This video is challenging biases in recruitment

NEW YORK — A job candidate named Wu Weixa is on the line with a recruiter for a position at the United Nations. As the Skype call launches, Weixa’s name pops up on the interviewer’s computer screen. Just as quickly, the questions flow through the interviewer’s mind: Does he call her “Wu” or “Weixa?” A glance at her resume reveals she is female, 32 years old and Chinese. How is her French? She says she wants a U.N. headquarters position to “settle down for a bit.” Does that mean she wants to become a parent — if so, how will she combine that with her career? The International Organization for Migration and the U.N. Human Rights Office are challenging this caricature and other preconceived notions about job candidates with a new video. All IOM recruiters are now tasked with incorporating the five-minute video into their hiring process. The aim is to tap into the problem of unconscious bias in the workplace, representatives said, after surveys showed great disparities in the career progression of men and women within the organizations. “We preach to the member states that they have to uphold the highest standards of equality from international conventions. But if you look at the U.N. staff you realize that it is predominantly male, older and white people at the senior management level,” said Saori Terada, policy officer for executive direction and management at the U.N. Human Rights Office. “At the end of the day, it is the decision of the hiring managers that impacts the office's demography, not just the measures and rules on parity.” The video — a project that was a year in the making — was sparked by recent internal surveys conducted by OHCHR and the IOM, which queried staff on gender and organizational culture. Both organizations — as with the broader U.N. system — have a disproportionate number of men in leadership positions. In one of his first moves in office, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres pledged to appoint equal numbers of men and women to top U.N. posts, and has since named several women to senior positions, including Deputy Secretary-General Amina J Mohammed. But disparities among the staff of individual U.N. agencies are not part of this plan. Eighty-eight percent of the 369 people OHCHR surveyed in 2015 — about 30 percent of its staff — reported that having an equal number of men and women at all levels would have a “positive influence” on the office’s working environment. But 62 percent of female respondents said that having a child would hinder their career development. Forty percent of men reported similar concerns. Within the IOM mothers are 79 percent less likely to be hired than other candidates with the same level of qualification. It takes women longer than men — 5.4 years versus 4.6 — to get promoted to a mid-level, P-4 position. --— The video highlights figures from the IOM’s research that show that, within the organization, mothers are 79 percent less likely to be hired than other candidates with the same level of qualification; and it takes women a longer period of time than men — 5.4 years, compared to 4.6 — to get promoted to a mid-level, P-4 position. “When we started to dig a bit deeper through an internal survey and tried to understand why hiring managers, including women themselves, sometimes think men are more qualified for management positions, we realized it all ties to conscious or unconscious bias,” Terada explained. The point of the exercise and video is not to encourage hiring managers to simply take on more women, said Theodora Suter, head of the gender unit at the IOM. It’s about finding the right candidates. “It is a video ​that wants to say ‘can you afford not hiring the best candidate because you just follow your bias​,’ and​ that is the question we are asking them,” she said. The video follows a hiring manager — a short-haired, dark suited official — entering an office building and proceeding to make a multitude of small, snap decisions that guide everything from which elevator to take (the one with two talking men, or the adjacent one with two women?), to judging an interview candidate such as the imaginary Wu Weixa. The video also turns the idea of gender bias around on the viewer — when the manager turns around, she is revealed to be a woman. The organizations recommend that recruiters try to recognize such biases; approach interviews with impartiality; pause during interviews to reflect on potential biases; and think specifically about how any given candidate can bring a diverse background — in terms of gender, geography or any other factor — to the team. The IOM’s internal survey revealed to Suter that policies on working culture, harassment and other issues are not being implemented effectively, she explained. “There are a lot of cases of harassment, and a lot of cases of people requesting flexible working arrangements [that have] been refused, things like that. So we also thought, OK, there is a problem, we have the policies but they do not get implemented — why is that?” she said. “We asked the consultant to look at how many policies get read in the field and we discovered very few of these documents get read, let alone understood and implemented.” Natalie Oren, an audiovisual support expert at the IOM headquarters in Geneva who led production of the video, admits it was tricky to convey all of these ideas in the final product, which sometimes carries a playful tone. “It is very difficult to strike the right tone,” she said. “As we were developing the concept of the video, I was a bit skeptical on what it should look and sound like. How could we effectively communicate this issue to our target audience? What visual language should we choose without it coming out too funny, nor too sweet, nor too blunt, if we want to be taken seriously? How could we convey this biased reality without sounding like we are complaining, or frustrated?” So far, they say, the video has been well received — and hit close to home — since it launched in July. “Though many of the points we present in the video have a humorous side to them, every person I’ve shown this to tells me: ‘Ugh, yeah that is exactly the thing I feel every day,’” Oren said.