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Avoid Unstructured Interviews to Make the Right Hiring Decision

October 21, 2020 by Karen Kennedy Leave a Comment

Hire Beyond the Interview

Have you regretted hiring an employee that appeared promising during the job interview?

If you have, then you’re in good company. Many of us in charge of hiring make decisions based on a positive interview, but we may regret it three months down the line.

There’s a lot of ground to cover on the topic of unstructured interviewing, so let’s get started.  

Acknowledge Their Point of View

We need to acknowledge that the person in front of us is modifying their behavior to be what they think we want them to be.

This behavior is very similar to how someone acts when dating someone new. The person is “putting their best foot forward” based on their interpretation of the job, their impression of who you are, and what you want. The person is not doing this maliciously. They simply want the job.

Overcome Your Biases

You need to overcome all the biases that we all bring to the recruiting process. There are over 300 biases, but the top 13 to watch during an interview are the following:

  • Confirmation bias
  • Affect heuristics
  • Expectation anchor
  • Halo effect
  • Horn effect
  • Overconfidence bias
  • Similarity attraction bias
  • Illusory correlation
  • Affinity bias
  • Beauty bias
  • Conformity bias
  • Intuition
  • Judgement bias

Structure Your Interviews

Our gut is our own worst enemy, and there are many research studies to back this. One such study, shows that our intuition is wrong more than 55% of the time. (Should You Trust Your Gut in Hiring? Arlene Hirsch, SHRM May 1, 2018)

The way to correct this is through structured interviews, which we’ll discuss in a future post. (Skill in Interviewing Reduces Confirmation Bias. Powell, Hughes-Scholes, & Sharman, 2012)

For now, can you think of why you thought your worst hire seemed to be the best hire during the interview process?  

As always, feel free to contact me for help in streaming your hiring process or comment down below.

Filed Under: Research & Resources Tagged With: hiring, Hiring Bias, interview process

Do you have a hiring bias for industry knowledge?

September 29, 2020 by Insights to Growth Leave a Comment

If so, then is your hiring bias founded on facts or can you teach industry knowledge in a short amount of time?

The Challenge

I challenge my clients to look at this, because when you limit yourself to candidates with “X” amount of experience in your industry, you really shrink the available pool of candidates.

I understand that there are truly places where you must know the industry because of regulations, compliance, certifications, or laws, but there are many cases where you might be able to find great candidates and train them. A great resource to understand this bias and many more can be found in Howard Ross’ book Everyday Bias.

The Advantages

Think of the advantages of being able to train a person “fresh” and being able to put your organization’s spin on the industry, so the person starts with a clean slate and without baggage from prior organizations.

We know from Peter Drucker that “Culture eats strategy for breakfast” so really, what you want to do is hire for talent, skills, and interest. If the industry knowledge can be taught, then you should focus on culture fit though talent. One of my favorite books is Bet on Talent: How to Create a Remarkable Culture That Wins the Hearts of Customers by Dee Ann Turner.

My Insights

In the past, I was asked to lead a sales team that was in the green industry. The company had historically hired people who had experience in horticulture, agriculture, or viniculture for sales roles. They were convinced that the person must have green industry experience, but the turn-over for the sales role was 40-50% annually.

Why? Well, people who like plants and grapes generally are not people lovers, they are plant lovers. So instead, we determined what skills and talent were for these roles. Once we made a change, we had top sales performers who came from teaching, hospitality, retail, property management and more. This shift was caused by hiring for talent and training for industry.

I believe that we need to seriously take a look at the advantage of attracting talent with transferable skills from outside our industries and rid ourselves from any hiring bias we may have. We can increase our candidate pool and the chance of finding the BEST talent for the role.

Have you had any success with going outside of your industry? Share your story in the comments below or get in touch with me for further support.

Filed Under: Company Culture, Research & Resources, Talent Trends Tagged With: Hiring Bias, industry knowledge

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