Introduction

When it comes to recruiting new talents and specifically migrants or people with a migration background for our enterprise, we all want the best possible person for the job. But it isn’t just about getting the right candidate to apply, it is also about the recruiter discovering the right candidate among the applications. Considering that migrants might also place among the candidates considered, here cultural unconscious bias can be one of the biggest obstacles to overcome. We all have many different forms of bias – that is a fact of life – but through recognizing and managing them we can mitigate their effect and provide better conditions also for people with migration background. In a recruitment situation we can avoid this by being reflective of potential cultural unconscious bias, so we don’t end up turning away an ideal candidate because of something that doesn’t influence their job performance. This may include gender, age, culture, looks, sexuality, unrelated traits, differences from ourselves, or some of the many other ways cultural biases can affect the recruitment process. The best outcome we can achieve by recognizing our own cultural unconscious biases in recruiting is the fact that we will be able to help shape and grow cultural awareness in the organization as a whole and maintain a multicultural and diverse workplace.

In this module we will dive into the different functions of recruitment especially when migrants and people with a migration background are involved and explore from an HR point of view when unconscious biases can be expressed during the recruiting process, how we can identify them in ourselves and others, and how we can avoid – or at least mitigate – their influence in the recruitment process.

Learning outcome(s): At the end of the module the learner will:

• Be able to recognize the stages of the recruiting process where Unconscious Bias can be observed and expressed
• Be able to identify Unconscious Bias in yourself and the organization
• Be able to use various methods and tools to avoid Unconscious Bias in the recruitment process when migrants and people with a migration background are involved

Source: https://pixabay.com/photos/analyst-recruiter-research-6492859/