Q&A Session with the Founders of DecisionHub (An inclusive decision-making platform)
As an individual navigating the world, you never know when bias will affect you, or when it plays a part in your own perception and judgment-making skills. It’s not really something you think about — until you think about it.
There are two such individuals who have given much consideration to the impact that bias plays on decision-making in the workplace and beyond; seeking to create positive changes by founding an organization named DecisionHub.
As a co-op student interning at their organization, I got the opportunity to sit down with the Founders of DecisionHub, Ahmed Hamodi and Greg Maxin, to get them to answer some questions about the DecisionHub platform, how it works, and why it came into being.
👉 What problem does DecisionHub solve?
Greg: Solid question. DecisionHub solves the problem of how to [efficiently] facilitate an unbiased application review process. We operate in a variety of sectors — grant distribution, small-scale recruitment, we can really be used to facilitate almost every application review process in the world.
Ahmed: To be more exact, we take the best of competitors such as Google Forms or Survey Monkey and combine it into one user-friendly platform that also takes a highly diligent approach to removing bias.
👉 It seems that the ability to reduce bias is DecisionHub’s most valuable feature. Could you explain what sort of strategy your platform uses to remove or reduce bias from the review process?
Ahmed: Our goal is not to remove the decision-maker from the question, as many try to do. We do not believe AI solutions are the way to go at the moment due to prejudice and bias existing in the datasets used to train these models. Our goal is to empower decision-makers by focusing on the biases that are system-induced and thus on the process of decision-making. We’re able to remove system-induced biases such as conformity bias (or groupthink) and mitigate biases such as anchoring bias.
👉 Alongside bias, what other problems does DecisionHub address?
Greg: We are passionate about a few things at DecisionHub; removing bias, saving organizations time, and ensuring the best decisions are made.
Apart from bias, we want to improve the candidate experience by saving applicants time. We achieve this with our autosave and autofill features, and an applicant portal where people can view their previous submissions.
Ahmed: On the other side of that, we also save reviewers time.
The reviewer's experience is as important as the candidate's experience and often neglected. With this in mind, we integrated areas in the review tool containing rubric criteria, a one-click carousel to move quickly from applicant to applicant, and providing admins exports and statistics at the click of a button.
Greg: Aggregated statistics, stacked rankings, and reviewer statistics allow admins to make the best decisions possible with the information available to them.
👉 Why are you passionate about DecisionHub and solving these problems?
Greg: Bias is an issue that plagues every review process in the world, whether we recognize it or not.
Ahmed: As someone who identifies in a minority community, I’m sure it has had some impact on my own personal candidacy when I have applied or participated as an applicant in the past. It’s unfair for individuals who are more than qualified for a position or sponsorship or grant to not be selected due to a variable that is out of their control.
We also recognize that a large part of the reason that extra precaution isn’t taken when it comes to bias removal is that there isn’t enough time — employees at companies are often stretched thin enough so they don’t have the bandwidth to add another item to their plate. This is why we strive to make the process as efficient and seamless as possible, so more time can be spent on what really matters to the business.
There are so many amazing people and organizations in this world, our goal is for them to be evaluated for what they truly are, so the best people and ideas can move forward and make an impact on the world.
👉 What’s the origin story of DecisionHub?
Ahmed: DecisionHub was never meant to be a company when it started. Greg and I, along with a few other students, started the project as a pro-bono idea that helped a singular non-profit organization in our local Waterloo Region community.
Greg: Through organic word of mouth, another organization in the Waterloo Region community reached out to us and wanted to use the product.
Ahmed: As we continued to develop and improve the product and more organizations were interested to use it, Greg and I decided to commit to this product and make it into something larger so we can spread our impact further. We’re excited to see where it goes.
Got any questions for Greg or Ahmed? Let us know in the comment section!