In recent years, diversity and inclusion (D&I) have emerged as a critically important issue and focus to ensure the success of work cultures and organizations large and small around the world. This summer, it was highlighted to an even greater degree as racial inequality and injustice came to the forefront.
Companies have been struggling with how to mitigate and reduce biases of all kinds in their hiring practices, while attempting to promote diversity and inclusion in their cultures and ecosystems, to help their organizations and employees thrive at the highest levels. But conscious and unconscious biases remain, and some tools that have been used to address bias, even AI ones, have been criticized as ineffective at best and counterproductive and deceptive at worst.
To learn more about how organizations can address and remove racial, gender, disability and other biases in their hiring processes and practices, I caught up recently with Mike Hudy, Chief Science Officer at Modern Hire.
Modern Hire is an AI-powered enterprise hiring platform, used by 47 of the Fortune 100 companies including Amazon, Walmart and CVS Health, to hire smarter virtually. Modern Hire enables organizations to continuously improve hiring results through more personalized, data-driven experiences for candidates, recruiters and hiring managers. CognitIOn, the nucleus of Modern Hire’s platform, merges expertise in industrial-organizational psychology, talent selection science, advanced analytics, candidate experience, employment law, data science and the practical application of ethical AI.Â
Mike Hudy, Chief Science Officer at Modern Hire, is an industry expert in predictive modeling using human capital data with more than two decades of experience in experiment design and talent analytics. Hudy has expertise in deciphering the complexities and ambiguities of talent acquisition to create the practical and effective solutions clients and candidates are seeking. Hudy’s prior experience includes serving as Executive Vice President of Science at Shaker International, of which he was also a founder. He also was Senior Consultant at CEB/SHL and Training Evaluation Analyst at Nationwide insurance.
Kathy Caprino:Â Mike, from your view, why is it so important right now for companies to have a diverse and inclusive hiring program, and how is technology helping?
Mike Hudy:Â Diversity and inclusion have been brought to the forefront of issues companies are tackling after a summer where racial inequality took center stage. Now, more than ever, companies are realizing the responsibility they have to not only attract and hire diverse talent, but to create an inclusive company culture that allows them to retain a diverse set of employees, and the immense value that this brings to their organization. Increased diversity in the workplace leads to a more productive, creative and higher-performing workforce with less turnover. Employees that can offer unique viewpoints and skills help drive success, and in turn strengthen the company on a global scale.
In order to hire diverse talent, it is important for recruiters to reduce and even eliminate unconscious bias from the hiring process. But that is easier said than done, considering that as humans, we’re so prone to unconscious bias that we often don’t realize our decisions are being influenced by them.
Science and technology, when applied appropriately, can help. Using proven, ethical AI in the hiring process can serve to provide objective information to hiring teams so that they focus on what really matters during the hiring process: characteristics of a candidate that are relevant to success in the job. By using only job relevant data as the foundation of decisions, companies can more effectively remove bias from hiring, ultimately better equipping hiring managers and recruiters to prioritize improving diversity and creating a more inclusive hiring process within their organizations.
