It's silly to deny we all have unconscious biases (I can't believe people still deny that lol), but why is unconscious bias a bad thing? It's the gift of fear. Your body and mind have certain emotional and visceral reactions to certain names etc. and that can be a good warning sign against hiring certain employees. Don't ignore your biases, they can save your life!

@TangoFoxtrot your unconscious biases are not just useless, but actively harmful, 100% of the time when you're looking at a CV.

@StephanBranczyk as far as I'm concerned, either impeccable grammar matters (in which case it's not an unconscious bias) or it doesn't, in which case it really shouldn't hurt the applicants' case. People who aren't perfectly fluent in a language can still be the best candidate for many jobs.

@Erik 100% of the time? What if your biases bias you towards the best candidate, just by chance?

@TangoFoxtrot you wouldn't know that it did. And even if you did know, it would only make your unconscious bias even stronger and problematic the next time around. "Wrong approach, right conclusion by luck" is bad because the next time, you'll use the same approach and you might not be lucky. And you might blame something other than the approach, because it worked last time after all.

@TangoFoxtrot well; I might see where you're coming from if you can give me an example of a common name that would trigger an unconscious bias for good reasons. I can't imagine any reason why someone's name would be a good judge of their skill or ability.

@Erik There are obvious examples: Theodore, Katherine, Mary, William, which point to highly educated, classy, and professional applicant. Christopher/Christina/Christa etc. indicate the applicant is a Christian or was at least raised so (as a Christian myself, I'd guess it's on average a good thing in the US). A name can also indicate age: Dorothy is likely older than Kaylee, which can be good if you're looking for experience.

@TangoFoxtrot all of these are really harmful. There is no reason to believe any of those assumptions would be true.

@Erik Sure, they'd not be true all the time, but on average, they would bias you towards the best candidate. Not 100% of the time. But sometimes.

@TangoFoxtrot on average, they would not bias you towards the best candidate, unless you got lucky and the best candidate just HAPPENED to have the right name. If you follow this in actual hiring, you are almost certainly making terrible hiring mistakes.

@Erik "unless you got lucky and the best candidate just HAPPENED to have the right name" Doesn't require much luck. Names are associated with characteristics for a reason. Of course I don't use this in actual hiring - at least not consciously, which is the whole point of this thread.

Names aren't associated with actual characteristics... they're assigned at birth by the parents.

At best, a name might mean that the parents are educated, but that doesn't mean the child is, and it might not even mean the parents are, they might just like complex names.

There's also no reason to believe that someone without a fancy name can't be well educated.

And there's also no reason to believe someone with a name starting with Chris is likely to be (originally raised) a Christian; it's a really common name. It just might seem that way because almost everyone in your area happens to be raised that way.

OK, but parents of a certain class tend to name their child a certain way. For example, upper class educated parents whose children are also likely to be upper class and educated, are more likely to name their child Katherine, William, etc. (the examples I gave).

And I'm sorry but if you have Christ in your name, you were named by Christian parents. I am a Christian myself and I've literally never heard of a non-Christian naming their children after Christ.

Thanks for moving to chat, Erik.