Here at Sourcegraph, we believe that interviewing is a company-wide effort. This means that we want every single teammate, regardless of role, to know how to run a great interview. We therefore want to provide resources on how to:
What is unconscious bias: unconscious bias (also known as implicit bias) is a bias that happens automatically, is outside our control, and is triggered by our brain making quick judgments and assessments of people and situations, influenced by our background, cultural environment and personal experiences.
Unconscious biases cause us to make a snap judgment of a candidate within the first 10 seconds of meeting them. That doesn't just refer to interviewing, it can also occur when you're dealing with a customer or a peer. We use these unconscious biases to inform ourselves of decisions we're making. When conducting an interview, for example, we can make a snap judgment and spend the rest of the interview reinforcing those biases that we have. Imagine you are interviewing somebody and you see that they went to the same school as you did or they like the same sports team that you do. You may unconsciously feel a natural affinity towards that person because they look like you or remind you of you. In that scenario, you may spend the rest of the interview looking for signs to reaffirm that this candidate is the right fit for the job. In reality, it could be an affinity bias.
Interviewing candidates remotely has the potential to uncover a whole new set of biases that are not often talked about. It gives you signals that you don't see while interviewing in person, for example: