Work story: This is what discrimination looks like

Been running an advert for a senior developer position for a few weeks now and it's something we've been struggling to recruit for because the specific market were in is seeing insane demand at the minute and people are getting snapped up all over the place on ever-increasing contracts. So we're getting pretty desperate to recruit.

The listing ended last night so today I sat down to sift through the applicants and find a handful to invite to interview.

As I'm going through I realise I'm getting a sinking feeling whenever I realise someone is either:

1. A woman
2. Indian
3. Too old.

So even though I'm in desperate need of developers, I'm consciously scouring their applications for reasons not to invite them to interviews. Stuff like "Hmmmm well they haven't filled in much detail there, I'll score them down" or "We're looking for someone who can really take a lead on projects here and they don't really demonstrate they're able to do that."

Then someone who's clearly around my age, doesn't mention anything about kids, or husbands, or any university of Tehran or Punjabistan or whatever I'll see something like" Delivered multiple .NET Core MVC projects" and be like "Yeah, yeah this guy fits the bill."

Then at the end, I check my scores and none of the women or Indians have made it through.

Hopefully this makes you aware of your own unconscious biases. I always thought I wasn't a racist or sexist, but if I'm unconsciously sifting them out at the application stage perhaps am I racist or am I proactively avoiding problematic workers further down the line?

Let me know in the comments.