In Britain today, around a quarter of pupils come from an ethnic minority background. The education workforce is beginning to catch up, but data shows that it isn’t yet representative of the diverse communities that schools serve.

Technology has changed our world in countless ways. In the education sector alone, it’s transforming how pupils learn, and how staff teach. If every classroom reflected technology’s potential to help recruiters overcome unconscious bias, this would help send a clear message to pupils that they’re represented in their schools, contributing to their engagement, wellbeing and confidence.

Technology is being utilised in the sector to help recruit a more diverse workforce. There has been a surge in available technology that helps those hiring to overcome unconscious bias, which is one barrier all industries face in their efforts to build a representative workforce.

1. Building awareness of bias before you begin

We all have hidden biases; it’s part of being human. One report indicated that UK employers’ initial perceptions of whether a candidate would be a good fit for their company is strongly influenced by unconscious biases, including visual, cultural and demographic factors.

The best we can do is be aware of them and put in steps to mitigate against them.

This requires action across the entire recruitment cycle, from writing job specs to interview techniques. Technology isn’t a panacea, but it has the potential to help the education sector become as diverse as the communities that it represents.

A group of researchers have developed an online tool that can help give people an idea of their implicit biases. Project Implicit tests people’s reflexes, which can reflect the subconscious mind, to measure potential unconscious biases. Project Implicit has multiple tests, such as the race-based test, which asks users to associate a series of faces as black or white, and a series of words as good or bad.

Giving people an awareness of their personal leanings allows hiring managers to bear any biases in mind throughout the recruitment process, gradually helping to overcome them.

2. Describing jobs to attract diverse candidates

You can’t build a diverse workforce if a diverse range of candidates don’t apply for vacancies.

One way to remove bias from the beginning of the recruitment process is to ensure a role is advertised in a way that will speak to as wide a pool of potential candidates as possible, no matter their race, sex, gender, sexuality or religion.

There has been a lot of attention in recent years about how the language used in job ads can be targeted towards a certain demographic, without the hiring organisation having any conscious intention to exclude any group from the recruitment process.

Researchers have found, for example, that there are very specific words and phrases that are gender coded, and that women are much less likely to apply to job descriptions that include ‘masculine-coded’ language, such as ‘active’, ‘confident’ and ‘driven’. Instead, employers should use neutral language, which can be very difficult to discern manually. Thankfully, this is where technology can step in.

Software, such as Textio, enables employers to write objective job descriptions that get more people to identify with a role. Textio compares the content of a job ad to successful job listings, revealing any hidden biases and suggesting neutral alternatives. Another tool, Applied, allows hiring managers to write a job description and receive feedback on how inclusive it is, using behavioural science to remove bias.

Australian app VideoMyJob allows employers to record a video of themselves talking about the vacancy they’re looking to fill. This video can then be edited and shared across social media. The company has demonstrated how the technology can increase female engagement in logistics roles, by using videos of women in these roles talking about their jobs.

3. Judging candidates, but not on face value

After establishing biases and neutralising job descriptions, taking advantage of a diverse pool of applicants requires dedicated efforts to prevent unconscious bias from threatening the level playing field that recruiters have worked hard to establish.

One famous study found that job applicants with ‘white-sounding’ names had to send around 10 CVs before they heard back from a prospective employer, while those with ‘African American-sounding names’ needed to send around 15, which unambiguously answered the title of the paper: ‘Are Emily and Greg more employable than Lakisha and Jamal?’

One way employers try to overcome this is to implement blind hiring, where all personal details are removed from applicants’ CVs and any other corresponding documents that anyone involved in the hiring process might see. The aim is to judge candidates on their skills, experience and qualifications alone.

There’s a lot of technology designed to support organisations with blind hiring. One example of this is FairHire, a tracking system backed by behavioural science, while the app Blendoor hides candidate names, age, criminal background and photos, using AI and analytics to try to reduce unconscious bias.

The Unbiasify Chrome Extension is a free Google Chrome extension that allows users to toggle on and off names and photos from social media, as this is part of the hiring process.

4. Putting interview candidates on equal ground

Unstructured interviews are “one of the least predictive hiring tools in terms of correlating to the candidate’s ultimate success in the job,” Siri Uotila, a research fellow at the Women and Public Policy Program at the ‎Harvard Kennedy School, told BBC Worklife. Uotila calls them “a ripe breeding ground for lots of different types of biases.”

Even when the initial application process prioritises inclusivity as much as possible, the interview can be another barrier for under-represented candidates in the education sector.

One way to prevent hidden bias from influencing hiring decisions at the interview stage is to structure interviews to ensure that all candidates are given the same opportunity, and to make it a more level playing field when the hiring managers compare candidates after their interviews.

There are platforms that can help. Modern Hire, for example, uses AI to process and understand a candidate’s responses in their interview, while HireVue’s platform allows employers to combine an interview and assessment into one 20-minute test, using psychologists to help mitigate bias. Employers can also combine video interviewing (more on that below) with automated scoring.

5. Using alternative assessments to get around biases

Technology is helping employers to think outside the box with their recruitment process, and there’s no reason why the education sector can’t also benefit from these developments. One example is AI-powered gamified assessments, which use elements of gaming to take capture psychometric data.

AI-powered gamified assessments are backed by neuroscience and claim to provide accurate and unbiased data on candidates, in ways that a traditional CV cannot.

Companies including Nestlé, Siemens, Procter & Gamble and Shell have introduced gamified assessments to their recruitment process. Organisations behind these tests say they can help eliminate bias, such as putting more female candidates forward to for interviews in typically male-dominated areas.

Unconscious bias is, unfortunately, a part of being human, but the benefits to gain from mitigating against these biases as much as possible are huge for the education workforce, and the younger generation.