Stereotypes and Job Interviews

Bias, prejudice and stereotypes create an initial impression (a filter) that interview answers are processed through. As this interview perception process is automatic, interviewers are often unaware of how their opinion of an applicant is influenced.

Not all biases are negative; the ‘affinity’ bias shows that it is advantageous to have shared experiences or beliefs with the interviewer, even when the similarity is minimal – both the interviewee and interviewer attended the same university.

Similarity is so powerful that believing an applicant has the same opinions (gained from the candidate’s social media feed, application form or from hearsay – the comments of other department team leaders for an internal vacancy), the interviewer will create a positive pre-interview opinion of the applicant affecting the job interview outcome. And in the interview itself, if the interviewer subconsciously believes the interviewee ‘likes’ them, through reciprocal liking, they will favour the applicant more, even if there is an absence of similarity.

Therefore what an interviewer reads, views or believes has a powerful effect on how they initially view each candidate and if they will be predisposed to ‘like’ them or not. 

Recruitment professionals are aware that prejudices are subconscious and many will disagree with the negative stereotype. Organsiations even go to the trouble of training HR staff to understand the effect of unconscious bias in the recruitment process.

Even with awareness, automatic processing happens. Within milliseconds of meeting a candidate an impression, a prejudice, is formed through that interviewer’s experiences (an interviewer may have lived in a household where the stereotype was regularly expressed). 

Because the bias is automatic it can’t be stopped, it simply pops into one’s mind. For example, the stereotype “women can’t perform male roles” can be the initial thought as an interviewer meets a new applicant, even if the interviewer doesn’t consciously believe the stereotype to be true. The automatic response to seeing a stimuli is just too powerful, the (stereotype) appears without warning. 

To counter this automatic process an interviewer can consciously override it, by searching for evidence that disproves the belief “Janis our best performer is female and works in a stereotypical male role.” This is the conscious mind (the slow thinking analytical part of the brain) in play.

This conscious overriding of automatic thinking is harder to complete when stressed or tired – towards the end of a full day of interviewing candidates. 

If the interviewer believes the prejudice, they are more likely to go with their schema rather than to challenge it, making it harder for the applicant with that (characteristic) to create a positive impression.

A racist or sexist interviewer, as an example, will be predisposed to conform to their bias even when the applicant has high levels of knowledge/experience and high levels of confidence. The interviewer’s beliefs are simply too powerful to alter their perspective, even when evidence is presented proving the value of hiring said candidate. 

There are, of course, people who do not have an automatic process for (stimuli = stereotype) and won’t be affected by the (prejudice). At the interview start, even though an initial opinion will be formed (possibly from a second schema), the said interviewer won’t be affected by the first stereotypical belief. 

Legislation is helping to create a fair recruitment campaign. Non-job related factors; age, race, gender, ethnicity, disability, etc that can be used to discriminate against certain applicants are no longer allowed to be considered as part of the application process.

An example of this is organisations no longer being allowed to advertise for a job role that requires the applicant to have ‘a number of industry years experience’ (age discrimination).

Even though, in this example, an older applicant can be offered a job interview based on their application form without their age being taken into consideration, in the interview itself a prejudice based on how old they appear to be, can be created subconsciously, affecting the older applicants interview scores.   

Interestingly there is no legislation around physical attractiveness in a recruitment campaign even though the evidence is proving the ‘beautiful is good’ schema to be true. One answer to this would be job interviews based on the TV show ‘the voice,’ where singing auditions are judged blindly and judges can only ‘turn their chair around’ once they pick an auditionee, based on their skill set alone (in this case their voice.) 

The evidence states that it is impossible for each applicant to receive a ‘fair’ interview, as candidates are judged differently by the interviewer(s) at an unconscious level.

This could be the difference between an interviewer, who sees commonality with themselves and the interviewee, subconsciously encouraging a candidate, due to high levels of likeability, to give a higher scoring answer or, due to an interviewers negative projection, will hear the applicant answers less favourable then the evidence suggest they actually are, resulting in a lower score.

Or due to a schema based on, as an example, physical appearance, or a stereotype, or a long-held belief, an interviewers bias can affect the applicant’s ability to showcase their predicted job performance. 

To override an initial negative prejudice, an applicant, by highlighting their high-level sector knowledge/experience and high level of confidence during the first interview questions can create an ‘interview identity’ that becomes the interviewer’s new filter, often bypassing the initial cynical impression, unless the said answers show a low level of knowledge/experience and low level of confidence which, instead of helping an applicants cause, reinforces the primary bias.  

Job Interview Advice