By Kelly Ryan (MSc 2018/19)

Hands up if you have ever hired someone simply because you could see yourself in their shoes?

How about because he/she went to same university as you (which of course is indicative that he/she makes great career choices)?

Or perhaps because he/she had the same name as you?

These are just some of the rationale offered up by hiring decision-makers in accounting for their selection decisions in the research I conducted for my final year thesis.  Whilst as a hiring decision-maker you might believe that you would only progress a candidate’s CV based on merit, unless your organization has a rigid scoring system in place, research would suggest that unconscious biases are likely to impact upon the objectivity of your selection decisions (Hunt, Prince, Dixon-Fyle, & Yee, 2018).

The issue is that all hiring decision-makers herald their own biases because humans can only understand the world from the perspectives they have been dealt, be this relative to their age, gender, title, socio-economic status or similar. Thus, it is not illogical to assume that some applicants may receive preferential treatment in a recruitment process if the hiring-decision maker can relate to their career pathway thus far. Likewise, other applicants may be treated less favorably on the basis that the hiring decision-maker cannot relate to them, or in other words cannot accurately interpret their career trajectory. In spite of fact, there has been a lack of research conducted to date exploring the impact of what is known as the similar-to-me effect on CV screening.

The similar-to-me effect holds that people are most likely to be attracted to those who are like themselves. This effect has been observed across a plethora of domains including one’s perception of beauty, the financing decisions of venture capitalists and perhaps of most relevance to the research that I conducted, it has also been observed during employment interviews. The similar-to-me effect is underpinned by theories such as the similarity-attraction paradigm. See Byrne (1971) for more.

The research project:

For my thesis, I decided to conduct an experiment to assess the impact of the similar-to-me effect on hiring-decision maker’s CV screening. One-hundred and seventy-two participants predominately from Ireland, the United Kingdom, India and the United States engaged in the study. All participants engaged in the experiment on the premise that they had engaged/or were currently engaging in some form of recruitment.

What participants did:

Firstly, participants were asked to fill in a CV template pertaining to their perception of a desirable candidate (i.e. someone that they would like to hire). Every participant was issued a CV template with probes collecting data pertaining to this desirable candidate’s name (an implicit measure for gender), nationality, highest level of education, university attended, degree-classification and personal interests or hobbies. After completing this CV template, participants were asked to fill in a CV template pertaining to their own variables on the next page. In this CV template participants were explicitly asked for their gender rather than their name so as to ensure that all participation remained anonymous.  Participants were then asked to provide rationale as to the decisions they made pertaining to their desirable candidate’s CV template.

Findings

A variety of analyses were then conducted. Firstly, I assessed whether the variables contained in the participant’s own CV would predict the variables they selected for their desirable candidate’s CV template. The results revealed that the vast majority of variables contained in the participant’s own CV significantly predicted their selection of these same variables for their desirable candidate’s CV. To take some examples from the data-set, Irish participants were found to be 129 times more likely to select an Irish candidate than participants who identified as alternate nationalities were to select an Irish candidate. Similarly, participants with a doctorate degree were found to be 66 times more likely to select a candidate with a doctorate degree than participants who did not have a doctorate degree. Furthermore, male participants were found to be five times more likely to select a male candidate than a female participant, whilst female participants were found to be seven times more likely to select a female candidate than a male participant.

It is important to note however that not all of the variables contained in the participants’ own CVs predicted their selection of these same variables for their desirable candidate’s CV. Citing one’s highest level of education as a foundation degree or one’s degree classification as a third-class honors for example were not found to markedly predict the selection of these same variables for one’s desirable candidate.

Nonetheless, almost half of the participants who engaged in the experiment replicated more than half of their own CV in the CV of their desirable candidate. These findings are particularly discerning, when one considers that most of the variables that were explored have little/no evidence linking them to performance. Interestingly however, when asked to shed a light on the underpinning rationale as to why they chose the variables for their desirable candidate’s CV template, even participants who created their desirable candidate’s CV in the image of their own CV oftentimes did not acknowledge doing so. This may suggest that owing to the often-unconscious nature of biases, hiring decision-makers may be unaware of their tendency to hire in their own image which makes this tendency even harder to thwart. Other participants however were explicit about seeking a candidate similar to themselves for rapport purposes and in order to validate this candidate’s credentials.

Implications

Overall, these findings present a number of implications for recruitment praxis. Firstly, it would appear that hiring decision-makers subliminally or otherwise favour candidates with a CV that resembles their own. Thus, recruiters could benefit from unconscious-bias training and awareness building around the synergetic capacities associated with working in a diverse team. These findings also suggest, akin to previous literature (Franke, Gruber, Harhoff, & Henkel, 2006) that applicants should not be overtly discouraged by rejection at the CV screening stage, as this decision may have had to less to do with their suitability for the role and more to do with the hiring-decision maker who reviewed their profile. 

One way of counteracting the similar to me effect may be to have all CVs reviewed by at least two hiring decision-makers to control for the impact of individual differences on hiring decisions (Frank & Hackman, 1975). This however, would be resource intensive and perhaps adopting a standardized scoring system for CV screening (Carbonaro & Schwarz, 2018) or blinding CVs by removing any information pertaining to applicants’ biographical characteristics (Rand & Wexley, 1975) could be more viable alternatives to counteracting the similar-to-me effect. 

Can you think of any other ways to limit the impact of such biases in selection processes?

Feel free to comment below!

Blog References

Byrne, D. E. (1971). The attraction paradigm (Vol. 11). Academic Pr.

Carbonaro, W., & Schwarz, J. (2018). Opportunities and challenges in designing and conducting a labor market resume study. In Audit Studies: Behind the Scenes with Theory, Method, and Nuance (pp. 143-158). Springer, Cham.

Frank, L. L., & Hackman, J. R. (1975). Effects of interviewer-interviewee similarity on interviewer objectivity in college admissions interviews. Journal of Applied Psychology, 60(3), 356.

Franke, N., Gruber, M., Harhoff, D., & Henkel, J. (2006). What you are is what you like—similarity biases in venture capitalists’ evaluations of start-up teams. Journal of Business Venturing, 21(6), 802-826.

Hunt, V., Prince, S., Dixon-Fyle, S., & Yee, L. (2018). Delivering through diversity. Mckinsey & Company. Retrieved July, 26, 2018.

Rand, T. M., & Wexley, K. N. (1975). Demonstration of the effect, “similar to me,” in simulated employment interviews. Psychological Reports, 36(2), 535-544.

By Danielle Antwi (MSc 2018/19)

Black women are a very active part of the workforce we see today, and yet the number of those in senior level positions is particularly low. In areas where other minority groups are fast increasing, their representation is on the decrease. This is particularly apparent where race and gender come into play. The race element in itself can lead to discrimination and in turn lack of opportunity whilst gender discrimination tends to leave women fighting barriers to progress. Due to this, many black women lack opportunity to reach senior level status and once they do, they can experience much pushback.

This pushback is commonly experienced in the form of hypervisibility and invisibility which comes under the broad umbrella term ‘visibility’. Invisibility is where individuals are less recognised, seen or rewarded whilst hypervisibility is described as increased scrutiny, and inspection. In visibility research up until now there is a lot of links between experiences of visibility and minority groups at work as there are many areas of work where minority members are underrepresented. One such study looked into the experiences of visibility with black women in senior management. This examined the effects of visibility on the self and identity. Let’s have a look at a brief overview of the study and its key findings.

The study interviewed 6 black women in the UK who worked in senior management roles, aged between 35 and 55. They were from various different sectors of work including finance, advertising and technology. The study used Interpretative Phenomenological Method (IPA) to get an in-depth view of the participants responses. Interviews lasted approximately 45-60 minutes and participants responses were transcribed and analysed.

Findings revealed that there were both positive and negative effects of visibility on the women. The positive effects of visibility were the active methods used to deflect and improve negative experiences. Some of these effects were seen in the behaviours of women such as advocating for younger black women, advocating for themselves and going above and beyond to create opportunities. They all had a very clear and positive sense of identity which they sought to confirm and verify; this was also a strong motivator for their behaviour. This strong sense of identity is very closely linked to two models: The Self verification model and Cybernetic model. They both see that people place value in their identity and seek for this identity to be confirmed by others. In other words, it was very important that the black women had people around them that perceived views of themselves that they also held. As they saw themselves as capable workers, they also desired the same verification from others, and if they saw themselves as advocators for others, they desired others to see this also.

Findings also revealed negative effects of visibility on the self which arise where people didn’t affirm these same meanings held of their identity. It was stressful for the women to continuously find that their hypervisibility and invisibility refuted some of their self-views. This led to burnout, critique of themselves and pressure to manage the way they were seen. It took a toll on the women and many maintained high expectations of themselves as much as others. There was also a pressure to prove to others that they were capable and sometimes the conflict between how they felt and how others felt was not in alignment. Although because identity remained strong, they were able to focus on themselves and their own self views to guide behaviour.

Their results provided knowledge of some of the participants methods of coping. The women engaged actively in strategies to prevent negative feelings, such as distancing themselves from negative situations and seeking support from family, friends and colleagues. Support provided verification, counsel, and guidance. This again corroborates with the self-verification model that suggests individuals seek counsel from others to affirm who they are. Coping led many of the women to distance themselves both physically and mentally from negative situations. This included travelling to get some time away and selectively engaging with people. It was clear the women used methods to keep themselves positive minded and sought to remain grounded. The interest here is whether forms of coping are positive or negative and this may help other black women when they enter similar situations.

This research shows the complexity of responses when it comes to visibility. The varying methods these women used to cope were calculated and strategic. They mentioned the learning that took place during their experiences which added much insight to prior research that has predominantly focused on negative responses. Many of the women also spoke of age and maturity as a large factor that shaped their mindset overtime. This seemed to have helped them deal with the visibility they faced.

But now what can we do with these findings? Well, we can think about how to move forward. There are 3 groups that could benefit from this research:

1. Black women

We see that black women here are given a voice and a platform to be their authentic selves, and this was one of the main purposes of this research. It is hoped that other black women can relate and see the positives in their experiences that they can take and use in their own situations.

2. Employers

Insight is invaluable to learning how and why hypervisibility and invisibility takes place. It is hoped that employers take a round table approach to sensitive issues such as this, getting them out in the open and allowing for discussion. The discussion must go further than understanding but also draw upon what can be done to change negative experiences. The question should be ‘how can you as an employer think about how to be inclusive, diverse and more mindful of conduct in spaces where black women are the minority?’.

3. Employees

For employees it may have some added benefit in the form of building bonds by stepping into the shoes of people that would not always have the same experiences. Hopefully employees will think about the role they take in the work environment and help to make spaces inclusive and open.