunter, J.E. 1998. The Validity and Utility of Selection Methods in Personnel Psychology: Practical and Theoretical Implications of 85 Years of Research Findings, Psychological Bulletin 124:262-274)
