Mirror Hiring

I have mentioned mirror hiring before (here), which is where organisational diversity efforts may be hindered by mirror hiring. This is where organisations employ staff due to a perceived ‘fit’ with the culture within the organisation (Robert Walters, 2019), also known as "institutional inbreeding" in Japan which is very evocative (Wang, 2024). Mirror hiring may be due to an overly strong organisational culture which effectively puts a hand brake on the organisation's drive for change (Jackson & Parry, 2011); or it may be that the organisation has implicit hiring criteria so are unaware of their own biases (Kezar, 2007).

Mirror hiring has been identified as the main obstacle to diversity efforts in New Zealand, where "Managers prefer to hire like-minded people instead of hiring a diverse mix" of staff (Robert Walters, 2019, p. 6). As previously mentioned, what also feeds into mirror hiring is unconscious bias (Kezar, 2007). And - no surprises here - unconscious bias was second on the list of barriers to diversity and was at the top of the respondent-recommended tactics list for improving diversity (Robert Walters, 2019). 

We can help to limit mirror hiring and our own biases by: having explicit hiring criteria; setting up staff interview panels which are diverse in gender, ethnicity, and age; ensuring that everyone in the organisation is aware of the benefits that diversity brings; actively listening to all staff, including those who do not possess structural power; conducting exit interviews; allowing staff to provide anonymous feedback (Kezar, 2007; Robert Walters, 2019). Some additional diversity-improving tactics we can include are: work sample assessments for new recruits; standardising selection processes (e.g. writing inclusive position descriptions; focusing assessors’ attention on qualifications and skills via scrubbing name, gender and geographic information from CVs); all staff DEI awareness training (i.e. identifying biases and mitigation solutions) (Robert Walters, 2019).

It is always good to have a range of tools!

Sam

References:

Jackson, B. & Parry, K. (2011). A Very Short, Fairly Interesting and Reasonably Cheap Book About Studying Leadership (2nd ed.). NZ: Sage Publishing Ltd.

Kezar, A. J. (2007). Tools for a Time and Place: Phased leadership strategies to institutionalize a diversity agenda. The Review of Higher Education, 30(4), 413-439. https://doi.org/10.1353/rhe.2007.0025

Robert Walters. (2019). Embracing Difference: How to recruit, retain and empower a diverse workforce [report]. Robert Walters Group New Zealand. https://www.robertwalters.co.nz/content/dam/robert-walters/country/new-zealand/files/whitepapers/embracing-difference.pdf

Wang, M. (2024). The Professional Development of Limited–Term Contract Teachers at Japanese Universities. [Tertiary thesis, Konan University]. https://konan-u.repo.nii.ac.jp/record/2000134/files/K04565.pdf