Confirmation bias is the human tendency to favor information that affirms our existing beliefs or values. This is an understandable evolutionary tactic for making sense of our surroundings, as it allows us to quickly make decisions and not waste time evaluating every move we make. However, strategically evaluating evidence is a skill, one that needs to be nurtured if we want to be open, objective, and empathetic. 

In the world of recruiting, confirmation bias takes hold of even the best, most thoughtful professionals. For example, industries such as law or investment banking often show a preference for candidates who attend top-tier universities. Hiring decision-makers assume that Ivy League attendance translates into intelligence, job-readiness, or even subconsciously, worth. Add in aggressive timetables and high competition for candidates — and a petri dish of mental shortcuts and bias forms, giving life to an unfair system in which the same people get ahead and the best decisions aren’t always made. 

To create a more equal and effective process, we must find ways to interrupt our bias and get comfortable with assessing disconfirming evidence, especially when in charge of human capital decisions. Suited is designed to provide independent, data-driven, and bias-free data points to consider throughout the recruiting process. 

01.

The Suited Score

In the Suited system, candidates are assigned a probability metric presented as a percentage.

This is a person’s probability of being a high-performing employee that is generated through their responses to our assessments and is unique to each firm in the network based on custom models trained on their current employees. This metric should be treated as a confirming or conflicting piece of evidence when making decisions. 

02.

Making Decisions

When the Suited scores are aligned with resume reviews or interviewer feedback, you should feel more confident in the decision to proceed or reject the candidate. However, when the Suited scores do not align with resume selections or interviewer feedback, we recommend investigating the candidate’s potential strengths and weaknesses further, as well as looking for potential bias (all things that can be enabled by the data within the Suited platform). In this blog post, we discuss ways in which one may mindfully address and mitigate bias in the hiring process.

The goal is not to replace human-led decision-making in the hiring process. Rather, the goal is to raise awareness of uncertainty and/or bias that exists in recruiting and to give firms the information to dig deeper and make informed and fair decisions.

Using Suited’s AI-driven recruitment models as a part of their evaluation process, firms are able to ensure high quality hires with speed and at scale throughout their recruiting process, resulting in equitable, data-driven, and accurate outcomes.