Canadian Professors: Interview ‘Bias’ Rampant

HR Needs Standards: To eliminate bias in employment interviews, human resources organizations should standardize their interview processes and provide formal training to those conducting them, according to professors at University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada. Writing in the Canadian Journal of Administrative Sciences, the academics say their findings indicate that interview processes followed by HR practitioners “do not always follow guidelines set out by Canadian Human Rights Tribunals and field researchers.” Although standardized interviews are “strongly recommended” by interview scholars and human rights groups, “improvements are called for” among HR professionals. Based on responses from more than 300 Canadian HR practitioners, researchers found that nearly 80 percent of hiring managers/interviewers “admitted straying from a predetermined list of prompts” when job candidates struggled to answer questions. The conclusion: Lack of structure in interviews could give some prospective employees “an advantage over others.” Interview questions that are administered to all candidates in a “structured and objective way” also could reduce labor grievances about companies’ selection process.