Recruiters should be brave enough to challenge unconscious bias at their clients’ organisations.

Speaking at LMA Recruitment’s recent HR seminar in London, psychologist, high performance coach and former NBA basketball player John Amaechi OBE called on recruiters to tackle unconscious bias head-on if they see evidence of it at organisations they do business with.

And Amaechi says organisations that are interested in tackling the problem will be thankful to recruiters that point it out.

“If it’s an unconscious bias you can just tell them ‘I fear there may be this, have you considered this? If you look at some of these things it seems that some of the best candidates are getting stuck in your process and I really do think that these are some of the best candidates that you are missing out on.’

“Anyone that’s really interested in winning will say ‘thank you – how can we address this? Maybe we can work together to do that’.”

But Amaechi said where recruiters may face opposition is at organisations keen on preserving homogenous workplaces in which employees never have to worry about saying anything that may cause offence to one of their fellow colleagues.

“You never have to be vigilant about what you do and say. You can slag off the same people because everyone will respond the same, and even better when challenges raise their ugly head in your organisation everyone looks at the challenge from the same perspective. 

“So when one person, usually a leader, says ‘I think we should do this’ the rest of the people say: ‘You are brilliant – that was exactly what I was thinking’, so by extension I’m brilliant also. So it’s really comfortable.

“I would say you then have a choice of working with an organisation that is overtly sustaining that homogeny despite it not being in their best interests.”

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