Anonymised CVs: What Are They and How They Affect Your Recruitment

Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) is often discussed when it comes to establishing a strong workforce. However, the processes used to achieve more inclusive hiring can often be misunderstood as complicated and costly. One common approach your business can take to improve inclusivity and reduce biases in your hiring practices is by using anonymised CV screening.

What Are Anonymous CVs?

An anonymous CV is a CV where all identifiable information is removed from the CV ahead of viewing. This allows HR and hiring managers to make decisions based solely on experience and skills, instead of personal information which might lead to unconscious biases including age, gender, and race. By obscuring identifiable data, you’ll be able to establish candidates who may be a good fit based on their work and volunteering history, reducing the likelihood of bias or missing quality candidates.

Why Are Anonymous CVs Important?

This is an initial step towards a more inclusive hiring process. By removing these personal markers, you will be able to better identify strong candidates with the right skills and experience for your roles. Every CV will be anonymised in the process, to give everyone the same opportunity at securing an interview or progressing further in the recruitment process.

However, it is important to understand that this isn’t the only important step towards more inclusive recruitment. While anonymised CVs can remove bias from the initial applicant and candidate screening stages, this process needs to be implemented alongside a strong EDI strategy to ensure your business and employees benefit from a truly diverse workforce.

Unbiased hiring practices are important for developing a stronger workforce focused on attracting and retaining the best talent for your business. More jobseekers are valuing the social impact of companies more than ever before when looking for employment. In fact, 66% of people claim that an inclusive work environment is an important factor when job hunting^[1]. Anonymising CVs and implementing essential EDI-supported recruitment processes are key to establishing more inclusive workplaces.

What the Research Indicates About CV Screening Bias?

Unconscious bias still plays a large part in hiring practices in today’s recruitment process. This involves the negative, and positive, discrimination created when hiring managers have access to personal information, including names, age, location, gender, and more. While this is unintentional, it can impact the diversity of your workforce, limit the inclusivity of your business, and have a significant impact on your business identity.

According to research by Wood et al, commissioned by the Department of Work and Pensions, candidates from ethnic minority backgrounds apply to 74% more roles than white candidates to secure an interview^[2]. While the bias might not have been conscious, it still largely impacts the workforces we see in the UK today, making blind hiring practices like anonymised CVs a crucial step in improving the equity, diversity, and inclusivity of your recruitment.

What is Unconscious Bias?

Unconscious bias is the process of unknowingly making a judgement based on prior experience or knowledge. In recruitment, this refers to the judgement made against candidates based on identifiable information such as age, race, gender, and other factors.

How to Anonymise CVs?

There are various ways to anonymise CVs during the hiring process. A traditional method is to manually retract identity-based information across protected characteristics. You can do this by physically removing personal data, including name, age, and location. However, this still leaves you open to recognising candidates, as you will have access to the CVs before removing the information. This means you can easily match experience with the redacted information, making it an inefficient way of anonymising CVs and leaving your hiring team open to unconscious bias.

Instead, the best way of achieving a fully anonymised hiring process is by using dedicated software, such as Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS), to anonymise the CVs before your hiring team review them. This removes the likelihood of bias or recognition. Using Artificial Intelligence to remove or obscure the personal information on a CV can also be a simple and effective way of processing CVs to remove cognitive bias. 

Working with a recruitment specialist who prioritises EDI hiring strategies can help you ensure that you’re benefiting from the anonymised hiring practices you put in place. Not only do recruitment agencies, with a history of implementing strong EDI strategies, have the expertise needed to support your anonymised hiring practices, but they will also have the resources readily available to support your anonymised hiring needs. This makes approaching EDI hiring an affordable and quicker process.

If a CV is Anonymised, Can You Still Find Suitable Candidates?

Yes, anonymous hiring through anonymised CVs is effective for finding suitable candidates and can actually improve your hiring practices by focusing on your candidates’ professional qualities and qualifications. This is now a preferred method for finding candidates alongside automatic screening systems and semantic searches that keyword match your job description to your candidate CVs.

By focusing on the professional capabilities of your candidates, and removing the unconscious bias, you’ll be better able to find candidates with the skills necessary to support your teams. Further steps in the process, including the interview stages, are also important for finding the right quality candidate for you so that suitable candidates aren’t lost within the recruitment process.

How Can Your Recruitment Agency Partners Help?

Trusting a recruitment agency to support your EDI strategy can be a good idea if you’re struggling to diversify your workforce. By developing your recruitment processes through expert help, you can empower candidates to apply for your roles and impact the community around you. As employers, we have a direct impact on the communities we work in and interact with, so being able to work towards better diversity is important for representing the world around us and ensuring our workforces are benefitting from removed bias.

Working with a recruitment agency can also help drive down your resource costs as they already have the technology in-house to support your EDI needs, meaning that you don’t need to afford the initial investment required with implementing new hiring systems. Recruitment agencies also have a history of supporting quality hiring. If you’re concerned about missing a top candidate, working with a trusted recruitment partner can ensure that your business is hiring the top talent within your sector.

Get in touch with one of our friendly advisors to see how we can help you improve your hiring processes and make a better impact on your local community.