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IDEA Committee

Hiring, Policies & Procedures

Interview process

Interviews can be stressful, especially when candidates are treated more like contestants than guests.  When candidates feel welcomed and comfortable, they are more likely to be themselves and want to work at Oberlin.  These guidelines are designed to encourage a gracious, less stressful interview process.  See the Oberlin College Department of Human Resources' Hiring Process Guides, Tools, and Forms for additional guidelines and recommendations. 

  • Zoom/phone interviews: In an effort to level the playing field during the Zoom/phone interview stage, we recommend sharing the interview questions in advance.  This allows interviewees to prepare thoughtful answers and helps them feel more comfortable in the interview setting.  We think this is particularly important when hiring early-career staff who may not have as much experience with the job application and interview process. 
     

  • Presentations
    Public presentations allow the entire staff an opportunity to get to know a candidate and see how they connect with an audience.  The question and answer period can reveal how well a candidate thinks “on their feet” and handles unexpected situations and questions. 

There is a false assumption that assigning identical topics for public presentations allows more objective comparisons between candidates.  In reality, candidates have varying degrees of familiarity with assigned topics, significantly affecting their presentations' quality.  

A preferable approach is to ask candidates to select their own topic for the public presentation. This allows for more equitable comparisons since all candidates have the opportunity to show their passions and speak about a topic they understand well.

Likewise, schedule presentations at the beginning of the day when candidates are fresh, rather than at the end of the day when they are tired. 

  • Affirmation of Diversity Statement
    Ask candidates to submit a statement affirming their commitment to diversity.  These statements can be quite revealing about the candidate's experience with and commitment to fostering an inclusive learning and working environment for the campus community.
     

Other ways to welcome candidates:

Before a campus visit:

  • After sharing the schedule, ask if there is anyone else the candidate would like to meet with, then schedule that meeting for them.  For example: a faculty member in a particular department, a group of library student assistants, a local real estate agent, etc.

During a campus visit:

  • Be sure to include short breaks in the schedule -- to allow for "comfort breaks," to give the candidate a few moments to reflect, or just have a bit of quiet time during a busy day.  

Unconscious (or subliminal) Bias

Undoing these behaviors requires moving from a fixed mindset — the belief that we’re already doing the best we possibly can to build diverse teams — to one of openness and growth, where we can deeply understand, challenge, and confront our personal biases. 

Accept that you have biases, especially affinity bias 

Even if you head up your organization’s diversity committee, even if you are from an underrepresented community, you have biases that impact your professional decisions, especially hiring. Affinity bias — having a more favorable opinion of someone like us — is one of the most common. In hiring this often means referring or selecting a candidate who shares our same race or gender, or who went to the same school, speaks the same language, or reminds us of our younger selves.

Ask: “Where is, or could, bias show up in this decision?”

By explicitly acknowledging that we all have unconscious biases and creating a space to call them out, there’s an opportunity to hold ourselves and each other accountable.

Reduce the influence of your peers’ opinions on your hiring decisions

Keep feedback private; otherwise people are influenced by what others are saying.  I recommend writing down your feedback on the candidate and whether you’re inclined to hire them, before you debrief with your colleagues. Again, ask yourself as you’re writing: “How could bias have impacted my assessment and recommendation?”

Use a “flip it to test” approach 

In 2017, Fortune 500 executive Kristen Pressner gave a brave TEDx talk, where she admitted to harboring gender bias against women leaders, despite identifying as a woman herself. Pressner developed a technique to disrupt bias — ask yourself, if you were to swap out the candidate from an underrepresented background with one of your more typical hires, would you have the same reaction? For example, if a woman of color candidate speaks passionately, and you’re less inclined to hire her because you think of her as “angry,” would you use the same word if a white man spoke the same way? 

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