What is Recruit Smarter?
Recruit Smarter - A better way to do business
Recruit Smarter is a Victorian Government initiative to target unconscious bias in recruitment processes.
The initiative brings together organisations across the public, private, non-government and research sectors in an Australian-first, multi-sector cooperative effort to find ways to address this issue.
What is unconcious bias?
Unconscious bias occurs when unintentional assumptions are made about job applicants based on features such as their age, gender, culture, religion or other background.
Bias is often founded on pre-existing social stereotypes and mindsets, and can lead to a disregard of an individual’s unique set of skills. Unconscious judgements, decisions and assessments, whether biased or not, are the product of knowledge developed through socialisation, education, and life experiences, filtered through religion, gender, sexuality, age or ability.
What are the effects of unconcious bias?
Unconscious bias can have a broad reaching influence on hiring practices, placing some applicants at a disadvantage to others.
Experiencing bias
Recent research conducted by management consulting firm McKinsey & Company indicates that organisations in the top quartile for racial and ethnic diversity are 35 percent more likely to have financial returns above their national industry medians. Other research has shown that teams with a wide spread of diversity outperform more homogeneous teams. The stories below highlight the experiences of Victorians who have encountered unconscious bias in the workplace.
Lorraine Ngwenya
Sahil Puri
Follow the links to the pages below to find out more about Recruit Smarter.
What Will We Do?
Find out about the Recruit Smarter Program of Work and what we will do.
For Job Applicants
Learn how we are working together to develop and maintain best practice in the recruitment processes.
Partner Participation
The Government is committed to working with the Victorian private sector to develop and maintain best practice in recruitment processes that address issues such as unconscious bias and better support and promote the State's diversity.
Contact us
Contact the Business Victoria Contact Centre 13 22 15.