Making smarter hiring choices

This is a free article you might find interesting. It’s also a sample of our knowledge andhow we can help you get a bit better at your job, and/or how we can help you fix a problem. If you’re interested in our consultation services, contact us.

This should go without saying but disclaimer: The information provided below is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute legal, financial, medical, or other professional advice. You should consult with a qualified professional for specific advice tailored to your circumstances.

If you’re interested learning more about this topic, we have courses: the basics of recruitment and making smarter recruitment processes cover this, or you can find all of our courses here.

So;

We’ve talked about pulling together options, we’ve talked about how to appraise candidates through selection tools, but now we get to the crunch, who to choose.  So let’s deep dive on that key question.

Do we make good decisions all the time?

Think you make good decisions? Think you make rational decisions, all the time? Perhaps that question really is a real test of whether you’re a optimist or pessimist; overconfident or underconfident; imposter syndrome or main character syndrome person.
Short answer- no we are not always rational, but generally we are bounded rational. Which is pretty good, but not perfect.

Cognitive biases in decisions

Let’s discuss a bit of the science, specifically the science of decision-making.  We think that all of our decision are clear, rational, balanced, but in reality this is much less so that we would think.  Humans make decisions in two ways; slowly and rationally, and quickly and intuitively (see Kahneman’s thinking, fast and slow).  Intuitive think is remarkably effective and highly efficient, but it’s prone to cognitive bias, as we take shortcuts to get to answers quickly.  This is different from what we commonly think of as biased (i.e. biased on gender, race, age, ethnicity etc), so they aren’t unethical, but generally they are faulty processes for making decisions. Tossing a coin is wrong per se, but it’s not great.

Some quick examples

I shouldn’t be encouraging this, but just ask AI for examples: ‘cognitive biases in selecting people for jobs’ will give you more info than I can here.

A good example is anchoring bias; we are natural catalogers, and often put people into groups very quickly, after which we are looking at info to see if we are right or wrong. How often, when you are reading page 2 of a CV, are you ‘double-checking’ if you’re first impression for page 1 is correct or not?

See here for more discussion on interview mistakes.

Aspiring to rational decisions

The human brain is in fact a fantastically efficient decision-making machine- an animal that can’t make quick decisions has another name- lunch. You’ve probably spotted (with that equally fantastic analytical brain of yours) that we aren’t the only creatures with this- all animals are great at getting away and hiding from predators quickly, so it’s not our most highly evolved function.

so we should aspire to use our better, new parts of our brain- that what upgrades are for. But don’t beat yourself if old habits keep coming through.

See here for the Three-Act structure of hiring.

How to do better: first, pull together the key indicators

The bigges mistake you can make is figure out the criteria, and the weighting as you go. This makes sense, and you may be tempted to skim this bit because it’s self-evident; BUT, first ask yourself, in you last process, did you know your top 5 attributes, and their relative weighting? e.g., 4 year’s experience at X level, which is be ~40% of the weighting? You didn’t did you. You figured it out as you went.

Why is this problematic? Because not know what you want makes you open to suggestion of what could important through the process, leading to weighting of criteria that isn’t as smart in the long term. Like the non-cooking partner doing the supermarket shop, you end up with chocolate biscuits and no rice.

See here for more discussion on the tests of interviews.

Second; Don’t just focus on the interview

This is a common error, specifically for the hiring manager.  Often their involvement in the process is limited to the interview, with the testing, the references, the skills assessment all being facilitated by HR.  The risk is that other tests are only seen as binary questions of compliance- e.g. was the reference okay? good.  Humans will attend to data they are more familiar with, but this runs the risk of missing key information.

Read here for a more in-depth discussion on the limitations of interviews.

Finally: what’s the estimation they perform the job fine in 6 months?

So here’s the core question.  Will they be able to do the job fine in 6 months?  Set aside: can they do it quickly, will they struggle to adjust, can they do it tomorrow;  What’s our estimation that they will be up and running in six months?

An error is to try and envision them being able to do it now. Tomorrow.  This is especially important when considering internal candidates, because we already have an perception in our head of what they do, how they fit, which can be hard to shake.  If you apply the criteria of ready now (to both internal and external candidates) you rule out most people with the potential.  We discuss elsewhere the important of leaving space for candidates to grow, but its important to recognize that an employee who can do the job tomorrow will be bored, and gone, in 12 months.

What if you have only one real option?

Choice is nice, but it’s not the end of the world if you only have one viable candidate.  At the end of the day, you only have one job.  It’s actually very rare to be genuinely choosing between two candidates, because practically most of the time there is one stand-out option, or only one option who could conceivably do the job.  As discussed above, there is risk of cognitive bias here- for instance, an anchoring bias could be in play- where one candidate could be substantially better than the others- but this doesn’t mean they will necessarily be good enough for the job.

Not your employee, so not your choice

Don’t forget (for HR people) at the end of the day, you don’t have to live with the higher manager does.  It can be frustrating if the hiring manager rejects candidates you think could do it, or in your eyes overvalues certain qualities, qualifications or experience.  The manager is the person who has to live with the new employee, or the vacancy, so they need to make the final decision so they are live the with the consequences of it.

Read here for the perils of taking on the maybes.

 Other articles:

Podcast episodes:

Courses:

If you have 10 seconds, please complete this survey. It helps us know what people want to know.