Eliminate Unconscious Bias In Your Tech Hiring Process

Finding the right developer certainly requires extra effort. You don’t want to make the wrong decision so as not to end up with a bad hire that costs you a lot. To overcome this, the first thing that can be done is to avoid unconscious bias in the recruitment process.

Bias on recruitment allows you to make judgments subjectively. Thus, the final results of candidate selection are often not as expected at the beginning. Of course, this is a very big loss; In addition to losing potential candidates, you can also lose a lot of costs for re-recruitment if it turns out that the selected candidate does not meet the standards.

In addition, recruitment bias can also make your team less diverse and of course, this is not ideal. Whether you realize it or not, you may have recruited candidates based solely on similarities in gender, ethnicity, religion, age, or other things that make the team homogeneous. Having diversity in a team can provide many advantages.

However, bias in recruitment often goes unnoticed. So how to solve it? In this article, Algobash will discuss simple ways you can make developer recruitment more objective.

Overcome recruitment unconscious bias with coding test

As a tech-recruiter, you may already be familiar with coding tests. This activity is often done by many companies to find the best developer candidates. Usually, the recruiter will give several tests to the candidate to see the extent of their abilities.

There are two common ways to do coding tests, namely live coding and take-home tests. The difference between the two lies only in the technical and processing time. Through live coding, candidates will be given a test directly by the user and the time is quite limited. While the take-home test candidate will be given a task for a longer time without user supervision.

Read full here: Live Coding Interview: Advantages and Disadvantages
Read full here: Coding test: Is It Mandatory For IT Talent Recruitment?

Coding tests help to minimize bias in recruitment. You can invite multiple candidates anonymously to take a test and then evaluate the candidate’s technical skills in completing the challenge.

This method is certainly better than just relying on a CV to assess competence. Through coding tests, you can see firsthand how they solve problems and what efficient ways are used to overcome coding tests.

However, for maximum results, you must make sure that the coding test carried out is also unbiased, especially during the assessment process. Yes, in certain cases, the coding test assessment is also not free from bias.

Effective coding test to avoid unconscious bias

There are several ways to maximize coding tests. The ways you can do it are:

1. Do it before interview

Give a coding test to the candidate before proceeding to the interview stage. This is done to minimize bias that may occur during the interview and can affect the assessment.

2. Give a test that is following the requirements and job responsibilities

The test given must be relevant to the responsibilities or job requirements of the position being applied for. For example, if a candidate applies as a mobile developer, then give them a task that fits the position.

3. Create a standard for coding tests

Each candidate must have different experiences and skills, it can be confusing for you to make an assessment. Try to make a standard coding test, give the same task to all candidates without exception. This will help you to compare apple to apple which candidate has better technical skills and problem-solving.

4. Make sure the test matches the candidate

To avoid bias you must also ensure that the test that will be given is suitable for the candidate. You can ask yourself or colleagues in your company about the following:

• What knowledge, skills, or abilities are relevant to the given coding test?
• What kind of knowledge and background is needed so that the candidate understands the coding test given?
• How will a particular candidate group (gender, religion, sexual orientation, ethnicity, region, etc.) interpret the coding test given?

To answer all the questions above, try discussing them with your teammates.

5. Use effective and efficient coding test tools

The effective coding test is very dependent on the tools used. So, use coding test tools that you understand and are easy to operate. The problem that often occurs when doing coding tests is that the candidate or recruiter does not know how to operate the features in it.

To avoid this, you can use automatic assessment coding tools from Algobash. Through Algobash you can easily create tests in just minutes even without any IT experience.

Those are some ways that can be done to create a more objective recruitment process. If implemented properly, coding tests can help you find the best developers.

Don’t forget to visit our website Algobash or Algobash Insight to read other interesting information about recruitment and technology.