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Find TimesJobs.com’s career articles, expert advice and tips @www.timesofindia.indiatimes.com, Jobs & Career section

n Event: PAGE 5 Tech Connect 2016

n Interview: PAGE 8 Corporate VP-HR, AMD Greater Asia

BLIND AUDITIONS IN HIRING Adding anonymity to the recruitment process leads to increased workforce diversity and better hires, say majority of India Inc employers in a TimesJobs.com study

VOLUME-VI I ISSUE 3 I MARCH 2016www.content.timesjobs.com

TimesJobs.com survey

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Many tech giants are embracing ‘blind auditions for hiring’ to remove bias and increase workplace diversity and build better teams. The

process involves masking candidate information such as gender, ethnicity, age and other such non-job specific elements to help recruiters make

unbiased choices. This TimesJobs study explores the advantages and challenges India Inc employers see in this emerging concept

Is bias holding you back from finding

top talent?

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VOLUME-VI I ISSUE 3 I MARCH 2016www.content.timesjobs.com

Apeksha Kaushik, TimesJobs.com

TO REMAIN competitive in today’s work world, it is imperative for organisations to attract, hire and retain a diverse workforce. As such,

the concept of ‘blind hiring’ or ‘blind auditions for hiring’ is getting recognised with increased focus on workforce diversity.

In a TimesJobs.com study on ‘Blind Hiring: Concept, Challenges and Competence’, nearly 60 per cent of India Inc employers listed workplace diversity as their prime focus in the current year.

In the study, 70 per cent of the employers from across sectors claimed that there is a lack of workforce diversity within organisations, with 55 per cent saying that the gap was mostly in terms of gender diversity.

Top companies such as Google, Facebook and Apple have gone on record about their goals to improve gender and ethnic diversity in their organisations. They have tried blind hiring and it has emerged as a probable solution to the tricky issue of workplace diversity.

In 2014, a San Francisco-based startup created software to help organisations increase diversity at their workplaces. It drew inspiration for their process from a reality TV show which had blind folded auditions for participants.

The software makes the hiring process anonymous by removing resume details

such as name, address, college/university, graduation year, educational background and other details which could reveal the candidate’s sex, race, age, ethnicity and socio-economic background. First impressions about a candidate are based purely on the person’s skills.

According to the TimesJobs.com study, skill set is the most crucial aspect for recruiters/hiring managers while hiring.

However, in a scenario where recruiter/hiring managers typically spend less than five minutes to review a resume, it is natural that inherent biases may kick in.

To remove such biases, it is imperative to mask candidate information such as gender, ethnicity, age and other such non-job specific elements to let the recruiter focus on skills that will matter for the job roles on offer.

A blind audition in the context of job search means that applicants are judged

on their skills and not on the basis of where they grew up, or from which educational institute they studied or whether they are male or female.

In a scenario where nearly 60 per cent employers said there are skill gaps in their workforce, it is essential to have practices such as blind hiring to help mask the insignificant elements in the resume and focus on just skill sets.

Workplace diversity

60%

Hiring

Screening12%

8%

Retention20%

What will be your prime organisational focus in 2016?

Skill set

62%

Educational qualification

International exposure 15%

3%

Experience (number of years)

20%

What do you focus on while hiring candidates?

Less than 5 minutes

78%

More than 10 minutes

0%

5-10 minutes 22%

How much time do you spend on reviewing a resume?

TV reality show ‘The Voice’ popularised the concept of blind audition.

Yes

60%No

40%

Do you think there are skill gaps in your workforce?

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The advantagesThe study shows that while 58 per

cent employers think improved gender diversity is the biggest advantage of blind hiring, 30 per cent said it helps improve ethnic diversity. Nearly 12 per cent employers said the process helps enhance the overall hiring practices by masking the inconsequential elements in a resume.

Where most employees get preferential treatment if they are from top B-schools, the technique of blind hiring lets the others stand a fair chance of getting selected purely on the basis of their competencies.

The routeWhen in 2014 Google realised it had a

problem with its employee data which showed that only 2 per cent of the company’s employees were black, only 3 per cent were hispanic and only 30 per

cent women, it pledged to improve its workforce diversity quotient.

The company took the help of a third-party software to mask inconsequential resume data and also used standardised questions to interview candidates to improve workplace diversity.

Like Google, nearly 68 per cent organisations said they preferred outsourcing the hiring process to improve workforce diversity and hiring rates, according to the TimesJobs.com survey.

One of the key reasons behind this preference for outsourcing the hiring process is the lack of skills among in-house HR teams to understand and employ such new techniques.

The challengesThe biggest challenge of implementing

a blind hiring process is said to be associated with the cultural fitment of a potential employees, said nearly 44 per cent of the surveyed employers in the TimesJobs.com study.

The cultural fitment aspect is directly related to the emotional intelligence of candidates, which blind hiring tends to often miss.

Gauging emotional intelligence is imperative for organisations to curb high attrition rates and have better, cohesive and productive teams.

About 32 per cent organisations claimed their HR professionals are not well-equipped to manage and use blind hiring software or technique.

It requires a lot of training and understanding on the recruiters’ part to accept and adhere to blind hiring protocols since they have been working all their lives on traditional interviewing and other hiring processes.

Nearly 22 per cent of the surveyed employers also said that blind hiring limits face-to-face interaction with a potential candidate which is a crucial part of hiring.

Even a section of employees (38%) do not seem to approve of blind hiring, according to a poll done by TimesJobs. The employees said they would like the hiring managers to know about their universities/institutes and their prior work experience as these could help them land the job.

The verdictBlind auditions, of course, are not a

replacement for face-to-face interviews. They are simply a first step in the process and a better way to screen potential candidates for face-to-face interviews. It helps add a layer before psychometric tests to further refine the hiring process.

The biggest advantage of this technique lies in the fact it removes the biases with respect to gender and ethnicity to hire the best for the job basis the candidate’s capabilities and skill sets.

While the original concept targeted tech positions, it is now getting recognised for other work disciplines too.

Blind hiring has its share of loopholes, but a method for masking the candidate’s identifying characteristics in the resume is a captivating concept. It not only helps in getting diverse candidates but also builds a strong foundation of skilled talent who can be nurtured for leadership roles. It is not just a solution to the global corporate diversity challenge but also a credible answer to the universal skill crunch problem.

For diversity -- said to be the biggest advantage of blind hiring -- the solution lies in not just building a diverse workplace but sustaining it.

A diverse workplace must encompass elimination of biases from the day a candidate is brought on board to the appraisal process and from succession planning and to the day the candidate exits/retires from the system.

Using in-houses resources

32%Outsourcing the process

68%

How would you like to enhance workplace diversity?

Misses cultural fitment

44%

Limits face-to-face interaction

Management’s apprehension22%

2%

Lack of competency to manage and use 32%

What is the key challenge of using blind auditions for hiring?

Helps improve gender diversity

58%

Helps improve overall hiring practice

12%

Helps improve ethnic diversity

30%

What is the advantage of using blind auditions for hiring?

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TechGig.com Bureau

DIGITAL technologies have led to transformation across sectors including retail, banking, manufacturing, cars and

energy. Customers have started reacting and interacting differently to social, cloud and mobile (SoCloMo) and it has opened new business models for companies. This has created a big opportunity and also a challenge for CIOs/CTOs/CEOs of today to develop strategies and drive revenue. Then they have to integrate software technologies in a cost effective, reliable and secure way. There is demand in the market and products are changing as per customer needs.

Keeping this scenario in mind, TechGig organised a panel discussion on ‘Tech Connect 2016: Connecting IT, Businesses and Talent’ to know how far Indian companies have adopted digital technologies.

Excerpts from the panel discussion:n Asher Kapoor, founder & MD, EPPS: If we divide the Indian industries in various sectors, there is a deep technology penetration among MNCs. But when it comes to MSMEs, people have started looking at the software that can help them standardise their business process. Still, there is lot of scope for adoption of software. n Amit Angarkar, Head-Technology and Architect, Opus Consulting Solutions: Being a service provider to MNCs, we are far ahead in terms of implementation considering there are a large number of software providers in India. We are not ahead in implementation and usage in western countries. n Ashwin Megha, Chief Operating Officer, Forgeahead Solutions: Proliferation of mobile technologies across the country is increasing so fast that one has to realise that there is huge demand across the board, not just in IT.

The game changer will be how quickly we are able to grow, cope up and sustain and make it happen. Today’s startup community is challenging the enterprise world to keep up the pace. n Alok Kumar, MD, Sears Technologies: I have observed two kind of adoptions: Service providers for MNCs, technically western countries, and Indian companies who are far behind. There is no middle path here. In case the country has to really go on the Make in India path, the adoption of technology in Indian companies has to increase. n Vikas Dhawan, COO, Searce: Nobody can avoid technology now. Earlier, individual stacks were working. Today, it is woven into a huge ecosystem of SoCloMo. What is frightening for companies is that it not only includes your employees, partner, customers but also your competitors. On the other hand, this is an advance warning systems where CIOs/CTOS can see the disruption coming. Gen Y is going away from ownership. It believes that if you can utilise something, you don’t have to own it. This is penetrating technology product offerings. Even large corporations are adopting APIs and technologies and making it a part of their system without rebuilding it. We are moving to an age where people will pick pieces of software from various sources and use them.

n Ashutosh Saitwal, Director of Test Engineering & Quality Assurance, ZS India: India is the biggest mobile market. There are more smartphones in India than any other country. At least, the growth rate is high. It means the technology landscape that’s evolving with SoCloMo cannot be looked in isolation. If we talk of mobile, there is something happening in cloud. The convergence of technologies is bringing in the disruption. n Abhay Ghate, VP & CTO, Nihilent Technologies: With the advent of technologies and being people active on social media, companies get lot of information about the customers. And the ability of companies to gather and digest the information to give personalised services to the user is really changing. This is putting pressure on industries to develop strength in this area.

To conclude, the experts on the panel agreed that they need risk-takers and decision makers when it comes to IT talent pool. The onus is on CIOs/CTOs and tech departments at large to define and evolve new technologies that will meet the relevant demand in the future as well and develop new strategies. At the same time, there should be enough room for trial and error. The possibilities are endless.

Technology adoption has to increase in Indian companies, say experts

TechGig.com Tech Connect 2016, Pune

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Jappreet Sethi

MULTIPLE studies have shown that recruiters and hiring managers have a favourable

bias towards candidates who come from a similar demographic background as their own. The bias gets emboldened if they have a high-profile employer or originate from a top rung school. These candidates become a natural choice for the hiring manager, even though having a top employer or coming from a good school has not been conclusively linked to better job performance.

Even the best-drawn processes with most loved companies like Google are not immune to this bias. In 2014, Google, for the first time, released demographics of its employees, revealing the end of result of its competitive, data-driven and science-based recruiting strategy. People

from African origin constituted only 2 per cent of its employees. Latino was at 3 per cent and men represented 70 per cent of the employee population.

Companies are quick to shrug this off by saying there aren’t enough qualified women and minority candidates applying to universities and graduating to enter the mainstream talent pool. The truth is farther from home. In the US alone, under-represented minorities make up nearly 9 per cent of graduates from the top 25 undergraduate computer science programmes, according to Education Department data analysed by

Maya A. Beasley, associate professor of sociology at University of Connecticut.

The bias may be deep-rooted in our psyche and gets triggered unconsciously without us even realising that we are playing to it. Even to the best of our efforts to see everyone as equal, the way things are and have been presented in the world around us distorts our mind, triggering bias.

For years, discrimination against women and minorities has been alleged in hiring practices for many occupations. But it is tough to find a solution to the vexed issue. Similar gaps and myths prevailed in the orchestra industry in the United States in the early 1950s.To counter any possibility of biases in hiring, most orchestras reformed their audition practices in the 1970s and 1980s. A significant change involved the

use of “blind” auditions with a “screen” to conceal the identity of the candidate from the jury. Female musicians in the top five symphony orchestras in the United States were less than 5 per cent of all players in 1970 but are hinging close to 30 per cent today.

Claudia Goldin from Harvard University and Cecilia Rouse from Princeton University conducted research using data from actual auditions in an individual fixed-effects framework and found thatn The screen increases - by 50 per cent - the probability a woman will be advanced out of preliminary rounds.

n The screen also enhances, by several folds, the likelihood a female contestant will be the winner in the final round. n Using data on orchestra personnel, the switch to “blind” auditions can explain between 30 per cent and 55 per cent of the increase in the proportion of females among new hires and between 25 per cent and 46 per cent of the increase in the percentage of females in the orchestras since 1970.

As such, blind hiring techniques have found favour in the market. In blind hiring, the following takes placen Removing the resume or redacting identify specific information like the candidate’s educational background and name from applications and resumesn Assessing candidates by skill testing or by giving sample projects. The top performers are then called for interview.

Making the interview round anonymous by using chat rooms and voice-masking technology so that the candidate’s identity is not decipherable.

This technique is finding backers in top technology companies globally and heavyweights from academia are putting their weight behind it too.

A company providing blind hiring in the US conducted 1,200 auditions across 13 companies to study if real change is happening or not. The results were way better than the industry average. Once the blind challenge was completed, the gender breakdown of those candidates hired was 58 per cent women and 42 per cent men.

It is time that we start breaking the biases in the track by putting roadblocks in the systems, to prevent the biases from fructifying.

The author is an employee

engagement expert

Blind hiring prevents biases from fructifying

Guest column: Recruitment bias

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TechGig.com Bureau

IT IS evident that phenomena like big data, data analytics, IoT and cloud have changed the way businesses compete. The effective use of data is the very

basis of competition and staying ahead of the curve. Data analysis has helped companies take a more structured approach towards decision-making, improving product profitability, acquiring clients, and improving strategy, operations, supply chain and delivery.

But as the data gets bigger, murkier and messier, it’s getting tougher to secure it. With this comes the challenge of managing, governing, ensuring the security of that data.

Companies are fast realising that it is not just a matter of ‘if’ but ‘when’ they have to deal with data breach. This was the line of discussion at ‘TechGig Data Security Dialogue 2016: Harness the Power of Data to Make Secure Business Execution’ held in association with DataGuise in Noida on February 25.

The panel discussion saw participation from Kuldeep Kaushal, Chief Information Security Architect, Mahindra Comviva; Arvind Singh, Director-Engineering, PayU; Sapan Talwar. Head-IT Security, Adobe; Dr Satyamoorti Sivasubramanian, Chief Security, Airtel; Srinivas Poosarla, Vice President and Head (Global), Privacy & Data Protection, Infosys; Narottam Sharma, Head-IT, Samsung R&D Center India; Puneet Kaur Kohli, Group Executive Vice President IT & CTO, Bajaj Capital; Manmeet Singh, CEO, Dataguise; Jim Emmons, VP, Dataguise and Tarun Sinha, Regional Manager, TimesJobs.com.

The experts brainstormed on how security breaches should be dealt with and what all can be done to prevent data leaks.

Highlighting the benefits of data and risks attached to it, Dr Sivasubramanian said, “The industry’s awareness about data security and consequence of data

loss has shot up. In every board meeting, questions are raised on how to prevent data leaks. So, if that level of awareness is there, the question is how to ensure the balance between the actual business activities versus security. There is a fine line. What I have learnt is that security issues revolve around people’s awareness and people consciousness. It is about introspection and we need to get to individual levels to prevent data leaks.”

Adding to it, Poosarla said data security is a concern for everyone, whether the company is small or big. “More than the real security of data, one major issue is interpretation of data. If the analysis of the data goes wrong, the entire context can go wrong and end up creating a bigger havoc for a company.”

However, taking the discussion to another level, Kohli said data security is not restricted to meeting the bare minimum compliance norms but going beyond.

Adding to this, Kaushal said, “To meet the compliance standards, all we do is a periodic check-up. I believe a regular due diligence of assets and data resources and classifying data on a regular basis into different categories including confidential and non-confidential can add to data security. Users should be given ‘the right to know’ access so they

access only that piece of information which is related to their job and profile. Rest should be barred. ”

Manmeet Singh, being from the solution providers’ side, added another perspective. “Data security was not as big a concern a decade back because the data was small and there was not much democratisation of data. But in the last 10 years, the scenario has changed. Cloud has come into the market. There is data sharing and data proliferation. Ten years ago, CISOs were reporting to CIOs or financial heads.

“Now, security is becoming a separate division and companies are realising that CISOs should have more power than CIOs. It is the CISO who manages governance, access and security. The parameters of security that existed a decade back are dying. It is just the 3-4 per cent of data that is extremely important. It is like one can have foolproof security in the house but still cannot leave jewels on the bed. They have to be kept in the locker. It is the perimeter security that will help.”

While the experts shared various other aspects of data security with examples, they also emphasised on the lack of talent they face when it comes to hiring professionals in the data security business.

Finding a modern outlook to data breach and security

TechGig.com Data Security Dialogue 2016, Noida

Disclaimer: Information provided in this newsletter shall not be reproduced, published, re-sold or otherwise distributed inany medium without the prior written permission of TimesJobs.com and a clear acknowledgement to TimesJobs.com.Contact: TJinsite, TimesJobs.com, Plot No 6, Sector 16A, Film City, Noida, 201301. Write in to editor@timesjobs.com

Copyright ©2016 Times Business Solutions (A division of Times Internet Ltd). All rights reserved.

How would you explain ‘blind hiring’?The concept of ‘blind hiring’, to my mind, is as exciting as going on a blind date. It removes the barriers of biases based on race, sex, age, socio-economic background or educational pedigree and focuses the hiring manager’s attention on the talent and potential of the individual to be hired . Judging potential hires by their abilities and skills rather than their CVs, which contains full name indicating ethnicity, caste/community and educational pedigree, there is a rising interest in “anonymous hiring” that reflects the growing awareness of unconscious bias, attitudes or stereotypes that affect hiring decisions.Do hiring managers in India turn down candidates due to race, sex, age, socio-economic background or education pedigree?Research on unconscious bias has shown that information like an individual’s name can affect how he/she is viewed by an interviewer/ hiring manager and subtly prompts the manager to make unfair decisions. There are times when linguistic or religious leaning and caste/community biases compounded with gender and the bias against LGBT in the “unconscious realm” of the hiring manager makes them turn down candidates. This can be due to a variety of additional factors such as their race, language, sexual orientation, socio-economic background, educational pedigree; or in case of experienced hires, if they are not from a big brand.How do you ensure these biases are removed from the hiring process?The talent acquisition team at AMD takes due care to redact all irrelevant or

intrusive personal information like race, sex, caste/ community, language, socio-economic background, educational pedigree and state of domicile, etc. This is done to enhance the openness of hiring managers to focus on the individual’s skill set and abilities, which are relevant to the job role. Leveraging technology to scrub irrelevant information, or utilising technology tools to bring in relevant information and screening procedures of applicants helps remove the biases from the hiring system. To share an example: Many years back, a pattern of behaviour was observed in the case of a hiring manager wherein it was reliably learnt from the talent acquisition data (resume set shared v/s shortlisted) that anyone who was not from a particular southern state was being rejected. As an HR leader, I confronted the manager with the data and counselled him on the unconscious bias reflected by his hiring actions, and helped him work on this. What are the possible solutions to removing hiring biases?One of the possible solutions is adopting technology or platforms like GapJumpers (launched in 2014) that help remove hiring bias through blind auditions. Each jobseeker can be asked to solve some problems and hence the focus is on skill-based assessment, as required by the job, to prove they are qualified and capable of doing a job they are applying for. Another possible solution is constant reinforcement and awareness drives with ‘Manager 101 Training’ and counselling them to help remove unnecessary biases, as this is needed not just to acquire talent, but also to retain talent. What are the challenges?The challenges are daunting as not all skills can be tested easily. The potential talent of the job seeker cannot easily be evaluated without involving huge amounts of time, effort, and resources. Initial screening based on keywords in a resume/CV serves a major role in easing the pain on hiring manager and recruiting teams.

(As told to Neha Singh Verma)

BLIND HIRING IS AS EXCITING AS GOING ON A BLIND DATE

Interview: Dr Kiranmai Dutt Pendyala Corporate Vice President, Human Resources, AMD Greater Asia

Leveraging technology to scrub irrelevant information, or utilising technology tools to bring in relevant information and screening procedures of applicants helps remove the biases from the hiring system