Principles of Equitable Faculty Recruitment: Unconscious Bias in the Hiring Process

 

The Office of Diversity and Human Rights is pleased to introduce a new training module available now on Courselink. The Principles of Equitable Faculty Recruitment: Unconscious Bias in the Hiring Process, provides participants with the tools needed to apply an equity, diversity, and inclusion lens to the faculty hiring process in post-secondary education. 

This module examines unconscious bias in the recruitment and selection process, provides a series of suggested steps and best practices that every hiring committee can undertake, and provides strategies to minimize bias at every step of the process. 

 

Learning Outcomes

By the end of this module, you should be able to:

 

  1. Contextualize the goals of employment equity within the department and faculty hiring process;
  2. Define unconscious bias, how it manifests in individuals, and how it manifests within the faculty hiring process;
  3. Identify strategies and challenges to minimize unconsious bias from impacting decision-making and interpersonal interactions within the search committee; and 
  4. Apply an equity, diversity, and inclusion lens to the faculty hiring process, in a methodical, deliberate step-by-step fashion. 

This module is offered through self-registration on Courselink now using your Central Login Account. Once logged in, you will be on the My Courses page. Select the Self Registration link located in the top navigation. Once selected, you will see a list of course sites. Select the module links that you wish to self-enroll in. The registration page should appear, and you will need to select the Register button. Once registered, the relevant modules should be visible on the My Courses page or searchable through the waffle icon in your screen's upper right corner. 

Note

Under s. 19.10 of the Collective Agreement between the University of Guelph and the University of Guelph Faculty Association, all faculty members who participate in faculty hiring are required to complete this module once in the term of the Collective Agreement. A faculty member should not participate on a search committee without having completed this training. While this training recommends best pracitces from an equity, diversity, and inclusion lens, all members of the Search Committee should review the relevant sections of the Collective Agreement, and in particular section 19 ("Faculty Appointments") to ensure that their recruitment and selection process complies with all requirements of the Agreement.