China 
You want to attract the best talent and create a more diverse workplace, but where do you start? Blind recruitment is one powerful tool that can help you attract more qualified, diverse candidates. By removing information such as name, gender, and ethnicity from job applications, blind recruitment allows you to focus solely on a candidate’s skills, experience, and qualifications.
This can help level the playing field and eliminate any bias from hiring decisions. Blind recruitment also helps ensure that your recruitment process is fair and transparent, as it lets you make decisions based solely on a candidate’s qualifications. Blind recruitment can help foster an inclusive and equitable workplace for everyone, and it can help your business attract and retain more diverse talent.
What is blind recruitment?
Blind recruitment is the practice of removing identifying information from a candidate’s job application, including their name, gender, ethnicity, and education. Blind recruitment helps eliminate any potential bias in hiring decisions, as hiring managers and recruiters can’t see a candidate’s details when reviewing their application. This allows them to focus solely on a candidate’s skills and qualifications, which can help ensure that your hiring process is fair and equitable.
There are three types of blind recruitment: name blindness, where candidates’ names are removed from their applications; ethnicity blindness, where candidates’ ethnicities are removed from their applications; and education blindness, where candidates’ education is removed from their applications.
Benefits of blind recruitment
Through blind recruitment, you can be more selective when making hiring decisions. While it may seem counterintuitive, removing identifying information from applications can increase the number of qualified candidates and diversify your candidate pool. This is because candidates who might otherwise not be as interested in applying to your job postings because of any bias they see in the job description will feel more comfortable applying.
Blind recruitment allows you to focus on a candidate’s skills and qualifications, which can help you make more informed hiring decisions. Hiring managers and recruiters shouldn’t be involved in the recruitment process until after candidates have gone through a rigorous screening process, including skill and technical tests, and multiple rounds of interviews.
Why blind recruitment is important
There are many ways to make your hiring process more inclusive, but blind recruitment is one of the most effective. By removing identifying information from candidates’ applications, you can help eliminate any bias in your hiring decisions, as hiring managers and recruiters can’t see a candidate’s name, gender, ethnicity, or education when reviewing their application. This can help create a more inclusive and equitable workplace, where candidates are judged solely on their skills, experience, and qualifications.
By implementing blind recruitment, you can help make a workplace more inclusive for everyone, regardless of their race, ethnicity, gender identity or expression, age, or other personal characteristics. This can help make your company more attractive to a more diverse group of candidates, which can also make your company more attractive to future employees.
How to implement blind recruitment
Before implementing blind recruitment, you’ll want to make sure that all team members understand its importance and how it works. It’s also important to make sure that all hiring managers and recruiters are on board with this new process.
To implement blind recruitment, follow these steps:
Create a recruitment strategy: Before you begin recruiting candidates, it’s important to create a recruitment strategy. This will help ensure that you’re recruiting in the most effective way possible.
Remove identifying information from job postings: Next, you’ll want to remove identifying information from your job postings. You can do this by removing candidates’ names from job postings and job advertisements, as well as any other content you may use to advertise job openings.
Remove identifying information from applications: Once candidates apply, you’ll want to remove any identifying information from their applications. You can do this by removing candidates’ names, genders, and ethnicities from their applications, as well as any accompanying materials, such as their resumes, references, and portfolios.
Review applications with a blind eye: Once applications have been submitted, you’ll want to review them with a blind eye. To do this, each application should be placed in a folder without the candidate’s name or other identifying information.
Use the same selection process for every candidate: It’s important to use the same selection process for every candidate. This will help ensure that each candidate is reviewed fairly and consistently.
Challenges of blind recruitment
Blind recruitment is a powerful tool that can help create a more inclusive and equitable workplace. However, it isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution. There are certain situations in which blind recruitment may not be the best option for your business.
The candidate pool may be smaller: While it may seem counterintuitive, removing identifying information from candidates’ applications can reduce the number of qualified candidates. This is because candidates who might otherwise be interested in applying to your job postings may be turned off by any bias, they see in the job description.
It can take longer to fill open positions: When it comes to hiring, speed is crucial. Blind recruitment can add time to your recruitment process, as each candidate must be reviewed without any identifying information.
Blind recruitment statistics
The numbers show that blind recruitment is an important tool for businesses and hiring managers. Whether you’re looking to diversify your candidate pool, or you want to ensure that everyone is treated fairly during the hiring process, blind recruitment is an effective tool.
63% of hiring managers say they’ve seen salary discrepancies because of gender bias.
54% of hiring managers say they’ve seen race or ethnicity bias result in candidates being overlooked or receiving lower offers.
78% of hiring managers say they’ve seen education bias result in candidates being overlooked or receiving lower offers.
42% of employees say they’ve experienced discrimination in the hiring process.
50% of millennials say they’ve seen education bias in the hiring process.
43% of employees say they’ve seen hiring managers overlook their qualifications because of age bias.
Blind recruitment best practices
By now, you may be convinced that blind recruitment is the best solution for your hiring needs. But how can you make sure that it’s implemented as effectively as possible? Follow these best practices to implement blind recruitment:
Define your hiring goals: Before you implement blind recruitment, it’s important to understand why you’re doing it in the first place. Define your hiring goals and ask yourself why you want to implement blind recruitment.
Review your recruitment strategy: Make sure your recruitment strategy includes a plan for implementing blind recruitment. This will ensure that you follow through with your plan and provide consistency throughout the hiring process.
Create a standardized process: It’s important to create a standardized process for reviewing and evaluating candidates. This will help ensure that all candidates are reviewed consistently and fairly.
Communicate the change: It’s important to let candidates know about the change to your hiring process. Let candidates know that they won’t be able to see their name or other identifying information on their application.
Tools for blind recruitment
Candidate experience: The candidate experience is the first touch point candidates have with your company. This is often through a job board or career site, where candidates will apply and upload their resumes. How they interact with your website and the information they’re presented with can greatly impact their decision to apply. By removing identifying information from your application, you can create a candidate experience that is more inclusive and appealing to a wider range of candidates.
Job description: The job description is the first thing candidates will see when they apply to your company. This can be accessed through a job board or career site, or it can be found on your company website. Therefore, it must be well-written and descriptive. Including too much information about the company culture, leadership team, etc. can make the job description seem more like a novel, so it’s important to be concise when writing your job description.
Blind recruitment success story
Success stories from hiring managers who have used blind recruitment are inspiring and show the positive impact this hiring practice can have.
Royal Caribbean’s hiring team has implemented a hiring process that includes removing candidates’ names from their applications. They’ve seen a 28% increase in the number of candidates applying for open positions.
