Article review: Four Cognitive Biases That Hijack Your Hiring Decisions and How To Fix Them
Booker makes great points about how the human mind typically works. We just can't help it. We begin forming opinions of people as soon as we lay eyes on their resumes. Then when the interview begins, the initial trajectory of the discussion is laid largely by our pre-interview resume analysis, our visual impressions upon meeting the candidate in person or virtually, and then the first answer to the first question. After that, it's difficult for subsequent questions and responses to nudge us very far off of that primary path. Instead we often fall into the confirmation bias trap and simply look for information that corroborates our initial impression.
But, we can combat that effect to some extent by recognizing it and consciously trying to reset our opinions. It's not that our assessment is irrelevant, it's that we need to treat each step of the process and each question as a totally independent event and leave the collective analysis until the end of interview. There is no benefit to jumping the shark. Instead, we should be keen, unbiased, observational note-takers during the interview as much as possible. When we have successfully compiled a series of independent data points by the end of the process and weigh each one fairly, we will be able to make better decisions about how a candidate may or may not fit within our organization.
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