As a business owner, you don’t want to practice discrimination in job hiring for several reasons. Aside from not wanting to treat job candidates unfairly, you don’t want to put your organization in a bad legal position. A key legal area for today’s businesses lies in discrimination-related matters. Discrimination concerns might start with potential pre-employment discrimination as you bring new people on board and can continue throughout a person’s employment with your company.
All this means that you need to stay vigilant from the initial job posting and beyond. The best thing you can do is ensure your hiring process complies with anti-discrimination policies.
4 Ways to Avoid Discrimination in the Hiring Process
If you are worried that your dutiful hiring team might misstep, here are four ideas to help everyone stay on track for legal compliance and show consistent courtesy to every candidate.
1. Draft and polish neutral job descriptions
Hiring teams often create problems for their companies before even posting the job description. As language becomes increasingly complex in terms of acknowledging everyone’s differences with respect, it becomes more challenging to draft a job description that doesn’t contain loaded language. Many people, even seasoned HR professionals, may not realize they are using outdated language to try to reach modern candidates from every walk of life.
With a thoughtful, sensitive, and well-crafted job description that focuses solely on tasks and qualifications, you can help ensure that candidates feel welcome regardless of their age, race, color, religion, sex, national origin, physical size, sexual orientation, or gender identity.
2. Avoid making assumptions
Unfortunately, it is easy to rely on preconceived notions — whether we are aware of them or not — and make decisions based on personal biases. However, you don’t want to fall into the trap of letting stereotypes dictate your hiring decisions. With unconscious bias, you might find yourself making certain assumptions regarding, say, physical abilities, salary expectations, or the level of commitment and timeliness.
For another example, if a pregnant candidate walks into the interview room, does that worry you? Do you make a snap judgment? Are you already thinking about a potentially less qualified candidate who isn’t pregnant? If so, it’s crucial that you truthfully and ethically make the best choice for the position and your organization, according to the individual’s match to the job and overall talent.
3. Improve your interview strategy and process
It might be easy for you or your job candidates to fumble with words during an interview. It’s a highly pressurized situation that requires both parties to think on their feet, but you, as the interviewer, have some added pressure. You want to stay present during the interview, mindful of your words and the potential discrimination factors listed in our first tip. One great way to do this is to form an interview team, comprised of diverse colleagues who can help make the process more organically inclusive.
4. Work with a professional background check firm to avoid discrimination
Around 90% of organizations use various background checks to assist in the hiring process. Unfortunately, this common and helpful practice might raise several concerns regarding discrimination, including the accuracy of the information that is used against talented candidates.
With professional background check firms such as Global Verification Network, you can rest assured that everyone does their due diligence to ensure you have the most meaningful, complete, and accurate information about each candidate. You can then make the best decision for your organization.
Why Choose Global Verification Network?
Global Verification Network (GVN) offers your company screening done right. We use sound investigative methodologies, and each case is undertaken by one of our accredited experts. Our goal is to help ensure that you hire fairly, according to the law and your organizational ethics.
Contact us to learn more about our various background screening services.