Are you in a mini-me hiring cycle?
Humans are tribal animals. We’ve evolved over many millennia to find safe, secure and trusting environments where we can live happily and comfortably, and where we can feel safe to grow, to try new things, to build a life.
This has served us well of course. But it has also led to extreme bias – both sub-conscious and conscious – in almost every action we take every day.
Our nature believes that people who are more like us are the ‘right’ kind of people. And there are a myriad of other biases that kick in to help short cut our decision making to keep us safe.
It the people space, and especially in recruitment, this desire for safety and connection obviously plays a huge role.
We’ve said it many times, but the interview process is maybe one of the most extreme examples of bias-laden interaction that exists.
Think about the motivations of both parties, how high the stakes are, money is involved, fear, rejection, relief, you name it.
But so often we hear businesses saying they trust the ‘instinct’ of hiring teams. They take candidates out for lunch, get them to meet the team, make sure there is a good cultural fit, and you’ll be right.
And then later in the conversation we hear how a bad hire, not using independent personality data, cost $100,000 to the business. True story.
The TALY approach to personality profiling, built on science, can help reduce the impact of bias and bad decisions in the hiring process. Get in touch to find out how we’ve helped other Australian businesses make each recruitment decision better than the last.
The cult of mini-mes
In hiring, one of the consequences of not managing bias can be teams of mini-mes – groups of similar, like-minded people who bring a similar personality and perspective. We’ve previously talked about the importance of building diverse teams here.
Think about the situation from the interviewers perspective. We’ve all run interviews with people who are super different to us, and it’s been tricky. The conversation has been formal, or stilted, or non-existent. It’s hard to find common ground. You don’t ‘gel‘.
And so we love the time when we have a great interview that flows nicely, we have an awesome conversation, we bounce off each other, it really feels like we’re on the same page.
A notable study in this context is “The Impact of Applicant Personality on Hiring Decisions” by Barrick, Mount, and Strauss (1993), which explores how interviewers tend to favour candidates who possess personality traits similar to their own.
It’s called the similarity-attraction paradigm or theory
Check out these two teams. One is deliberately building in techniques during recruitment to hire for diversity, the other isn’t.
How to avoid hiring mini-mes
First, start with making a deliberate decision on your approach to building diverse teams. You may want to be building teams that are similar and like-minded, or you might want to be building diversity and cognitive differences. Read more about this here.
To then be able to make the right decision and to remove bias, you need to bring independent data into the decision making process…
Make sure candidates are interviewed by a range of people in the team – and these people should bring different perspectives and mindsets.
Consider using independent/anonymous rating systems as part of the recruitment process. Evaluate case studies or responses without the social overlay to help you actually review the person based on their output, not just how well you get along with them
Bring independent data into the mix (like from amazingly accurate personality profiling like the TALY approach).
But overall, just challenge yourself to sit back and think through whether the candidate is right for the role, or just a good fit for you.
The TALY approach to personality profiling brings together a unique mix of Five Factor and Emotional Intelligence profiling to help organisations, hiring managers and teams to make better decisions about recruitment and teams.
Get in touch to find out more… we love talking about this stuff!