Blind hiring
Also called name-blind recruitment, anonymised applications
Removing identifying information such as name, photograph, age and school from an application so that it is evaluated without those signals.
Last reviewed
In practice
The evidence base comes largely from correspondence studies, where researchers send otherwise identical applications with different names and measure the difference in callbacks. The effect has been found repeatedly, across decades and across countries, which is why the name is the first thing most blind processes remove.
Results from anonymisation trials are more mixed than the concept suggests. Some public-sector trials improved minority progression at shortlisting; at least one large controlled trial found the opposite, because employers who had been deliberately favouring minority applicants could no longer identify them. Anonymity removes information symmetrically, which is worth thinking about before adopting it.
Blind hiring also does nothing about bias in whatever replaces the removed signal. If the assessment itself disadvantages a group, hiding names preserves the disadvantage with perfect fidelity.
Not to be confused with
- Anonymous screening
- Blind hiring usually means redacting a document that has already been submitted. Anonymous screening means the identifying data is never collected or transmitted in the first place. The second is considerably harder to leak.
Related
Anonymous screening
Evaluating candidates on a record that contains no identifying attributes at all, because those attributes are withheld at the source rather than hidden from the reviewer.
Adverse impact
A substantially different rate of selection for a protected group that results from a neutral-seeming employment practice, regardless of whether anyone intended it.
Resume screening
Reviewing submitted resumes to decide which candidates continue in a process, usually against criteria such as keywords, years of experience, education or employer history.
Read further
Longer pieces on this and the arguments around it.
Blind hiring: what the evidence supports, and what it does not
Blind hiring has one of the cleanest natural experiments in labour economics behind it, and real limits. What it fixes, what it cannot, and how to implement it.
ReadName-blind recruitment: the weakest form of blind hiring
Name-blind screening is the most adopted and least effective form of blind hiring. What a name signals, what survives redaction, and what to do instead.
Read