When scanning through hundreds of resumes in application review, it's easy for unconscious bias to creep in. Familiar like home towns, links to social media profiles, or other identifying information promote mental shortcuts that result in snap decisions that are based on this surface-level information, rather than the candidate's skills and qualifications for the role.
Greenhouse's resume anonymization feature uses AI to assess a candidate's resume and blur certain pieces of identifying information to help improve your hiring practices.
For more information on how we use AI, check out our blog.
Benefits of resume anonymization
Resumes contain a lot of personal information about candidates, and hiring teams may experience bias even without realizing it.
Many peer-reviewed studies have shown that hiring bias is reduced when candidates’ identifying information is concealed. Hiring teams have already seen these results with the anonymization of take-home tests.
Greenhouse Recruiting’s resume anonymization tool uses machine learning, a component of AI, to identify and anonymize candidates’ identifying information. This provides the following benefits:
- Makes your hiring practice fairer and more equitable from the beginning
- Helps you identify the most qualified candidates
- Improves the candidate experience so they can feel confident applying through Greenhouse
Turn on resume anonymization for a job
Note: Only Site Admins and Job Admins can make changes to a job's interview plan.
If resume anonymization is turned on for your organization, it can be turned on for a specific job by editing the Application Review stage of the interview plan:
- Open a job
- Click Job Setup
- Click Interview Plan
- Click the Edit icon next to Application Review
- Scroll to the bottom of the page, select the checkbox for resume anonymization, and click Save.
Anonymized resumes will become visible in the Application Review within 40 minutes. The time required for the tool to anonymize resumes varies depending on the number of applications the job has received.
How resume anonymization works
Note: This feature is currently optimized for resumes written with Latin characters, and no candidate resumes were used in the training of our model.
Greenhouse Recruiting uses a proprietary machine-learning model to identify and conceal specific candidate data. The model breaks the candidate's resume into sections, which are then scanned for keywords, phrases, and other information that could identify the candidate. Our model uses state-of-the-art deep learning models that have been trained to work with the highest possible accuracy.
Anonymized fields
Resume anonymization conceals candidate details that have the highest incidence of enabling bias. Studies show that this includes gender, photo, and related information.
Example: The presence of a candidate’s name on their resume can unintentionally influence an employer to assume the candidate’s gender. Other places the candidate’s name is used, such as in their email address, can have the same effect. Resume anonymization accounts for these factors to conceal the most relevant information.
The following pieces of information can be anonymized:
- Name
- Titles
- Suffixes
- Gender
- Photo
- Race/ethnicity/nationality
- Marital status
- Address
- Phone number
- Links to social media profiles
While our model is highly precise, it's important to note it may not cover every part of the application review process. When your organization includes custom application questions, the applicant's responses could potentially disclose identifiable details. Additionally, if the resume includes a headshot with peripheral details like a company logo on clothing, these details might still be visible.
Viewing anonymized resumes
Configure resume anonymization for your jobs
Go to Jobs and select one of your open jobs. Then, select Job Setup > Interview Plan. Resume anonymization can be turned on for two stages: Application Review and Hiring Manager Review. Click the Edit icon next to the stage name and go to the Additional Settings section. Add a checkmark to the box next to Anonymize resumes in Application Review, then select Save to enable resume anonymization.
View an anonymized resume
Note: Resume anonymization is currently available only for the following stages:
When you're viewing the job dashboard, select the Review Applications button in the Pipeline tab.
This button will only appear if you're a recruiter or hiring manager on the hiring team and there are candidates to review.
You can also follow these steps to access a resume for application review.
Recruiters and hiring managers can access a candidate’s full resume on their candidate profile.
Provide feedback on anonymization
Every anonymized resume includes the ability to leave feedback on the accuracy of the anonymization. Your feedback is crucial to the ongoing development of resume anonymization, and we encourage you to submit your thoughts.
Turn off resume anonymization for a job
To turn off resume anonymization for a specific job, go to the job’s Interview Plan page and uncheck the box next to Anonymize resumes in Application Review. Then, click Save.
Sources
- Johnson, Stefanie K., and Jessica F. Kirk. 2020. “Research: To Reduce Gender Bias, Anonymize Job Applications.” Harvard Business Review. March 5, 2020. https://hbr.org/2020/03/research-to-reduce-gender-bias-anonymize-job-applications.
- A., Corinne, John F. Dovidio, Victoria L. Brescoll, Mark J. Graham, and Jo Handelsman. "Science Faculty’s Subtle Gender Biases Favor Male Students." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 109, no. 41 (2012): 16474-16479. Accessed December 11, 2023. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1211286109.
- Ahmed, Ali, Mark Granberg, and Shantanu Khanna. "Gender Discrimination in Hiring: An Experimental Reexamination of the Swedish Case." PLoS ONE 16, no. 1 (2021). Accessed December 11, 2023. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0245513.