5 Common Interview Mistakes that Undermine EDI Goals

You’ve set clear equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) goals for your organisation, but now you're not sure that your interviewing practices are keeping up? That may be because despite your clear intentions, common pitfalls in interviewing often inadvertently create barriers and lose companies top talent. Let’s explore these potential mistakes and how you can avoid them to ensure your interviewing practices genuinely support your EDI goals.

1. Inflexible and Inaccessible Interview Structures

Rigid interview structures can be a significant roadblock in achieving your EDI goals. Inflexibility often manifests itself in interview scheduling that doesn't account for candidates' diverse needs, such as caregiving responsibilities or disability accommodations. An approach that insists everyone fits into a narrow schedule can inadvertently exclude candidates who might need a bit more leeway. Consider opening up slots outside the standard 9-to-5 or offering candidates options like remote interviews to remove these barriers.

Additionally, accessibility is often overlooked and traditional interview processes might unintentionally favour certain groups. For instance, interviews held in locations without accessibility features can disadvantage candidates with mobility issues - ensuring venues are accessible or providing virtual alternatives can show your commitment to inclusivity.

Before you schedule an interview, it's important to proactively check with candidates if they have any reasonable adjustments, for example:

• Additional time for questions or tasks.

• Aids such as closed captions or screen readers.

• Access to a close parking space.

• A sign language interpreter.

• Knowledge of the interview topics beforehand.

• For the interview to be held at a specific time.

Tip: Audit your current interview process with feedback from current employees to spot these inflexibilities and address them.

2. Interviewers Being Under-Prepared

Interviewer preparation often gets overlooked, yet it's crucial in making equitable and data-driven hiring decisions. When interviewers are unprepared, bias can easily seep into the interview process, leading to unjust assessments of candidates.

Key reasons for interviewer under-preparedness include:

• Lack of structured guidelines: Without a standard template or checklist, questions may be inconsistent, making it difficult to compare candidates objectively.

• Time constraints: Busy schedules and back to back interviewing can result in inadequate preparation time, causing interviewers to rely on instinct rather than facts.

One practical way to tackle this issue is by implementing structured interview builders, designed to help you craft uniform assessment criteria. Using a tool like this ensures everyone interviews consistently, basing decisions on relevant data rather than gut feelings.

A lack of preparation can also manifest as a lack of familiarity with candidate profiles or specific role requirements, which affects the quality of the interview. Asking irrelevant, repetitive or inappropriate questions because you haven't reviewed the candidate's CV in detail reflects poorly on your organisation and can undermine the candidate's confidence.

To counter this:

• Dedicate time for preparation: Schedule time before interviews to thoroughly review candidate information and define core questions.

• Employ interview intelligence tools: Tools that let you build company wide interview templates can save you time, allowing for better focus on critical evaluation areas.

3. Relying on Solo Interviewers

Using a panel of interviewers rather than relying on a single interviewer has been shown to produce fairer and more accurate outcomes - multiple interviewers provide a balanced and holistic evaluation of candidates, as they each bring unique perspectives and interpretations to the table. This collaborative approach reduces the risk of individual bias skewing the results and ensures that decisions are more thoroughly vetted.

In a panel interview discrepancies in opinions can be discussed, leading to a consensus that is more informed and objective. This minimises over-reliance on any one person's judgment and fosters a fairer evaluation process.

Candidates also often feel more assured when they see that the evaluation is a team effort rather than the subjective judgment of one person; it gives them the chance to interact with multiple representatives of the organisation, providing a clearer sense of the company culture and team dynamics.

Tip: Rotate panel members from different departments or areas of expertise to ensure diverse perspectives and encourage a more inclusive and collaborative hiring process. Tools like Evidenced can be used to capture and analyse panel interview feedback without introducing bias, ensuring consistency and highlighting areas for improvement.

4. Interviewers Discussing Opinions Before Submitting Results

Premature discussion among interviewers about candidates, before each of them has independently recorded their feedback, can skew perceptions and hinder objectivity. This approach might lead interviewers to unintentionally conform to dominant opinions or overlook aspects based on prior discussions, which can undermine EDI objectives by reinforcing unconscious biases.

This practice can lead to:

• Groupthink: Tendency for discussions to lead to unanimity rather than diverse perspectives.

• Confirmation bias: Interviewers may look for evidence to back others' assessments instead of forming their own.

• Pressure to conform: Junior interviewers may feel compelled to agree with senior colleagues.

To prevent this, implement structured protocols that promote independent evaluations before discussions.

A practical solution is using tools like Evidenced, where individual feedback can be recorded and stored immediately following an interview. These tools ensure that every interviewer's perspective is documented without undue influence, thus enhancing decision-making equity.

Tip: Encourage interviewers to briefly summarise their independent assessments in structured formats such as rating scales or scorecards immediately after the interview to prevent second-hand influences, ensuring more objective panel discussions later.

5. Interviewers Not Basing their Opinions on Data

When interviewers rely solely on personal impressions rather than concrete data, it can lead to biased and inconsistent hiring decisions. This flaw not only undermines EDI initiatives but can also result in missing out on diverse talent. You might think a candidate 'seemed confident' but without structured evaluation criteria, you're not making a fair assessment. Instead of gut feelings, aim to base decisions on tangible data and clearly defined competencies.

To mitigate this, consider using structured scorecards that assess specific skills and attributes. Interview intelligence softwares like Evidenced provide real-time guidance and structured interview templates to ensure your evaluations remain consistent and focused on the relevant data. They also capture performance metrics, eliminating subjective assessments and enabling interviewers to concentrate on objective criteria. With such tools, identifying the right candidate becomes data-driven rather than intuition-based.

Efforts towards data-driven interviews ensure diverse candidates don't slip through the cracks due to unconscious biases or unsubstantiated opinions. By eliminating reliance on personal judgment, you build a hiring process that actively supports your EDI objectives.

Building a diverse and inclusive workplace requires intentional effort throughout the hiring process, particularly during interviews. By avoiding common pitfalls like inflexible structures and unpreparedness, and by leveraging data over intuition, organisations can effectively support their EDI goals. Making these changes not only aligns with modern diversity standards but also enhances the overall quality of hiring decisions, creating a more equitable workplace.