According to a study published on the Harvard Business Review, if there’s only one woman in your candidate pool, there’s statistically no chance she’ll be hired. That’s because people have a bias in favor of preserving the status quo and this can lead board members to unconsciously prefer to hire more white men for leadership roles. But when created a new status quo among the finalist candidates by adding just one more woman or minority candidate, the decision makers actually considered hiring a woman or minority candidate.
The results suggest that we can use bias in favor of the status quo to actually change the status quo. This “get two in the pool effect” represents an important first step for overcoming unconscious biases and ushering in the racial and gender balance that we want in organizations.
Further information on the study are available on the Harvard Business Review.
