 So, you've been a hiring manager for a while now. You know your job well and you go through each recruitment confident that your decisions are made professionally. But are you sure your decisions are based on integrity and respect for diversity? How do you make sure you are choosing the right person for the job without any bias? Throughout the day we tend to make assumptions based on the affinities or differences we have with certain groups of people. As our brains receive millions of pieces of information each second, we create shortcuts based on preconceived ideas or past experience in order to make decisions quickly. Doing so we tend to have preference for people that we perceive as familiar or similar to us. So, how does unconscious bias affect you when hiring? How does it put you at risk of missing out on the best qualified candidate and missing out on contributing to the diversity of the team? As a hiring manager, you are trusted to make these types of decisions daily. And here comes the first. Hi, this is Wu Weixia on the line. Can you hear me? Hmm, should you call her Weixia or Wu? Ah, let's see. First name Weixia, 32, Chinese, wonder about her French. Oh, she spent three years as a field coordinator in South Sudan. Yes, this is quite challenging. Women often have to provide more evidence of competence to be seen as equally capable. But not in the UN system, right? In studies where equally qualified candidates were considered, mothers were 79% less likely to be hired. Women take five and a half years to get promoted to a P4 level, whereas men take four and a half years. Hmm, I guess she was lucky to be led by such a charismatic chief of mission on that project. Actually, I took the lead on that particular project. The words and attitudes of male and female candidates are usually assessed differently. In performance review, women received two and a half times the amount of feedback men did about aggressive communication styles. Not a big deal, is it? Overall, more men work in hardship duty stations than women. And while 30% of applicants are women, they are not being selected. Hmm, so what problems are to apply for a post at HQ? Well, I guess it's time for me to settle down for a bit. So she'd like to come up here. Won't that be too difficult to combine with a career? The family and personal aspirations of women are often a break on their careers. Having children is seen as a hindrance to their career progression by 62% of female staff. At senior positions, 16% of males versus 40% of females are more likely to be divorced, separated or single. Wait, aren't we being a tiny bit biased? And how about you? Yes, you watching this video. Are you ever biased? We all have biases, regardless of our gender, nationality or position. Will you let your bias get in the way of hiring the best candidate for your team? I thought not. Here is what you can do. One, recognition. The first step is to recognize your own unconscious bias and that of the panel, taking a few concrete steps to mitigate biases. Two, priming. Prime your brain to make decisions based on objective criteria before looking at their qualifications. Have each member fill in the evaluation template individually to avoid groupthink. Three, impartiality. Put aside your gut feeling towards some candidates, in particular during the first five minutes of the interview, making sure you guide all candidates equally, both in your tone and in follow-up questions and comments. By allowing for a pause during interviews, panelists can have a chance to discuss any biases and refocus on the job criteria before concluding the interview. Four, diversity. Out of the best qualified candidates, choose the candidate that will bring the most diversity into the team in terms of gender, geography, background. Make sure to have the facts about the team composition to be able to do this. Teams with a maximum of 70% of the same gender, nationality or ethnicity perform better than more homogeneous teams when the leadership is inclusive. And finally, accountability. Collect data disaggregated by sex and nationality at all stages of recruitment and include them in the final recommendation file to the head of the organization. The data will tell you where you should start and how you are doing moving forward. What will you make sure you do differently next time you hire? Take a step forward and make those values a reality, starting in the UN. You can begin now by forwarding this video to a colleague.