You’ll know that International Women’s Day is on March 8th and each year the resources available on their website get better and better. This year’s theme is breaking the bias and, as an aside, we particularly like the Zoom backgrounds available to download.  

With 40% of FTSE 100 board roles now held by women, the UK is placed second in international rankings for women’s representation, compared with 12.5% 10 years ago. Thank you to Joy Burford for bringing this positive fact to our attention!

Skills-based interviews have a marked effect on the number of women hired into senior roles according to research from software company Applied. Skills-based interviews, motivation and cognitive ability test help #breakthebias by removing opportunity bias (i.e. those fortunate enough to have held a position that a future employer deems favourable, regardless of how well they actually performed in that role) and instead encourages diversity of approach.

Providing as many opportunities for candidates to see themselves working a role as possible is an essential part of improving opportunities for women, and all under-represented workers. Too often, people self-select themselves out of the process because the way a job is advertised, and then interviewed and assessed is biased towards to a particularly group. This is usually never intentional, it’s a legacy of habit and often never really knowing the people you lost along the way so never understanding what needs to be done to alter the process.

Our specialist psychometric assessor, Eithne Sanders, can help support your recruitment process with a wide range of online assessments that will help de-bias your recruiting. Email her to find out how she can help.