Voice-changing recruitment tool prevents unconscious bias

Interviewing.io is a tool for coders to interview for top tech companies without the risk of unconscious biases working against them.

Recruiters and managers are often guilty of unconscious biases during recruitment, with the candidate’s ethnicity or gender negatively impacting their chances of getting a job or even an interview. This is especially true in the tech industry — a recent study found that women produce more approved code than their male peers, but only if they hide their gender.

There are platforms such as InHerSight that highlight this problem, by giving jobseekers the tools to determine whether companies have a positive hiring and work culture. Now, for companies who want to tackle their own biases from the ground up, Interviewing.io is an online tool that alters the voice of the interviewee, so that they can be judged on their merits alone.

Interviewing.io was created as a tool for coders to practice interviewing for top tech companies without the risk of an unconscious bias working against them. Founder Aline Lerner, compares it to Chatroulette for technical interviews. To begin, interviewees sign in anonymously and are connected with a top company such as Google, Udacity, Square, Twitch and Microsoft. They then proceed with the interview, with their voice masked. At the end of the interview, the participants can choose whether or not to reveal their identities and take the recruitment process further.

Could the tool be used in other industries where racial and gender biases remain a big problem, such as the housing and vacation rental market?