Test Used to Ensure Fair Housing Also Can Combat Hiring Bias

A decades-old investigative technique the federal government uses to expose evidence of discriminatory home-selling practices nationwide is also an effective tool to uncover patterns of hiring discrimination.

The US Justice and Housing and Urban Development departments both use matched-pair testing—also called auditing—to clamp down on real estate agents who violate fair-housing standards by denying equal opportunities to home buyers based on their race, religion, and other protected characteristics.

Agencies charged with curtailing workplace discrimination could yield similar successes in detecting bias issues at the early stage of the hiring process if they adopt this “underutilized” testing method, according to a ...