Hiring Managers Cannot Suppress Their Biases in Job Interviews, Study Finds

[rug]

April 8, 2017 by PHILIP PERRY

Say you go to a job interview and sometime after, the interviewer sends you a friend request on Facebook. Would you accept it? The question gives us pause. It’s a paradox, really. On the one hand, not accepting might mean you have something to hide. On the other, if you accept, you could be evaluated on far more than your CV. Though the unemployment rate just took another dip, it’s still hard to find a good job nowadays, one that can sustain us and lead to a solid future.

Unfortunately, more and more interviewers are sending friend requests, giving candidates the jitters and leaving them wondering if they made the right choice, either accepting or rejecting. By law, it’s illegal to ask about one’s religion, sexual orientation, or marital status at an interview. Unless you’re wearing signifiers like a hijab, a cross, or a wedding ring, the interviewer may never pick up on these things. But on social media, the information is just a few clicks away.

So what’s the big deal? Evaluating someone on the basis of say religion is illegal, right? The problem is, these decisions are often made subconsciously. The hiring manager may not even know they are doing it. After all, don’t we go with our gut in such situations? And doesn’t that allow for inherent bias to slip in?

This all rests on social identity theory. We, each of us, identify with certain groups. This theory states that we, overtly or subconsciously, value and put our own group above others. The in-group we identify with could be a social class, an ethnicity, religion, one’s own family, a sports team, and more. A study, recently published in The Social Science Journal, found that people naturally use race and religion as part of their interpersonal judgments.

http://bigthink.com/philip-perry/job-interviewers-consider-a-candidates-religion-in-their-evaluation-studies-show

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0362331916000094

[No Vested Interest]

1. Ignore the friend request from an interviewer. He/she does not know how often or even if

you check your facebook site.
Of course, an interviewer can see what you post for the general public, and if you tell and show all to the public, the interviewer will see what you have posted.

[AtheistCrusader]

2. I always accept.

I figure if they don't like who I am as a person, better to know up front, rather than beat around the bush.

Work relationships are long-term and tightly integrated. If I don't fit, if I can't stand the person I'm working for, I'm going to find something else. Happy teams that mesh well, and share some commonalities, tend to be more productive.