How to Reduce Hiring Bias and Build a More Effective Team

Hiring bias doesn’t always stem from ill intent — often it arises from unconscious shortcuts, assumptions, and heuristics under time pressure. But in finance, where objectivity, precision and performance are core, bias in hiring doesn’t just damage fairness — it undermines team strength. The best finance teams are assembled on capability, not conformity. Reducing bias leads to better hires, stronger teams, and long-term value.

Recognise Where Bias Creeps In

Bias can enter well before interviews:

• Job descriptions & role language: Words like “driven,” “aggressive,” or “dominant” tend to appeal more to men than women in Europe; such wording can discourage women from applying.
• Educational or pedigree filters: Giving undue weight to candidates from elite universities or finance-centric institutions in London, Frankfurt or Paris risks excluding high-potential nontraditional candidates.
• “Cultural fit” as code for similarity: If “fit” means mirroring existing team styles or backgrounds, you may inadvertently screen out complementarity.
• Name and ethnicity bias: In Europe, field experiments have documented discriminatory effects based on candidates’ names or appearance. (E.g. Polavieja et al. field experiment on appearance-based discrimination in European hiring) [Polavieja, 2023] OUP Academic
• CV screening biases: Research based on eye-tracking shows that recruiters may disproportionately focus on certain parts of the résumé (e.g. institution name, gaps, fancy credentials) and make rapid early judgments. PMC

First step: map every decision point (from job spec through offer) and ask: Who might this exclude unintentionally?

Structure Your Interview Process

Unstructured interviews are especially vulnerable to bias. Instead:

• Use structured interviews: ask each candidate the same core questions, score them using a rubric aligned with role competencies.
• Use multiple evaluators / panels: mixing perspectives helps offset individual bias.
• Include work samples, case studies or live modelling exercises (e.g. financial forecasting, scenario stress-tests) so candidates can show ability objectively.
• Use blind or anonymised CV review in early stages—removing names, ages, institutions to reduce early filtering bias. Studies and guides suggest blind recruitment can reduce bias in early screening. wr-publishing.org+1
• Around 35 % of UK businesses already use some form of anonymised recruitment (e.g. stripping names, ages) to reduce bias. People Management

By anchoring decisions on metrics, evidence and rubric scores, you reduce reliance on instinct or “gut feeling.”

Focus on Skills, Not Similarity

We naturally gravitate toward people who feel familiar — but high-performing teams thrive on diverse strengths.

• Define must-have vs. nice-to-have skills (e.g. IFRS knowledge, risk modelling, stakeholder communication) and evaluate candidates against them — not how much they mirror prior hires.
• Ask behavioural, evidence-based questions: e.g. “Tell me of a time you discovered a material error in financial reporting — what did you do?” rather than purely hypothetical scenarios.
• Score on quantitative, observable criteria — avoid scoring based on confidence, accent, or fluency alone.

Decoupling “liking” from “fitness” helps reduce bias.

Broaden the Talent Pool

Bias often stems from too narrow a search. To expand:

• Look across industries and geographies: candidates with backgrounds in tech, manufacturing, consulting or non-financial sectors can bring fresh perspectives.
• Consider nontraditional educational or career paths: liberal arts, economics, or institutions outside “usual targets” can yield strong analytical talent.
• Use recruitment firms with diversity mandates, and push them to challenge their filtering assumptions.
• Introduce returnships / career re-entry programmes (especially in Europe/UK) for people returning after career breaks (e.g. caregiving).
• Promote internal mobility and upskilling: sometimes your best hire is already in the organisation and just needs training.

Widening your pipeline increases the chance of strong, overlooked candidates.

Create Accountability for Inclusive Hiring

Inclusive hiring must be led, tracked and embedded.

• Train all hiring managers and interviewers in unconscious bias and inclusive decision-making.
• Track metrics: monitor who applies, who gets interviews, who gets offers — disaggregated by gender, ethnicity, education, etc. In many organisations these metrics are still rarely studied.
• Hold senior leadership accountable — tie diversity and inclusion goals to incentives, performance reviews, and public commitments.
• Require diverse shortlists (e.g. at least one woman / one minority candidate among finalists) before advancing interviews.
• Analysing data on rejected candidates helps detect inadvertent drop-offs (few organisations do this today).
• Leaders must model inclusive behaviour — if senior ranks are homogenous, junior functions tend to replicate. In UK financial services, female representation in senior finance roles remains modest. Reuters+1

Why It Matters (UK / European Context)

• In some of Britain’s top financial firms, women are paid on average 28.8 % less than men in equivalent roles. Reuters
• In UK financial services, the mean gender hourly pay gap is around 15.4 %, with a median gap of 17.7 % as of April 2022. UK Finance
• Among FTSE 100 companies, 23 % of chief financial officers, COOs or divisional exec roles are held by women. RSM UK
• UK financial services boardrooms’ gender pay gap has narrowed somewhat: executive package gender difference decreased from ~30 % in 2019 to ~25 % in 2023. Global Relay Intelligence & Practice
• The UK is ahead of many European peers in female board appointments: about 43 % of new board appointments in UK financial services firms over the last year were female (versus ~50 % in Europe). ICAEW

These illustrate that reducing bias is not just morally right — it is commercially critical, especially in the UK / European finance context.

Hiring without bias in finance is not about lowering standards — it’s about raising them. By leaning on data over intuition, capability over conformity, and accountability over convenience, firms can unlock deeper talent pools and build finance teams that are sharper, more resilient, and more competitive in the UK and across Europe.

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