Annika Smethurst: Blind recruiting is a good idea but it has left public service in the dark

BLIND recruitment, where all identifying markers are ­removed from job applications, was meant to make life easier for woman to climb to the top, Annika Smethurst writes.

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BLIND recruitment, where all identifying markers are ­removed from job applications, was meant to make life easier for woman to climb to the top.

It was meant to erase that in-built bias employers have towards females, the elderly, certain ethnic groups or even the young.

Employers would no longer be able to look at a name on a job application and worry whether 30-year-old Louise in the finance team might fall pregnant. Or ­whether Don, a name overrepresented among the over-60s, might be eyeing off retirement.

Names, ages and gender are all replaced by a number.

Bureaucrats in the Australian public service imple­mented a trial of blind recruiting with 2100 participants from 14 federal agencies last year. But scrubbing away those markers appears to have had the ­opposite effect.

Does blind recruiting actually work in anyone’s favour? Picture: iStock

The trial found that leaving identifying markers on job ­applications meant employers were about 3 per cent more likely to hire women. Men were slightly less likely to get a foot in the door if their names remained on their CVs.

Males from minority groups were 6 per cent more likely to be short-listed for jobs and that increased to 9 per cent for minority females.

One unknown agency, so desperate for diversity, was 55 per cent more likely to shortlist men from minority groups for jobs in the public service if their applications were identifiable. Indigenous women were also 22 per cent more likely to get to the next round of recruitment when they listed those characteristics, than when recruiters went in blind.

The system that was meant to blow up the obstacles in front of minorities was actually embedding them.

We all have unconscious ­biases that affect our decision- making. On the surface of it, recruiters in the federal public service were apparently so aware of this in-built bias that they were actively trying to buck the trend. While admirable, it has fuelled another ­debate about merit.

Diversity should be encouraged in the workplace. Some studies have found that greater executive and board diversity in organisations can result in returns more than 50 per cent higher and gross earnings 15 per cent higher than organisations which lack diversity.

But giving applicants a 50 per cent greater chance of getting a job, because of a minority status, suggests the balance isn’t right.

Yesterday the Liberal Party debated a motion to reintroduce blind recruitment across the public sector. The motion, put forward by the ACT branch of the Liberal Party, was overwhelmingly suppor­ted by grassroots members.

They argued that blind ­recruitment wasn’t about ­“promoting minorities” but about getting the right person for the right job and to protect the integrity of the recruitment system.

“This is about the individual application … no matter the background,” the conference was told. Whatever their motives, blind recruitment doesn’t appear to be the only answer. In the case of females, the ­latest remuneration report by the Australian Public Service Commission shows that ­females aren’t being prevented from joining the public service.

In fact, of the 139,327 federal public servants, about 59 per cent are women.

But when it comes to earnings, women are being held back. In the federal public service, women are over-represented in the two lowest pay quartiles and thus earn 8 per cent less than men.

Even though there was little difference between the two genders in the highest pay quartile, women appear to be trailing behind.

Targeted recruitment and training will do more to get the balance right.