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by returningfory2
2103 days ago
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I think it's so tricky though. Take: > * How disputes are settled. Suppose you pose to the candidate a situation in which they are in the right, and ask them how they would proceed. They respond by giving the impression that they wouldn't easily compromise on their correct point of view. Is this positive or negative? For many interviewers the answer will unconsciously depend on the candidate's gender. If the candidate is a man it's positive because they are "assertive" and "stick to their guns", whereas if they're a woman it's negative because they're "pushy" and "unwilling to listen to other points of view". |
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This should, ideally, depend on your team and your organization, right? There's no one right answer here.
I agree that there is an opportunity for bias here, but that goes for pretty much any question you could ask. You could ask them about programming languages they've used and find out they've used a lot of different languages. And the bias response would be to think that for men this means they're inquisitive and curious, but for women this means they're flighty and unable to stick with anything.
One thing that I think can help is to talk with the hiring team in advance about what you hope to get out of each question. For example, in asking about how you'd handle a technical dispute, you could focus on whether they would go directly to their teammates or manager before going to the next level up in the management chain. And on the flip side, you may want to make sure that their answer isn't "if I'm right I will never let it go because it's important to be right." By focusing on a few key points you're looking for, it may (I hope) limit the potential for bias.
But it's legitimate to ask about non-technical soft skills in an interview. Those are a _huge_ part of doing any job that involves interacting with other people. And conversely, there are people who are hugely destructive to a team or organization because of the lack of such skills. I don't think the answer to bias is to simply avoid any topic where bias could come into play.