The Tragedy of Bias in Technical Hiring in Five Acts презентация

Oct 10, 2014

#GHC14

2014

enough trained women

enough trained women

Industry doesn’t know how to recruit and hire women.

Industry doesn’t know how to retain women. (Hint: Industry must hire women before retaining them!)

manifests in:
Job descriptions
The Interview Process
The Hire or No-Hire Decision

men and women merely players.”
- William Shakespeare, As You Like It

two mobile software companies

Looking for a new job

Volio,
Technical recruiter at
Roam.io

run fast.”

- William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

short cuts
Driven by impressions, patterns, intuitions, memories, and feelings
Prone to error and bias unless checked by System 2

System 2 Thinking:
Slow
Effortful, limited energy budget
Conscious engagement required
Can be lazy
Applies methodical, reasoned, and coherent thinking to the System 1 raw data

(Kahneman, Daniel. Thinking, Fast and Slow. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 2011.)

day since infancy:
Role models - parents, teachers, siblings, and caregivers
TV, books, music, and cultural memes
Peers and their own source data!


System 1 creates a meaningful story from our senses and experiences!
(Efforts to fix The Pipeline change the next generation’s patterns.)

System 2 helping to catch errors, assumptions, biases, and mental short cuts!

(We all do this! Don’t feel bad. It’s part of being human!)

more likely to make selfish choices, use sexist language, and make superficial judgments in social situations…. but of course cognitive load is not the only cause of weakened self-control. A few drinks have the same effect, as does a sleepless night.”
- Dr. Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow, pp.41

The Halo Effect
First impressions influence later experience
Affect Heuristic
People answer an easy question with System 1 instead of a harder one with System 2

Attribution Error, or the Negativity Effect
Over-emphasizing traits in others while under-emphasizing situations (luck) in ourselves

stereotype

Projection Bias
Unconsciously assuming that others share our own perspectives, thoughts, and values

biases? How can we improve judgments and decisions, both our own and those of the institutions that we serve and that serve us?...

The way to block errors that originate in System 1 is simple in principle: recognize the signs that you are in a cognitive minefield, slow down, and ask for reinforcement from System 2. Unfortunately, this sensible procedure is least likely to be applied when it is needed most.”

- Dr. Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow, pp.417

the candidate is about three minutes after the end of the interview…. I ask interviewers to write immediate feedback after the interview, either a “hire” or “no hire”, followed by a one or two paragraph justification. It’s due 15 minutes after the interview ends.”

“Never say “Maybe, I can’t tell.” If you can’t tell, that means No Hire. It’s really easier than you’d think. Can’t tell? Just say no! If you are on the fence, that means No Hire… Mechanically translate all the waffling to “no” and you’ll be all right.”

- Joel Spolsky, The Guerrilla Guide to Interviewing v3.0, Oct 25, 2006
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/GuerrillaInterviewing3.html

hiring requirements
External: promote the job and company

How can the job description project bias?

(See also: Gaucher, D., Friesen, J., & Kay, A. C. (2011, March 7). Evidence That Gendered Wording in Job Advertisements Exists and Sustains Gender Inequality. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. )

and auto racing? XXXX Game Studios is hiring!

You are a Senior Software Development Engineer with broad game development experience and world-class software engineering skills. You’re the kind of person who drives projects to completion, sometimes across multiple functions and groups.”



(See any Projection Bias? Casuistry? Representativeness?)

on the ZZZZ Medical Group Support team, demonstrating our values of patient-centered care and service; respect, caring and compassion; teamwork and partnership; continuous learning and improvement; and leadership.
In this position you will:
          Enhance existing computer programs to add value throughout the organization…”

(Representative stereotypes exist for female-dominated roles too)

technologies
and platforms and an elite team of great developers. No résumé needed! Great work speaks for itself. We'd love links to your GitHub or StackExchange profile!

Your Profile:
You live, eat and dream about code and test! Your drive to know more and do better makes you evolve...”

(Projection Bias and Representativeness)

at the Director level or equivalent
Physical Requirements:  
Must be able to execute a two-handed reverse dunk on a ten-foot rim without the aid of a trampoline.

job descriptions that don’t create role biases!
Look carefully for values, traits, behaviors, and motivations
Find gender-neutral ways to “sell” the job

Circulate several versions to attract candidates with diverse motivations and career objectives.
Get people with different perspectives to edit job descriptions – how would someone in marketing write an engineering job description?

hiring versatile software engineers with a passion for making products that impact our customer’s lives. Our developers support and challenges each other to continuously learn and improve. We believe in working at a sustainable pace following Agile philosophies. Roam.io offers flexible schedules and a respectful and fun work environment. Join us and make a difference!

Do you live, breathe, eat, and dream about coding and mobile? Do you crave fanfare and adulation from users? Roam.io is hiring! We’re looking for software geeks who can thrive in our high-energy open office environment. We offer great benefits, free food and beer, foosball, and tons of fun. Come join our elite team and push the barriers in mobile technology!

(Which one would Julie apply for? What about Julio?)

some coding
On-site interview with 4-6 sessions, all with heavy coding
Many tech companies do no training on how to interview
Some focus on legal areas of questioning
A few give training but do not monitor how these techniques are used in interviews

the way interviewing is done today is necessarily the way it should be done. The current paradigm puts too much emphasis on the ability to solve puzzles and familiarity with a relatively limited body of knowledge, and it generally fails to measure a lot of the skills that are critical to success in industry.”

- Mongan, John, Eric Giguere, and Noah Kindler. Programming Interviews Exposed: Secrets to Landing Your Next Job, 2013, pp. xxvi

selection methods in personnel psychology: Practical and theoretical implications of 85 years of research findings,” Psychological Bulletin, 124, 262–274.

some coding questions
Also ask behavioral, work habits, and job knowledge questions to assess all the other success factors
A great resource for technical managers to use with their teams is this book:
Rothman, Johanna. Hiring Geeks That Fit. Rothman Consulting Group, Inc. 2013.

Agile, communication style,
personal work habits with Merlin Cutio

Petra Escalus: CS fundamentals - complexity, networks,
threads, databases, OS


Ty Balt and Amy Bram: lunch at Café Verona
and behavioral and culture fit

Cindy Paris: mad programming skillz - languages, algorithms,
data structures, coding


Phil Laurence: Debugging and testing in mobile & embedded


Finish with Hiring Manager Monty Gue

The workplace environment
The technology stack

The interview experience will impact Julie’s final decision!

did you see that Julie has the skills for job requirement #1?”
Don’t ask: “What did you think of Julie?”
Watch for cognitive landmines:
personality traits, intuitions, impressions, or stereotypes,
Slow down, engage System 2
Dig into possible bias with questions
Give a numerical score for each job requirement
Numerical scores engage System 2
Don’t use “hire” or “no hire” which uses System 1.

it as an improbable fiction.”

- William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night

a romance…

But, it sets the stage for candidates of all kinds to audition on equal terms.

experience #System2Hiring yourself?
My team is hiring!


Kelsey Foley
kelsey@moz.com
@EnigmaticKelsey

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