The Myth of the ‘Bias-Free’ Assessment

Considering I'm a scientist, I've been in A LOT of sales meetings when working for assessment providers (this is a 'green flag' by the way, if you're buying an assessment, you should expect access to a senior scientist to answer any and all technical questions).

Inevitably, the conversation would drift to bias: was the tool I was selling 'bias-free'?

I used to love this moment, as it let me wheel out one of my favourite lines:

'No assessment tool is bias-free, and if a vendor has told you theirs is, they either don't understand bias in assessment or they're fibbing.'

❌ An external 4/5ths rule audit doesn't make a tool bias-free.

❌ A lack of demographic variables in the scoring doesn't make a tool bias-free.

❌ Removing human scorers to make a tool 'objective' doesn't make a tool bias-free. It just hides where the bias went.

Each of these is worth having. None of them is the same as bias-free.

Come and hear me and Ben Hawkes unpack this and hand you a framework for mitigating, managing and accounting for the bias in every hiring tool, plus the questions to actually put to a vendor. The third webinar in The Hiring Science Studio's core insights series.

For vendors building the tools and hiring teams choosing between them.

3:30 pm UK / 10:30 am EST, Thursday 18 June.

Register here: https://zoom.us/meeting/register/8AQCVBvCRUyV_tdas9TfdA