Hands up if you have NEVER made a hiring mistake…hmmm. I didn’t see many hands go up. In fairness I can’t see you but if I could I am sure very few hands would have been raised.
Virtually everyone, at some point in their career has made a hiring mistake. Many of us know that the cost of bad hire is at least 3 month’s salary and can be as much as one and half times an employee’s annual salary.
Hiring mistakes can be made for a variety of reasons and I hope it doesn’t appear as though were trying to oversimplify things. Here we want to focus on the fact that some leaders/hiring managers use their gut or rely on a “gut feeling” to make hiring decisions. Sometimes they are aware of this and at other times they are not. Sometimes this works and often times it doesn’t. Research shows that many interviewers make these decisions in the first 30 seconds to 2 minutes of an interview. In some cases, they decide whether the candidate will move to the next stage of the interviewing process and in other instances they make the decision to hire or not hire.
This next question I have asked many times in seminars and in my coaching. I ask people if they have ever heard of something called “The Confirmation Bias”. Usually 20 percent or so say, “absolutely” and the rest have a bit of confused look on their face. Once I describe what it is however, most people are familiar with the concept. The “Confirmation Bias,” was researched by a psychologist named Peter Watson. I know it’s a fancy, schmancy term but I have to throw a few of those in every once in a while, to keep you on your toes. According to Watson’s research, sometimes when people make a decision, they have a tendency to accept information that supports their decision and discount information that does NOT support their decision. Sound a bit more familiar now?
So, what might this look like in an interview?
A hiring manager or recruiter is interviewing a candidate and within the first 30 seconds to 2 minutes decide that they either like or dislike the person they are interviewing. They spend part of the rest of the interview focusing on formation that supports the decision that they made and refute or discount information that does not support their decision. We have actually seen taken a step further where the interviewer actually spoon-feeds the candidate (they one they like of course) with appropriate responses to interview questions. It was somewhat amusing to watch but the result wasn’t very funny. Hiring someone who didn’t fit.
The big challenge here is that most people are not aware that this is influencing their decision. We don’t have an internal mechanism that sounds like a truck backing up letting us know we are about to enter into the “confirmation bias zone.” It stands to reason that the confirmation bias can contribute to use viewing our gut instincts as being “correct.”
While gut instincts may be accurate it’s important to recognize they are not always correct and can lead mistakes during the hiring process. Hiring is very complicated, in part because people are complex.
Objective data can help confirm what your gut is telling you or it may take you in a different direction altogether. This is where our data-informed™ hiring tools come in – they allow you to objectively measure candidates against what is critical for success in a given role. If you already have a robust behavioural-based interviewing process this will enhance it. If you don’t currently have a structured way to interview, guess what? Our reports include one for you.
We can help you measure your candidates’ work-related traits and show you how those traits will impact success, both positively and negatively, for a given role.
Adding objectivity to your hiring process can provide the following benefits:
- Hire more individuals that fit the role and fit within your organization
- Reduce hiring mistakes and save money
- Help new employees be more successful
- Improve retention rates
- Improve performance
- Better sleep – indirectly of course. Imagine achieving 1-5 and how much better you will feel when your head hits the pillow…….
Watch for more articles in the future and in the meantime, if you want to learn more about how you can hire more objectively and improve performance in the process, please contact us info@opt-assess.com.
Thanks for stopping by and taking the time to read this article.
