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How to reduce unconscious bias in your recruitment process

Take steps to make sure that you're carrying out fair and equal practices at the advertising, CV shortlisting and interview stages of your recruitment process.

Last reviewed on 7 May 2025See updates
School types: All•School phases: All•Ref: 41025
Contents
  1. Reducing unconscious bias brings long-term benefits to your school
  2. Look at data from your previous recruitment rounds
  3. Advertising roles
  4. Shortlisting candidates
  5. Carrying out online checks of shortlisted candidates
  6. Interviewing candidates

Reducing unconscious bias brings long-term benefits to your school

It may take some time to implement and embed the steps in this article into your recruitment process, but they'll help make your school inclusive, diverse and welcoming.

Reducing unconscious bias will:

  • Create a more inclusive team
  • Give pupils more diverse role models to look up to in your school
  • Help you find the best candidate for each role
  • Help you avoid being challenged by applicants who felt the process was prejudiced 

It might not be possible to adopt all the steps below, so pick the ones that are most suitable and feasible for your school's context – even following some of them will reduce your unconscious bias. 

Look at data from your previous recruitment rounds

Look at multiple recruitment rounds to find out whether there are any worrying recurring patterns, so you can focus on the most important areas of the process.

For example, if a wide demographic variety of candidates get shortlisted but only a narrow demographic group tend to be hired, start by looking at your processes during the interview stage. 

Find out how to tackle unconscious bias at each stage of recruitment below.

Advertising roles

Post job adverts in a diverse range of places

Make your school website welcoming

Show your commitment to diversity

Shortlisting candidates

You may find that a wide variety of people apply for your positions, but only a narrow demographic group make it past the CV stage. If this is the case, consider using the approaches below, which are recommended practice in other industries.

Anonymise CVs

Use a scoring grid to ensure objectivity

Carrying out online checks of shortlisted candidates

Keeping Children Safe in Education (KCSIE) 2024 recommends that schools "should consider" carrying out an online search of shortlisted candidates as part of due diligence (see paragraph 226).

But this can increase the chance of unconscious bias interfering with the hiring process, because you may learn additional personal information that's not relevant to the job.

To reduce this risk, ask someone neutral, who is not part of the interview panel, to carry out the search. They should only pass on relevant information to decision-makers – e.g. information that suggests the candidate:

  • Is unqualified for the role
  • Poses a potential safeguarding risk
  • Risks damaging the reputation of your school/trust

Read more about carrying out an online search of shortlisted candidates for more support on how to do this fairly.

Interviewing candidates

Ask the interview panel to read up on unconscious bias beforehand

Train staff on unconscious bias 

Keep your interview process evidence-based

Avoid asking personal or health-based questions

Make reasonable adjustments for candidates with disabilities

Notify candidates of interview outcomes sensitively 

Sources

Many thanks to:

  • Ann Marie Christian, an independent safeguarding consultant, trouble shooter, author and trainer. She provides consultancy for designated safeguarding leads, heads, senior leaders and governors. She has experience in frontline and managerial child protection matters, including school improvement, casework and training
  • Gulshan Kayembe, an independent consultant who has experience of inspecting schools. As a consultant, she provides mentoring for senior leaders and has worked as an external adviser on headteachers’ performance management
  • Fitzgerald HR, who spoke to us about contacting unions to find out what inclusivity training they can offer
  • Sufian Sadiq, director of teaching school at Chiltern Learning Trust, who spoke to us about anonymising CVs in your recruitment processes
  • Show Racism the Red Card, who spoke to us about contacting your local authority to find out about unconscious bias training available to you
  • Nina Siddall-Ward, an education consultant. She is the former head of standards and learning effectiveness for a large local authority and has been a headteacher in 3 schools

 

Article updates

12 September 2024

The DfE updated Keeping Children Safe in Education (KCSIE) on 1 September 2024.

We’ve updated page and/or paragraph numbers in this article, where relevant, to reflect the updated guidance. There were no other changes to the guidance that affected this article. 

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