Greg Moran, Founder & CEO, Chequed
With the advancements made in human resource technology and behavioral science in recent years, more companies are relying on technology resources to support their hiring decisions, and dramatically dismissing instinct. Although once a significant part of recruitment, the subjectivity of personal “gut feelings” have caused many to try casting them aside completely. Yet, in reality, this is both over simplistic and weak advice. In short, our gut reactions matter and can help us make better hiring decisions.
Our instincts are a powerful resource; a sort of cumulative guidebook created not only from our individual experiences, but from the sum experiences of our species. Gerd Gigerenzer, director of the Max Planck Institute for Human Development, provides a more thorough explanation in his book, “Gut Feelings: The Intelligence of the Unconscious,” writing: “…gut feelings are based on certain rules of thumb that take advantage of capacities of the brain that have come down to us through time, experience, and evolution.”
These inherent inclinations can be particularly useful when reading a social situation and – as we are all well aware – recruitment is, in every sense, a social situation. Our intuition helps us understand if a candidate will be able to mesh with the existing workforce and organizational culture, or if they will have trouble performing because they are unable to fit in. By ignoring our gut instincts in this realm of personal connection, we only increase the likelihood of the latter.
Taking this into account, it is still imperative to acknowledge the limitations of intuitive thinking. Gigerenzer also notes that the problem with gut feelings is that people often ignore other necessary information when they heed instinct cues. As a prime example we turn to what leadership and organizational development expert, Stephen Balzac dubs “The Hydrangea Conundrum.” The social philosophy was developed in 2010 after The New York Times reported the comments of a woman whose neighbors had been arrested for being Russian spies: “They couldn’t have been spies. Look what she did with the Hydrangeas!”
Certainly a couple that kept such a lovely garden could not be engaged in international criminal affairs. Or could they? “The fact is,” says Balzac, “planting hydrangeas is as much an indication of whether or not someone is a spy as being charming in an interview is an indication that a person is a good hire.”
While gut feelings are important to helping us determine if a candidate is a good match, we mustn’t view candidates through too subjective a lens or inappropriately anticipate high performance based on arbitrary characteristics. A recent study by the University of Nebraska at Lincoln found that narcissists interview with greater success than do non-narcissists. They’re charismatic, natural self-promoters with a knack for blind-siding our social read. Yet recruiters who fall prey to such airs may be inadvertently passing up a top performer who is socially awkward for a poor performer who simply knows how to turn on the charm.
So how, then, do we leverage the benefits of our evolution without becoming too vulnerable to human error? The key is to create a structured recruitment process in which gut instincts are balanced by scientific data. While intuition is valuable in that it provides an assessment that is otherwise difficult to delineate, behavioral science allows us to apply consistent, objective and predictive metrics to all candidates.
Science can only provide information; it cannot make us actually believe it, or make decisions for us. With that, it is critical that hiring managers regard their intuition as a facet of assessment that must be checked and challenged by behavioral data.
For example, using science-based, predictive, online reference checking to gain deeper insight to candidates allows us to compare our subjective impressions from interviews against validated data about candidate performance in previous jobs. By creating a harmonious balance between these two essential recruitment tools, recruiters can not only improve efficiency, but also quality of hire.
Science-based recruiting solutions, including personality assessment software and automated reference checking, not only speed up the recruitment process, but also help identify only the best drivers of business in the initial candidate pool. As a result, recruiters’ subjective gut instincts come into play for only the top candidates, not only reducing the risk of having gut instinct lead them drastically astray but also enabling them to focus their intuition where it is most useful – assessing cultural and social fit.
An effective, automated and objective upfront screening process ensures our instincts are applied to pre-qualified and high potential talent. Hiring managers will benefit most from using their gut with those candidates that meet the initial screening criteria and have a successful first round of structured interviewing. Gut feelings about which candidates to bring in for further interviewing – and finally to hire – are an important part of the hiring process, when qualified by science, and help hone the hiring process to continuously improve the quality of new hires.