Quadrics Company, a service provider, is hiring for their customer service staff. They are reviewing resumes online. Because of "implicit cognitions," Quadrics tends to hire women for these positions. Explain the concept of "implicit cognitions" and describe actions that Quadrics could take to address any bias that occurs.

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Interviewers make hiring decisions based on their impression of how an applicant fits the perceived requirements of a job. Unfortunately, many of these decisions are made on the basis of implicit cognition. Implicit cognition represents any thoughts or beliefs that are automatically activated from memory without our conscious awareness. The existence of implicit cognition leads people to make biased decisions without realizing they are doing so. A recent study of job applicants' résumés, for instance, demonstrated that recruiters evaluated women more favorably than men for customer service jobs, probably based on gender-role stereotypes.

Experts recommend three solutions for reducing the biasing effect of implicit cognition. First, managers can be trained to understand and recognize this type of hidden bias. Second, they can use structured rather than unstructured interviews. Interviewers ask the same sequence of questions to all applicants in a structured interview, which leads to more reliable evaluations. Finally, managers can rely on evaluations from multiple interviewers rather than just one or two people.