Fighting hiring bias with Antibias

As any People leader can likely attest, creating a truly diverse and inclusive workplace is no easy feat. Bias can creep into decision-making in subtle ways, starting with the hiring process even when HR professionals have the best of intentions. In many cases, unconscious bias begins the moment a recruiter glances at a profile photo, often without even realizing it. This could influence decisions based on irrelevant factors like race, gender, or age rather than focusing on what truly matters: the person’s qualifications and experience.

At Beyond, we conduct regular training on implicit bias and the unintended impact it can have on hiring decisions. During one of our post-training exercises, our teams were asked to come up with strategies for countering bias. As LinkedIn profiles are often a useful supplement to CVs and résumés, a lot of strategies were centered around how people use the platform, and how profile photos and even full names, as innocuous as they are, can unintentionally cloud objective judgment.

Avoiding this information, though — especially if you’re sourcing passive candidates who haven’t applied directly — can feel almost impossible.

The Birth of Antibias

As our teams further strategized, the idea struck us: “What if LinkedIn had a feature that allows HR professionals to hide profile photos and names while reviewing candidates?” A simple toggle feature could help recruiters stay focused on credentials, making the process more objective and fair.

One of our engineers immediately got to work on a Chrome extension that could accomplish this, and exactly sixty-three minutes later, the prototype for Antibias was up and running.

This extension allows users to anonymize LinkedIn profiles by hiding profile pictures — and names, if desired — when browsing profiles. It’s a straightforward solution that helps recruiters focus solely on skills, qualifications, and experience without the influence of appearance or assumptions.

While Antibias isn’t a silver bullet for eliminating bias, it addresses a critical piece of the problem. It’s one modest, but meaningful, tool in the larger effort to make the hiring process more equitable.

Small Steps, Big Impact

Fostering diversity and inclusion requires a multitude of solutions, some large and some small. ‘Antibias’ is a small step, but if even ten recruiters use it and each reviews a hundred profiles, that’s 1,000 job applicants who may be evaluated more objectively without the unconscious bias that can arise from a simple glance at a profile photo.

Antibias is also a testament to how creativity and organic solutions can emerge from within an organization when people are empowered to take initiative — something we strive for at Beyond. Antibias has already sparked broader conversations amongst our employees about how we can continue to identify and address other sources of bias in our processes.

Antibias was initially launched in 2019 and received an honorable mention at Fast Company’s World Changing Ideas Awards in the same year. It is being relaunched today, as we believe the world needs it more than ever.

Antibias is available for free, and we encourage any recruiter or hiring manager who wants to make their process fairer to give it a try and leave a review of their experience.

Get Antibias in the Chrome Web Store here, and let’s continue to take conscious steps toward building a more inclusive future for all.