Would two people with identical qualifications be considered to have different levels of competence simply because they are of different genders?The answer is yes.Many studies have shown that when evaluating others,people are prone to make predictions that fit stereotypes based on the candidates’ gender,therefore,"subconsciously believe that the male candidate is more competent when the qualifications of both candidates are identical"-the unfair evaluation based on this unconscious gender bias is called gender-biased evaluation.Although gender bias is prevalent in individuals,organizations can prevent it from turning into institutionalized workplace bias through interventions-one way is to increase the fairness of evaluations by adopting more specific or structured evaluation criteria.This study focuses on the initial resume screening process,using experimental research and statistical analysis to develop and test hypotheses.The study designs an experiment to test whether the gender of a resume affects the assessor’s evaluation of a job applicant’s competence,then and an intervention is designed to test whether more specific evaluation criteria can moderate the effect of gender on the fairness of the evaluation.In this thesis,the experiment was randomly divided into four groups with the help of the randomized scenario feature of Wenjuanxing-an online questionnaire platform.Experimental participants were asked to fill out a questionnaire in which they scored the competency of the same resume based on the same job description.The four experimental groups were controlled two-by-two:where groups 1 and 3 were assigned to masculine name resumes;groups 2 and 4 were assigned to feminine name resumes;groups 1 and 2 were required to score job applicants based on more specific evaluation criteria;groups 3 and 4 were required to score job applicants only in general terms.Based on 262 validated questionnaires,this thesis conducted a two-by-two comparison of the four groups by independent two-sample t-test and used a nonparametric Wilcoxon rank sum test as supplementary validation.In addition,the study verified the original hypotheses by analyzing the moderating effects of the intervention through ANOVA and linear regression:1.gender perceptions in resume screening affect the evaluation of job applicants’ competence,and evaluators rated male resumes higher;2.more specific evaluation criteria moderate the effect of gender on evaluation fairness:there was no significant difference in the scores of male resumes before and after the intervention,but female resumes scored significantly higher after the intervention than before the intervention,indicating that subjects’ perceptions of male CVs were more stable,while the evaluation of female CVs was more susceptible to other conditions.Therefore,we should be more aware of the influence of subconscious gender-based differential evaluation on recruitment and promote gender equity in the recruitment process through rational design of the recruitment process. |