Work, Reconsidered: Bias Doesn't Require Bad Intent

A superhero-like figure stands confidently against a vibrant cityscape backdrop, surrounded by symbols of communication, teamwork, problem-solving, and focus. The phrase "Work, Reconsidered" emphasizes a reimagined approach to professional life.When people ask me what I've learned after more than thirteen years in recruiting, they usually expect me to talk about hiring. The truth is, I almost always end up talking about people instead.

When I started recruiting in January 2013, I thought the job was pretty straightforward. Companies needed people. Candidates needed jobs. My role was to help connect the two. I'd been a hiring manager before, so I wasn't completely new to hiring. Looking back now, I smile a little at how simple I thought it all was.

What I didn't realize was that recruiting was about to become one of the greatest studies of human behavior I could have asked for. Every intake meeting, every interview debrief, every hiring manager conversation, and every offer discussion gave me a front-row seat to the way people evaluate one another. Some of what I saw confirmed what I thought I knew. A lot of it challenged it.

Early in my career, I had a client tell me he "only want(ed) white men" for an entry-level warehouse position loading and unloading trucks. "No Black candidates. No Brown candidates. No piercings. No tattoos. No women."

I remember sitting there stunned. There wasn't anything ambiguous about what he was asking for. It was discrimination. Plain and simple. The request came out as if it was effortless for the guy.

I wish I could tell you those conversations no longer happen. They do. Blatant discrimination and bias still exist. They still affect people's careers, livelihoods, and opportunities. They still deserve to be confronted every single time they happen. Nothing in this post is meant to suggest otherwise.

What surprised me over the years wasn't that those conversations existed. It was realizing they weren't the only biased conversations influencing hiring decisions.

Over the years, I found myself thinking just as much about comments like these.

"Something just felt off."

"They're not executive enough."

"Their voice bothered me."

"They looked like skelator."

"They didn't make enough eye contact."

"I don't know... it's just a hunch."

"I loved them... but let's see who else is out there. I'm afraid I like them too much."

Those conversations (and many more!) have stayed with me because they rarely came from people who saw themselves as unfair. How we view ourselves is our own reality. Most of the hiring managers I partnered with genuinely cared about building strong teams in the ways they knew how. They wanted to make good decisions. If you'd asked them whether fairness mattered, I have no doubt every one of them would have said yes. And yet, they said what they said.

That's what I couldn't stop thinking about. Intent vs. Impact is a topic I am constantly juggling while wondering if others are as well.

A dynamic illustration depicting a magnifying glass focusing on a standout red figure among a group of gray figures, symbolizing the concept of individual recognition or selection in a crowd. The background features a city skyline and a vibrant, starry sky, emphasizing the theme of standing out and being noticed.

If people who sincerely wanted to be fair could still make decisions using language they couldn't fully explain, what exactly was I observing?

I've been carrying that question with me ever since. It didn't make me care less about blatant discrimination. It made me realize that blatant discrimination wasn't the only thing shaping people's careers in such a dangerous way.

I've spent a lot of time thinking about that question over the years. In many ways, I think it's quietly shaped the recruiter I've become. It also forced me to take a hard look at myself.

It's easy to recognize assumptions when someone else is making them. It's a lot harder to recognize the ones we've been carrying around ourselves.

Early in my recruitment career, I questioned candidates who looked like job hoppers. If someone had several short stints on their resume, I wondered whether they were committed or whether they were going to leave six months after we hired them. I also questioned whether someone who had spent years running their own business could successfully transition back into an internal role working for someone else.

The funny thing is, I don't remember consciously deciding to believe either of those things.

They were just... there.

Ideas I'd picked up over the years. Assumptions I'd heard often enough that they started to feel like facts. Bias passed down is still bias.

Then life challenged both of them.

The job market changed. Layoffs became more common. Contract work became more common. Careers became far less linear than they had been when I first started recruiting.

Then I became self-employed. Eventually, I returned to an internal recruiting role.

There's something incredibly humbling about living the very career path you once questioned in someone else. It didn't make me feel guilty. It made me more curious.

How many other assumptions had I accepted simply because they'd never been challenged?That's a question I still ask myself.

It's also one of the reasons I've developed a habit over the years.

Whenever someone tells me they're trusting their gut, I almost always ask one more question.

"Tell me more."

Not because I'm trying to catch them being biased. Not because I'm trying to prove them wrong. Because I genuinely want to understand how they arrived at their conclusion.

Sometimes their answer is thoughtful, specific, and grounded in evidence. Sometimes it reveals an assumption they hadn't stopped to question. Those usually end up being very different conversations.

I've found that "Tell me more" opens far better conversations than "I think you're wrong." Thank you to the excellent mentors I've had over the years for these wisdom-gems!

I've been asked more than once whether I think recruiting has made me a better judge of people.

Honestly, I don't.

I think it's made me much more cautious about believing I've figured people out.

If anything, recruiting has taught me how quickly we create stories about one another. Sometimes those stories are accurate. Sometimes they aren't. The challenge is that we don't always know which is which in the moment, and yet we still have to make decisions.

That realization became even more personal after I was diagnosed with ADHD and then Autism well into adulthood. Looking back, there were so many moments throughout my life where people were making decisions about me based on what they observed without having the full picture. To be fair, I've done the same.

That diagnosis didn't make me an expert on bias. It didn't suddenly make me objective. What it gave me was a different appreciation for how incomplete first impressions can be. It reminded me that there's almost always more to someone's story than we can see in a résumé, an interview, or even a series of interviews.

Maybe that's why this topic has stayed with me for so many years.

Every hiring decision is ultimately a decision about another human being. Human beings are wonderfully complicated. We're shaped by experiences other people can't see. We're influenced by circumstances that never make it onto a résumé. We communicate differently. We think differently. We solve problems differently. Sometimes we're nervous. Sometimes we're masking. Sometimes we're grieving. Sometimes we're simply having an off day. Sometimes we're carrying something we'll never share in an interview.

None of that means we stop evaluating people.

It means we remember that evaluation comes with responsibility.

A confident superheroine with glasses and a cape stands against a vibrant pop art background, raising a finger as a speech bubble above her says, "Tell me more."

I've come to believe that one of the greatest responsibilities we have in hiring isn't to eliminate human judgment. I don't think that's possible. Human judgment will always be part of hiring (... unless they let the ATS bots take over - I know, I know - I am teasing of course!). The responsibility is making sure our judgment is worthy of the people whose lives it affects.

For me, that starts with curiosity. It starts with asking one more question. It starts with being willing to examine my own thinking with the same honesty I expect from everyone else.

That's true whether I'm talking with a hiring manager, interviewing a candidate, or reflecting on a decision I made years ago that I see differently today.

Because blatant discrimination still deserves to be confronted every single time it appears.

And so do the quieter assumptions that can influence our decisions without us realizing it.

I don't think we have to choose between those conversations.

I think we need both.

Maybe that's one of the biggest lessons recruiting has taught me after all these years.

The longer I do this work, the less interested I become in believing I've figured people out and the more interested I become in understanding them.

I don't know that we'll ever get that completely right 100% of the time,

But I think it's worth trying.

Because every once in a while, asking one more question changes everything.

-rkc

This essay is rooted in my own experiences and observations over thirteen years in recruiting, talent strategy, and talent acquisition leadership. For anyone interested in exploring some of the research, ideas, and perspectives surrounding bias, judgment, neurodiversity, and inclusion more deeply, I've included a few resources below.

Nancy Doyle — Learning From Neurodivergent Leaders

Daniel Kahneman — Thinking, Fast and Slow

Minda Harts — The Memo

Leadership in Neurodiversity and Neurodivergence

Iris Bohnet — What Works: Gender Equality by Design

Lily Zeng — Fixing Fairness

Inclusive AF Podcast

Tiffany Jana & Michael Baran — Subtle Acts of Exclusion

Ed Catmull — Creativity, Inc.

Michelle Mijung Kim — The Wakeup Call

Daniel Coyle — The Culture Code

Kenji Yoshino & David Glasgow — How Equality Wins

Tifffany Yu — The Anti-Abelist Manifesto

Harvard Project Implicit

If you have a resource to add to this list that is impactful please comment below and let me know. I will be compiling a resource list to add to my site this year.