Would You Like A Blindfold Next Time You’re Interviewed For A Job?

Filming starts this week on the BBC’s new big Saturday night family entertainment show “The Voice”. These are the kind of shows that can be the lifeblood of a broadcaster delivering huge audiences. Think X-Factor or Strictly Come Dancing. The Voice boasts an all star cast including Jessie J, Will.i.am and the living legend Tom Jones.

“The Voice” is a talent show similar in vein to Britain’s Got Talent but with one big difference. The judges have their backs to the contestants not being able to see them. The idea is that the judges’ sole focus will be on the singers’ voices. Appearance, gender, age, race, levels of beauty none of that will matter as the programme emphasises the only thing that should matter in a “talent competition” the contestants’ “talent”.

I’ve never entered a talent competition, and anyone who has ever heard me on a Karaoke night would laugh at the very idea, but I am sure like most people working in television we can all relate to going to interviews and the focus not being solely on our “talent”. A simple look at employment figures across the industry would suggest that consciously or subconsciously issues of race, gender, and disability play a role in deciding who are offered jobs. People from diverse backgrounds simply do not fare as well in interviews.

So could we copy BBC’s new Saturday night show “The Voice” and start holding “blind” interviews? This may not be as ridiculous as it first sounds. 

In the 1970’s approximately just 10% of new hires at major U.S orchestras were women. The justification put forward by those in positions of power was that “women were just not very good musicians”. But suspecting prejudice was at play the musicians’ unions insisted that orchestras should hold “blind” auditions, the applicants would play behind a curtain, concealing their appearance and gender. The results were striking. By the 1980’s half of new recruits to the New York Philharmonic were women, 40% in the San Francisco Symphony and a third in Boston and Chicago. Although this cannot be put down solely to the implementation of blind auditions studies by Harvard economist Claudia Goldin and Princeton’s Cecelia Rouse show blind auditions heavily increased the chances of women being hired.

As someone working in television and interested in diversity what concerns me the most is that playing an instrument is a relatively objective technical skill, far more so than the “soft skills” researchers, producers and TV executives are judged on. And so if prejudice can play such a large role in judging whether someone can play an instrument, that auditioning behind a screen can make such a difference, what subconscious prejudices are at play each time someone goes for a job interview in the media?

Now I am not suggesting that the BBC and all the other broadcasters and production companies start conducting interviews behind a screen or with the interview panel turning their backs to the candidate as in The Voice. However other industries have started to realise that a certain degree of “blindness” can be a good thing in their recruitment. 

In the first round of interviews for some Medical Schools and Business Schools the interview panel are not given the applicants’ Resumes to ensure that they concentrate on the interviewee’s answers and are not prejudiced by whether the person went to the “right” school or any other such irrelevant facts. And two years ago research commissioned by the Department of Work And Pensions suggested that CV’s for government posts should strip away surnames to avoid prejudice against people from Asian and African backgrounds.

The Voice will start broadcasting on BBC1 later in the year. As with any big Saturday evening entertainment show there is a lot riding on it for the channel. But for those of us trying to increase the diversity in the media there might be more than one reason to tune in and who knows this show might, in the classic BBC Reithian tradition, educate as well as entertain.