Editor’s note: This article was first published in December 2013. Warren Buffett is described as currently being 83, which was true in December 2013.
As in any profession, most professionals should take stock of how the decisions they have made have turned out over time. Recruiters are no exception, and they should analyse their hiring system. Of course, in this field it is very hard to talk about returns and percentages, above all because you may have been right to hire someone who does the job well, yet let others slip away who would have done it much better.
In Human Resources, as in many other professions, once we make a decision we will never know what would have happened if we had decided differently. Even so, we can try to avoid falling into some errors or cognitive biases.
1. Overvaluing the initial data and jumping to a conclusion before finding out more about the person.
We cannot judge a candidate on first impressions.
Although we usually tell candidates to work hard at making a good impression, quoting the saying “You never get a second chance to make a first impression”, we, as hiring professionals, must give the first impression no more than its due weight. Most of the time we rely on intuition, and while intuition is a good thing to have, it also fails.
2. Choosing the least bad.
In some selection processes, the company does not hire the ideal person for the job but the best candidate who turned up. In other words, in the land of the blind, we may end up settling for the one-eyed man. If that is not what we are looking for, we don’t hire, and we start the process again.
See also: 15 habits and choices for success in business and your career
3. Fixating on the CV.
You need to be very clear that a CV is just a calling card. An old businessman used to say that making any kind of decision based on a CV is like measuring a person’s worth by the colour of their shirt. (Read: The perfect CV for the new times)
Having an MBA from such-and-such Business School sounds very good, but it does not tell you that the person is ready for what your company needs. Richard Branson used to say don’t hire a CV, hire personality. Always start by measuring people not by what they have, but by what they would be capable of doing with what they have. There are many skills a candidate can have that your company needs.
4. Using fashionable hiring methods.
Many innovative hiring methods that used brainteaser questions have turned out to be useless. Google itself admitted that its interview model was a waste of time. In the end, to choose good candidates you have to forget about mind games and “innovative” processes, because they can let through someone who is neither the most suitable nor the smartest, just the craftiest.
5. Using the Murphy method or similar.
Personally, I consider the Murphy method and its mind games a real waste of time, but recruiters at some large Spanish companies are already starting to use them. Always remember that an interview should be neither a game nor an interrogation. It should be as natural a conversation as possible.
6. Straight lines.
Sometimes you have to step outside the usual to find the exceptional. I always give the example of Warren Buffett, who for more than 20 years has had a profile that any company would reject out of hand, since he is now 83. Yet I am sure that any company would want him running it. We should not put barriers or bureaucratic limits on talent and skills.
7. The need to close quickly.
Be careful about making decisions driven by the need to fill a vacancy fast, because pressure to make any kind of decision is rarely a good adviser.
Some recruiters wonder how much time and how many interviews it should normally take to hire a candidate. There is no set amount of time. Sometimes 30 minutes are enough to see what we were looking for, and other times we will need to spend as long as it takes to analyse everything we need before deciding. In any case, we should make the decision when we feel ready to make it.
Remember the advice of Jim Rohn: don’t use minor information to make major decisions.
We tend to make that mistake in business and in recruitment alike, as well as when picking stocks.
Further reading
Featured image: Rondal Partridge, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
