Hiring bias represents one of the most persistent challenges in building diverse, innovative teams. Bertrand and Mullainathan (2004) revealed that résumés with White-sounding names received 50% more callbacks than identical résumés with Black-sounding names, highlighting significant racial bias in hiring practices1. When managers rely on shortcuts—hiring people with similar backgrounds, personalities, or demographics—they limit the organization’s potential.

This article will help you identify common hiring biases and implement practical strategies to create a more equitable hiring process.

“When leaders consistently hire and support people just like themselves, they minimize organizational effectiveness. This homogeneity limits diverse perspectives, innovation potential, and the ability to understand varied customer needs.”2​

Common Types of Hiring Bias

Hiring biases stem from a number of factors and have different underlying biases.

1. Affinity Bias In many fields, managers find it easier to find and filter candidates that closely match their own background. While pulling staff from groups you are a member of, or from new graduates from your school is a great place to start your candidate search, limiting yourself to those locations limits your ability to find success. In my history I’ve experienced this. In my youth I applied for a job as a dock worker at a trucking company. Late in the hiring process one of the interviewers commented on my skinny frame. I didn’t attend the gyms that were regular haunts for the rest of the team. They needed laborers badly and so took a chance on me. I quickly grew to the task and was promoted several times in short time there. How to spot: Review your most recent hires. Do they share similar backgrounds, education, or interests with you or your team? This pattern could indicate affinity bias at work.
2. Gender Bias Stereotypes about the suitability of certain jobs for people of one gender over another abound. In male-dominated sectors like mining or manufacturing, women are overlooked for operational jobs due to assumptions about physical strength or risk tolerance-even when equally qualified2^, 3^, 4. I’ve also experienced this. In one company I worked for leadership were reluctant to hire someone I had put forward because they wouldn’t be “culture fit”. That culture was a frat boy type environment. This person was excellent in their job, and later showed that excellence in the position, improving the quality of several processes. How to spot: Review your current staff. Is there a gender imbalance?
3. Name and Appearance Bias It’s not uncommon for people to be prejudged based on their name or spelling of their name. People are quickly parsed into ethnic, social, or economic groups based on name. Resumes with certain names receive fewer callbacks. Interviewers rate people with facial blemishes or scars lower3^, 4. This limits your ability to find the right candidate by limiting your pool of people. How to spot: You can spot this by examining hiring data for disparities linked to candidate names or appearance.
4. Confirmation Bias Confirmation bias is common in hiring. Managers stop screening after seeing something (often an afinity bias item) in the candidate’s resume. Several markers of a poor fit are ignored in favor of highlighting the match to the positive data. How to spot: Review interview notes for cases where “liked” candidates get more positive comments that are not related to data.

Questions to ask yourself

At all times, look for places where data is not presented, overlooked, or incorrectly weighted in the decision. Questions to ask yourself are:

• Do you look for candidates with the right education even if they have a history of short-term employment?
• Do your candidates age, gender, race distribution match the general public?
• Are you quick to hire the first person that crosses your desk that meets a given list of criteria like home town, alma mater, or job history?

By asking these questions, you can identify where bias may enter your hiring process. Now let’s explore specific strategies to address these biases.

Avoiding Hiring Bias

Once you understand the common biases that affect hiring decisions, you can implement specific strategies to minimize their impact. The following approaches have proven effective across industries and organization sizes.

Your best options are to take control of the elements of the hiring process you do control.

• Ensure that all of your interviewers are trained and aware of biases. This puts all of your interviewers on a level playing field. They all have the same information and understanding of expectations. Example: Before launching a hiring round, a company holds a 90-minute workshop where all interviewers review examples of bias. Interviewers practice using structured scorecards and are reminded to focus on evidence over intuition. This ensures every interviewer evaluates candidates through the same lens, reducing variability and subjective influence.
• Create a list of skill-based questions and scoring rules, and have all interviewers use this for all interviews. This places all of your candidates on a level playing field. Example: Instead of asking “Tell me about yourself,” try “Describe a time when you had to solve a complex problem with limited resources. What was your approach and what was the outcome?” Then rate responses on specific criteria like analytical thinking, resourcefulness, and results.
• Avoid subjective or “cultural fit” questions. They often serve as shorthand for existing biases. Example: Instead of asking a vague question like “Would you enjoy grabbing a beer with this person?”, which can mask personal bias as cultural fit, a hiring team replaces it with, “Can you describe a time you adapted to a team with different working styles?” This shift focuses on behaviors and skills, not personal likability, helping avoid subjective judgments that often exclude diverse candidates.
• Regularly review your questions, interview process, and interviewers to look for unintentional bias injection. Example: As a hiring manager, you review recent interview feedback and notice that one interviewer consistently rates candidates lower if they pause before answering technical questions. After discussion, the team realizes this penalizes reflective thinkers. They revise the scoring rubric to emphasize the quality of answers over delivery speed and retrain the interviewer. This regular check helps catch and correct subtle, unintentional bias in the process.
• Review all interviews as a group after each person records their own data. This becomes a time where the interview bar can be discussed, and candidates are checked against that bar. Example: After completing interviews, each panelist independently submits their scores and notes. In a follow-up debrief, the team compares their assessments against the predefined hiring bar—clear criteria for what success looks like in the role. One interviewer rated a candidate highly for their enthusiasm, but the group notes the candidate fell short on key technical skills. By anchoring the discussion to the shared standard, the team avoids letting individual biases sway the final decision.

Conclusion

Research shows that structured interviews that are pre-thought-out with job-relevant questions, and are asked to each and every candidate do the best job of reducing hiring biases. Take the time to identify the skills a candidate needs to do the job, develop questions to test for those skills. Interview people throughout the hiring process to find the best person for the job. Finally train the people directly involved in your hiring process to identify and remove biases from the process.

Your Bias Reduction Checklist

□ Review job descriptions to remove biased language

□ Implement structured interviews with consistent questions

□ Train all interviewers on bias awareness

□ Establish clear, skill-based evaluation criteria

□ Regularly audit your hiring funnel for disparate impacts

□ Diversify your candidate sourcing channels

□ Conduct group calibrations after independent assessments

Footnotes

​1 https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/0002828042002561​

​2 5 Common Types of Unconscious Bias Affecting Hiring Decisions https://tpd.com/5-common-types-of-unconscious-bias-affecting-hiring-decisions-real-world-examples-from-the-mining-and-manufacturing-industries/​

​3 12 Types of Hiring Bias & How to Avoid Them - Homerun https://www.homerun.co/articles/4-types-of-hiring-bias-and-how-to-avoid-them​

​4 Gender Unconscious Bias in Recruitment - HRBrain.ai https://hrbrain.ai/blog/gender-unconscious-bias-in-recruitment/​