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We built voice modulation to mask gender in technical interviews

blog.interviewing.io

61–70 of 369 posts

Re: We built voice modulation to mask gender in technical interviews

#61
post #55

Is anybody studying the reasons behind the huge gender disparity in roofing, welding or kindergarten teaching? I think there is a tremendous gender bias in those and other fields that is going unstudied, because nobody cares or because those fields aren't as cool or important .

Someone I know worked as a welder at a very high level of experience and skill. She reported constant sexist comments, abuse and obstruction from male coworkers, particularly those whose work she was sent to inspect and/or repair.

Re: We built voice modulation to mask gender in technical interviews

#62
This is interesting because it starts to peel another layer of the problem. Yes there are still cues that can give away gender, but this seems another step closer to making the interview process a science. The next logical question from here is "why are women more likely to quit after 1-2 bad interviews".

Re: We built voice modulation to mask gender in technical interviews

#63
post #15

I would really have liked to see them check whether the gender-blinding actually worked. Even if someone's voice is modulated, they may have gendered behavior patterns that could influence someone's performance ratings. I wouldn't be surprised if I could guess the gender of a voice-modulated person pretty accurately from other cues. To combat this, they could have asked the interviewer during the performance assessme…

I actually don't think you should put the question on the interview feedback form. That invites bias into the question. "Oh, this candidate did well, must be a man." In fact, having interviewers consciously guess at the gender may even skew their perception of the interview performance post-hoc.

I would, however, be interested in a separate experiment to gauge the effectiveness of the voice modulation.

Re: We built voice modulation to mask gender in technical interviews

#64
post #54

So we all realize technical interviews serve no practical purpose and should be quietly abandoned, but instead of looking into the future and discovering better ways of identifying talent, people keep inventing stuff that makes the torturing mechanism even more sophisticated so that the suffering can be prolonged. I'd like to see the people behind this project apply their technical skills to something more useful to…

So we all realize technical interviews serve no practical purpose and should be quietly abandoned We don't really know that at all. Technical interviews are an invaluable tool in finding people who can write software and be collaborative co-workers. A lot of software developers on the receiving end don't like them. Part of that is because a good technical interview pushes you out of your comfort zone and forces you t…

What is the point of pushing people out of their comfort zone? Practical software engineering doesn't happen when you're uncomfortable. Discovering quality solutions requires concentration and immersion into problems.

Re: We built voice modulation to mask gender in technical interviews

#65
post #35

Sweet that some one is trying new things with ideas. But Oh boy, Life does not revolve around tech interviews. Make peace with it. An old school psychologist would observe us and say that the people obsessed with tech interviews faced an emotional toll of rejection during early career and are trying to get over it. Google, Facebook and other companies are like parents of the tech kids and the kids are seeking some ki…

Maybe interviewing is over-important because of the frequency in which tech workers/engineers change jobs.

Maybe un(der)employed programmers, who are naturally more concerned about interviewing, have extra free time and are thus over-represented on hacker news.

Re: We built voice modulation to mask gender in technical interviews

#66
post #35

Sweet that some one is trying new things with ideas. But Oh boy, Life does not revolve around tech interviews. Make peace with it. An old school psychologist would observe us and say that the people obsessed with tech interviews faced an emotional toll of rejection during early career and are trying to get over it. Google, Facebook and other companies are like parents of the tech kids and the kids are seeking some ki…

Maybe interviewing is over-important because of the frequency in which tech workers/engineers change jobs.

yes, I believe you are completely correct. It also seems like a common way for the engineering community as a whole to gain insight into a company's culture. It seems to me that these two ideas go hand in hand in a encouraging our fetishization of the tech interview

Re: We built voice modulation to mask gender in technical interviews

#67
The result does not surprise me at all. I realize this was not the kind of study that would pass rigorous review. I am surprised the author thinks this is a surprising result. The kind of people who do technical interviews have been taught since childhood that the system is biased against women and that they need to look out for this bias. If anything I would think the occasional super tech woman would be enough of a surprise that the average interviewer would have an unconscious bias in favor of her

Re: We built voice modulation to mask gender in technical interviews

#68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both maturity and strong communication are important for any professional position.

Both maturity and strong communication are important for any professional position. So, shall you start firing executives at VC firms, or shall I?

Peter Thiel ... ubernostrum is coming for you

Re: We built voice modulation to mask gender in technical interviews

#69
Hi Aline! Great read, as always.

I had a couple of thoughts while reading:

1) One of the things you mentioned was that men whose voices were modulated to sound like women tended to score better than women whose voices were modulated to sound like men. Do you think that's because the men actually performed better than women, or do you think it's possible that interviewers have a lower set of expectations for female interviewees? Or some other reason?

My hypothesis at this point is that, all other things being equal, it seems like if an interviewer expects you to do poorly because of an unconscious bias against women, and you actually do perfectly average, the interviewer might rate you higher simply because you surprised him. Does that make sense?

2) How did your partners (Mattermark, Yelp, etc) react to your findings? Will this change how they hire in the future or how they use interviewing.io?

3) Given enough time and resources, do you think it's really possible to eliminate gender bias in interviews (through techniques like this, or otherwise), or do you think the best we can do is minimize it?

4) Piggybacking off #3, do you do follow-ups with the companies after you've placed people? I'd be interested to see whether women who did well in the interview actually do well at the companies long-term -- perhaps those biases extend beyond the interviewing process, as well!

Keep up the good work! :)

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