Avoid many employment discrimination pitfalls with a new interview anonymization system! Tell your HR department about it today.

The issue:

When selecting an individual for a job, an unavoidable aspect of the process is the physical appearance of the candidate.

A job candidate might be unfairly penalized because of preconceptions about their age / sex / race / etc. Not only is this unfair to the candidate, but the overall situation also opens a company up to employment discrimination lawsuits even if they are not illegally discriminating.

Proposal:

To help avoid even the most subtle biases in the evaluation of a job candidate, the HR department should issue a full face-covering mask to all on-site interviewees (Figures 1 and 2).

1c-masks-plus-hair — ***Fig. 1:*** When interviewing job candidates who are wearing these masks, we don’t have to worry about certain types of illegal discrimination occurring, since the candidate retains most of their anonymity. These masks could be cheaply obtained from a halloween store (perhaps using the “Friday the 13th”-style of hockey goalie masks as a good baseline mask).

If there are multiple job candidates in a single day, the HR department could stock a number of distinct masks, so as to distinguish each candidate. “The red mask one” versus “the really unsettling purple-mask one,” for example.

1b-masks-no-hair — ***Fig. 2:*** *It is possible that the mask should also cover hair, since hair color, texture, and style also “leaks” information that could theoretically lead to bias in the interviewer.*

Since the masks are different styles without the colors, it may also be preferable to have the masks be entirely black-and-white (Figure 3), to avoid any cultural connotations with specific colors.

If you think this is ridiculous and would never happen, consider that a double-digit percentage of male candidates in the early-2000s Western world would prefer not to wear a pink mask (see also the dialog surrounding the “Mr. Pink” codename in the movie Reservoir Dogs), and other countries may have their own color-associated biases.

1a-masks-black-and-white — ***Fig. 3:*** *With these de-colorized masks, we don’t have to worry about culture-specific color associations.*

Even with a mask, a person’s voice still provides substantial information about them, so these masks could also contain built-in voice modulators that would make all job candidates sound like Jigsaw from the Saw series.

Conclusion:

This is somewhat similar to the previous “anonymous government officials” idea (which has, surprisingly, still not been implemented!) but is more generally applicable.

PROS: Helps job applicants get a more fair evaluation, shields a company from accusations about certain types of illegal discrimination.

CONS: None! This is a perfect and practical idea.