Unconscious bias and related cognitive effects influence our perception in many areas of life: However, these biases can have serious consequences, especially in recruiting. Effects such as the "halo effect" make people we like appear more competent. Even unconscious, internalized, racist or xenophobic tendencies can influence our assessments simply through a person's last name.

The “voice.of.diversity” course of the TU Career Center links the eLearning “diversity skills” of the TU Wien with the students’ first steps into professional life. The theoretical content learned in advance is applied to the application situation in preparatory practical workshops, documents are checked and empowering measures are jointly developed in order to identify any biases in the application process and counteract them. At the end of the course, there is an anonymous job interview with companies in order to implement the skills learned.

At the anonymous audition on November 10th, the participants presented themselves and, above all, their professional knowledge in a very special application process: First anonymously in the DEBIAS chat tool, which was developed to minimize the unconscious biases in the application process by the Center for Informatics & Society, opens an external URL in a new window (CIS) at the TU Wien and the TU Career Center. After the chat the applicants and company representatives get to know each other face to face.

One participant says: "The course was structured in an exciting way. In the anonymous application process, I was able to approach companies in a completely different way and was able to score points with my skills.”

Lukas Ramach (Managing Director BOC Group) adds: “The format helped us to focus even more consciously on where we are confronted with bias despite all our openness. In fact, the answers from the chat tool don't tell you what kind of person is actually standing in front of you. There is a discrepancy between the real appearance of the applicants and the inner eye, there are some surprises. The best result is that we have found employees from every round who are still with our company to this day.”

Interested? The course takes place once a year (in the winter term), participants receive 1 ECTS.

For more details go to: www.tucareer.com, opens an external URL in a new window