EEO & Diversity

Whether we acknowledge it or not, implicit bias is something that everyone as an interviewer should recognize and keep in check. Having a first impression type reaction or judgement to a specific candidate based on things like the applicant’s race, gender, weight, or religion can alter the way that you are listening to what they have to say. If the second you met them you had a two second internal reaction of like or dislike based on any of their attributes, it can greatly affect the interview itself. Because of this reason, it is important for managers and specifically the person conducting the interview to know their implicit biases and keep them in check.

In order to learn more about myself and the implicit biases that I have, I took the Implicit bias test for race from Harvard University. This test was set up as a speed reaction with one key signifying whether the person on the screen was African American or European American. After you were familiar with that the same two keys were used to select whether words had good meanings or bad meanings. The test went on to switch the location of the race keys. For example, one round of the test the key “E” represented both the category bad and African American. The next round it represented the category good and African American. This was used to test how quickly your brain was able to decipher between the keys and meanings. If it took longer for you to associate someone who was European American and the good category, this might imply an implicit bias. I thought that this test was very interesting. I scored equally fast at connecting both the good and bad categories with the races that were shown on the screen. While this result is one that I am very proud of, it does not mean that I do not have a responsibility to continually check in with myself and my biases. We all have a responsibility to check our biases and ensure we treat everyone with respect and fairness, especially during an interview process.