Yesterday included a post about how tech has sold itself as the silver bullet solution to hiring people.

Algorithms actually do a lousy job of screening resumes and companies that rely on them miss a lot of great hires.

Why?

Because the only thing an algorithm can do is match key words and experience descriptions. Based on 13 years of tech recruiter experience I can tell you that rarely does anyone change jobs in order to do the same thing somewhere else, unless they hate their manager or the culture.

Not things that an algorithm is going to pick up on. Nor will the initial phone call usually made not by the hiring manager, but by someone who know little about the job other than to match the candidates responses to a list of “preferred” answers.

No discretionary knowledge based on the manager’s experience or the candidate’s potential.

We all know that management loves to save money and many of them feel that AI will allow them to reduce the most expensive item of their fixed costs, people — including managers.

Imagine an app giving you a quarterly evaluation—without a manager or HR rep in sight—and you have an idea of where this is potentially going.

What management forgets is that a company isn’t an entity at all. It’s a group of people, with shared values, all moving in the same direction, united in a shared vision and their efforts to reach a common goal.

It exists only as long as people are willing to join and are happy enough to stay — excessive turnover does not foster success.

So what do workers think about the use of AI/algorithms?

However, workers don’t necessarily like the idea of code taking over management functions—or hiring, for that matter. Pew research shows 57 percent of respondents think using algorithms for résumé screening is “unacceptable,” and 58 percent believe that bots taught by humans will always contain some bias. Nearly half (48 percent) of workers between the ages of 18 and 29 have some distrust of A.I. in hiring, showing that this negative perception isn’t going away anytime soon.

They are right to be distrustful, since AI is trained on historical datasets its “intelligence” includes all the bias, prejudices, bigotry and downright stupidity of past generations.

This is bad news for companies looking to “increase efficiency,” but great news for companies that recognize they aren’t hiring “resources” or “talent,” but people, with their infinite potential and inherent messiness.

Image credit: Mike MacKenzie

One of the dumbest (stupidest?) actions during the original dot com boom was two-fold.

The first was title inflation, with larger companies taking a leaf from the financial services industry where customer-facing positions, such as brokers and non-teller positions, were often VPs.

Second, bigger titles were often handed out in lieu of promotions and raises, while in the startup community titles bore little-to-no relationship to the person’s skills or experience.

Both created major problems for candidates when interviewing at new companies, especially for those who bought into their titles. It came as shock that the skills required to be a VP in a “real” company are seriously different than those needed in a startup.

That was then, but what’s happening now?

I got the answer in a list from CB Insights of tech’s silliest job titles.

It’s gotten worse.

Aside from confusing their customers and vendors, the titles sound totally idiotic to all but a very small slice of the tech world.

However, the titles do do a great job of strengthening gender bias and turning off women.

What more could any bro want?

Image credit: JJ Merelo

Continuing from yesterday.

Two of the hardest things you need to do to start acquiring wisdom are

1. Investing the time, energy and discomfort in getting to actually know yourself — the real you that may only exist in private at 3 AM and that you rarely if ever talk about.
2. Choosing (yes, it’s your choice) to reduce your intake of social media or not, you do need to reduce your reliance on it. At the same time you want to strengthen your objectivity

The absolute requirement of the first is to get to know your opinions, biases, prejudices, etc., sans outside influences. You can’t be objective until you know your subjective viewpoint.

That said, today’s world of distractions, intentionally addictive social media, and extended working hours doesn’t lend itself to self-reflection. That means you need to consciously set aside the time to do it and then follow through — same as any get healthy program.

Developing your objectivity requires you to do some very uncomfortable things, such as reading/listening to material outside your worldview, belief system and comfort zone.

Then researching sources recognized as objective to determine the validity of the information.

You should know that the odds are against your accomplishing this.

Research has shown that no matter how much incontestable proof people rarely change their mind.

But perhaps you can be one of the exceptions.

Image credit: Katherine McGittigan

Poking through 11+ years of posts I find information that’s as useful now as when it was written.

Golden Oldies is a collection of the most relevant and timeless posts during that time.

Back in the late 2000s, when blogs were newish, there was a thing called Wordless Wednesday. The idea was to present your thoughts on a subject with a picture, instead of words. Anyway, I came across this one and it fit so well with a post I’m working on I decided to make it this weeks Oldie.

Read other Golden Oldies here.

Image credit: Nick J Webb

Have you ever wondered why bias is so deeply ingrained and prevalent?

The answer is simple.

The datasets are biased.

For humans

Psychologists from Northwestern University have found that children as young as four show signs of racial bias, suggesting they pick up on cues to act intolerant from the adults around them from a very early age.

For AI.

The digital world is an incredibly biased place. Geographically, linguistically, demographically, economically and culturally, the technological revolution has skewed heavily towards a small number of very economically privileged slices of society.

Knowing the datasets for both are biased for the same reason, it is the wise boss, from team leader to CEO, who takes time to learn their own biases and also understand the various biases of their team.

Only then can they develop approaches and work-arounds.

The bottom line in business is that you don’t have to change minds, you just have to create processes that neutralize the effects.

Image credit: Paul Downey

Bias, implicit or not, intentional or not, is at the forefront of most companies and bosses’ minds. Companies spend thousands on various kinds of anti-bias training.

But based on decades of data, not much seems to change.

Perhaps that’s because bias isn’t “fixable” or, as Lily Zheng, a diversity and inclusion consultant, says, Bias isn’t like an upset stomach that an individual can take an antacid to fix.

Zheng offers a truly commonsense approach that is far more practical and achievable than trying to make people unbiased.

The outcome of any implicit bias training shouldn’t be to cure people’s bias or make them more objective—it should be to make people bias-aware. (…) When people are bias-aware, they are able to act with less bias without fixating on being unbiased.

It all boils down to knowing yourself, which can be a lost cause for some people.

More than a decade ago I started talking about MAP (mindset, attitude, philosophy™).

MAP (mindset, attitude, philosophy)™ is the basis for everything you do—it is the why of life.

Everything you do and say is a mindset, grounded in your attitude towards others, which, in turn, is based on your personal philosophy.

Obviously, implicit bias is part of MAP.

Zheng provides a good roadmap for handling implicit bias, focusing on the need for self-honesty and a non-judgmental attitude, including that awareness doesn’t always mean change.

While the decision may not end up changing, the process of being honest and nonjudgmental about one’s own bias adds both accountability and intentionality.

I provided a simple step-by-step for changing your MAP if you so desire.

Both require honest self-awareness, but doing them is, as always, your choice.

Image credit: Ron Mader

Yesterday I said we would “consider the difference between respect and nice on culture, creativity, innovation, and success.”

According to the Oxford Dictionary there is a substantial difference between nice and respect:

• Respect: A feeling of deep admiration for someone or something elicited by their abilities, qualities, or achievements.
• Nice: good-natured; kind.

If one of these was going to be the basis of the culture created, which would you choose?

If you worked in that culture, which would do more to motivate you?

If you chose respect, you hit a home run.

Nice? A grounder to first, with little chance of getting home.

What’s the problem with ‘nice’?

…a powerful quirk in group psychology called shared information bias.

Here’s what happens: in nice organizations, team members become highly attuned to each other’s feelings and short-term well-being. Individuals rightly assume that their survival and advancement is based as much on how nice they can be and how good they make others feel as on the results they produce.

Obviously, if the strongest motivator in your team is not to offend or upset anyone, then creativity will be stifled and innovation crushed.

Recent research and discussions have focused on various forms of bias, both conscious and unconscious. However, it seems to me that information bias often reflects more pernicious biases.

That said, it may also be one of the easier to fight.

Easier, because respect is the antidote and respect is well understood and can be cultivated, since all people crave respect.

Bosses at any level can set the tone simply by respecting everyone on their team equally and not giving a pass to any form of disrespect — no matter who it comes from.

It’s also easier to recognize disrespect and censure it, since it is relatively obvious if you are looking for it.

One of the most common forms of information bias can be found in meetings when the person trying to speak is belittled, cut off or ignored.

It’s up to the boss to stop it, just as it’s up to the boss to model respectful behavior, since most people follow the lead of their bosses — similar to monkey see, monkey do.

Image credit: David Kivlin