motivation.

Unconscious bias is the subconscious attitude or prejudice towards a group of people that affects how individuals think about others around them.

• 79% of HR professionals agree that unconscious bias exists in the hiring process (CMiC, 2021).
• As a result, talented applicants can be overlooked due to unconscious bias.
• For instance, applicants with male names are 40% more likely to be called for interview than female names (Souza & Doyle, 2020).

Thus, there is a need to anonymize the hiring and interview process to reduce unconscious bias. AnonymizeIt is a Telegram bot that can facilitate this "blind" interview process by allowing recruiters and applicants to communite while protecting their identity. We hope that this bot can reduce conscious bias in the hiring process.

user manual.

For recruiters:

1. Find @AnonymizeIt_bot on Telegram or click here.
2. Type /beginSession to create a new interview session and secret key.
3. Send the secret key to the applicant via email.
4. Once the applicant joins the interview session, type /s ### with ### being your message to the applicant. You are now chatting anonymously with your applicant!
5. Type /endSession to end the current interview session.

For applicants:

1. Find @AnonymizeIt_bot on Telegram or click here.
2. After receiving the secret key from a recruiter, type /joinSession ### with ### being the secret key.
3. After joining the interview session, type /s ### with ### being your message to the recruiter. You are now chatting anonymously with your recruiter!
4. Type /endSession to end the current interview session.

demo.

---