Blind Auditions Could Give Employers a Better Hiring Sense

Blind auditions made a huge impact in increasing gender diversity in professional orchestras:<p>“In the 1970s and 1980s, orchestras began using blind auditions. Candidates are situated on a stage behind a screen to play for a jury that cannot see them. In some orchestras, blind auditions are used just for the preliminary selection while others use it all the way to the end, until a hiring decision is made.<p>“Even when the screen is only used for the preliminary round, it has a powerful impact; researchers have determined that this step alone makes it 50% more likely that a woman will advance to the finals. And the screen has also been demonstrated to be the source of a surge in the number of women being offered positions.”<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theguardian.com&#x2F;women-in-leadership&#x2F;2013&#x2F;oct&#x2F;14&#x2F;blind-auditions-orchestras-gender-bias" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theguardian.com&#x2F;women-in-leadership&#x2F;2013&#x2F;oct&#x2F;14&#x2F;b...</a>

&quot;Calderon learned to code at an intense boot camp for Latinos. She says the men in her class have had an easier time getting jobs than the women, even though they learned the same skills.&quot;<p>Honestly, after reading this, it really makes me wonder about why she wasn&#x27;t getting hired. A bootcamp in coding isn&#x27;t going to really give you enough skills to do the job.<p>Superficially, you might be able to get a few things to work and mash together some frameworks, but to truly understand, it takes many more years of learning and discipline.<p>I wouldn&#x27;t hire someone that only went through a bootcamp for a developer position.

My company has just launched an anonymous interview process for 3 open positions - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;careers.bytemark.co.uk&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;careers.bytemark.co.uk&#x2F;</a> . We only take a mobile# and an alias, and just talk to candidates over IM for 2&#x2F;3 interviews. I blogged about the rationale - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;blog.bytemark.co.uk&#x2F;2015&#x2F;05&#x2F;20&#x2F;bytemark-is-hiring-by-anonymous-interview" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;blog.bytemark.co.uk&#x2F;2015&#x2F;05&#x2F;20&#x2F;bytemark-is-hiring-by...</a><p>re: the post on gapjumpers, I&#x27;m not sure about asking someone to do (what appears to be) a 1-2 day programming exercise on their own time to prove themselves for a job. That favours people with the most time to put aside - and it&#x27;s a heck of a lot of wasted effort for the candidate who gets rejected. I don&#x27;t think that&#x27;s as fair as it should be.<p>We&#x27;re using anonymous interviews for all our positions (not just development), and it&#x27;s great to get a sense of personality without thinking about gender, age, race or anything else irrelevant. When we turn people down, we don&#x27;t even know who they were. I _think_ that&#x27;s a good thing for both sides.<p>I&#x27;m not going to pre-judge what&#x27;s happening with our process, but so far we&#x27;ve got through a load of interviews without stress, and got very strong impressions from these 30 minute initial chats. Second interviews will start happening the week after next &amp; I&#x27;ll write about it once we&#x27;ve got this batch of recruits through the door.

Specific performance on a challenge is certainly a piece of the puzzle. But cultural fit is also important. And someone who may be less than perfect in their &quot;audition&quot; could likely be mentored into a great employee, if their cultural fit is close to perfect.<p>One of my standard statements is that the ability to do a job is not a guarantee to get the job - it is just the base requirement to even be considered.

I&#x27;ve been using and promoting a similar process (including side-by-side, blind comparison) since 2010 on ars.io<p>As an ATS it removes photos and names, just shows candidates side-by-side allowing managers and team members to quickly rank-sort the applicants without gender or nationality bias.<p>Combine that with our &quot;gig-to-hire&quot; process and the result is lower time to find higher quality candidates.<p>I wish I was better at press.

Bytemark in the UK have started hiring by initial anonymous interview <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;blog.bytemark.co.uk&#x2F;2015&#x2F;05&#x2F;20&#x2F;bytemark-is-hiring-by-anonymous-interview" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;blog.bytemark.co.uk&#x2F;2015&#x2F;05&#x2F;20&#x2F;bytemark-is-hiring-by...</a>

A coding challenge isn&#x27;t going to tell me whether you might be an asshole who&#x27;s hard to work with.