Companies looking for tech-related talent continue to tend to interview more men than women for the positions they want to fill. To the point that in 2022, according to a report by the recruiting company for technology and sales Hired, interviews for 38% of IT job postings only generated interview requests for men. In addition, this percentage grew by 1% compared to 2021. However, it fell compared to 2018, when the positions for which only men were interviewed were 45%.
For the preparation of the report, entitled State of Wage Inequality in the Tech Industry 2023 (State of Pay Inequality in the Tech Industry 2023), Hired reviewed nearly 64,000 job postings and more than 860,000 candidate-employer interactions between 2018 and 2022.
But inequality when offering interviews is not only clear between men and women. In 10% of job openings, employers only made interview offers to white candidates. Of course, the figure has fallen significantly compared to 2018, when the positions that only interviewed white people were 26%. In addition, women of European and Asian origin also reduced their level of wage inequality with respect to men. But inequality in IT is a problem that continues to exist.
Despite all this, those in charge of hiring do not see these numbers as a problem. 99% of hiring managers who responded to the Hired survey for the report have insisted that they do “efforts to ensure that hiring decisions are free from bias«.
According to Hired, its data and responses to surveys of job seekers and job offers indicate that biased hiring practices are easy to find in more than half of the industries seeking professionals on its platform. The report indicates that inequalities are present above all in the manufacturing, health, and leisure and entertainment sectors.
Hires has highlighted two specific types of bias, both unconscious, that often occur: affinity bias, which leads to hiring people similar to oneself; and confirmation bias, which focuses on candidate information that supports pre-existing beliefs.
None of these biases have to be direct, aggressive, or even offensive. Hired found that 68% of employers who cite the expression “cultural integration» as a qualification are particularly susceptible to being included for both biases.
For the company, placing more emphasis on diversity, equality and inclusion initiatives is one way to address these issues. This does not mean that workshops and training on more unconscious biases are launched. On the other hand, while 51% of those responsible for hiring indicate that the teams in charge of carrying out these initiatives are essential, 14% assured that this type of initiative «creates an unfair advantage for some groups«.
This despite the fact that 82% of women and 69% of men who are looking for work indicated that they would be more interested in working for a company that had received awards and recognition for carrying out diversity, equality and inclusion initiatives.
For now, a 80% of hiring managers feel pressured by their employees to reduce bias in hiring and salaries, which can be facilitated with various measures. For starters, Hired recommends anonymizing resumes, hiding personal details like name, age, and gender. They also recommend structured interviews in which all candidates are asked the same questions.
If recruitment processes include technical assessments, hired recommends doing so using an asynchronous system, which will not only prevent hiring managers from unconsciously imposing their biases, but also free them up for other tasks.
