Mastering the Hire

12 Strategies to Improve Your Odds of Finding the Best Hire

Chaka Booker

• Publisher: HarperCollins Leadership
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781400216413
• Topic: Negocios y empresa
• Subtopic: Gestión de recursos humanos

Research shows you have a 50% chance of hiring the right employee… and a 50% chance of hiring the wrong one. It's a?toss up, but it doesn't have to be.

After years of scientific research and first-hand interview experience with thousands of candidates, author Chaka Booker has created a system that helps employers consistently make great hires.

Mastering the Hire provides 12 proven strategies that have been used to accurately identify the right talent 90% of the time. Whether hiring manager, business owner, CEO, search consultant, team manager, team member, novice or expert interviewer, Chaka's method is for anyone who wants to beat the hiring odds.

?In this book, you will learn:

• How to manage?your intuition: when to trust it and when to put it aside.
• Question design principles: structuring questions so candidates are influenced to tell the truth
• The power of pressure: when to apply or release pressure and how to control the hidden internal pressure that leads to poor decisions.
• To identify key competencies: the four competencies you must always interview for and techniques to accurately assess them.
• Tools for removing?bias: tomorrow's talent doesn't fit yesterday's mold and is often overlooked.
• Understanding and removing bias will give you a competitive advantage.

To?reimagine the hiring process: resume reviews, phone interviews, and in-person interviews will get a much-needed revamp with innovative twists on each.

The interview is the cornerstone of the hiring process, yet science has shown the odds aren't in your favor. Mastering the Hire gives you strategies that will dramatically improve the one decision that determines everything you can accomplish--who you hire.

PART 1

REDUCING INTERFERENCE

An interview is an interactive process. That seems obvious and innocuous. Except when you consider that an interaction is defined as a “reciprocal action or influence,” and within that reciprocity there is a lot of noise. Most people are unaware of the psychological, emotional, and physical factors that take control of them as soon as they interact with another person.

The moment you step into the interview room, human nature kicks in and you and the candidate instinctually begin reading each other. Signals, social cues, and assumptions fill the space between the two of you, influencing your behaviors and your decision-making processes. Some of the signals are interpreted inaccurately or have nothing to do with assessing the candidate—they are interference. Your job is to understand and minimize the noise that interferes with an accurate read of the candidate’s talent.

STRATEGY 1

INTUITION, KNOW THY PLACE

A common phenomenon in candidate selection is a stubborn reliance by interviewers on their intuition.¹ We would all like to believe our instincts are razor sharp and our gut reactions are in tune with reality. Interestingly, science may actually support this belief.

Research published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology found that first impressions tend to be incredibly accurate.² In the study, undergraduates were shown muted thirty-second videos of instructors they hadn’t met, teaching a class. The undergraduate’s assessment of these instructors was found to be highly correlated (.76) with the assessments made by a separate group of students who had taken a sixteen-week class with the instructors in person.

The phenomenon was dubbed “thin-slicing.” The idea that small windows of exposure allow for accurate assessments has been replicated in multiple studies with different demographics and controls. The discoveries in this area were the foundation for Malcolm Gladwell’s best-selling book Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking.

From an interviewing standpoint, this should be revolutionary. Everyone who has ever interviewed anyone has had an immediate first impression, usually within the first few minutes. Perhaps the gap between perception and reality is smaller than we thought. Perhaps we are spending far too much time with candidates.

If only it were that easy.

There is good reason to be extremely cautious about first impressions. All the studies indicate that first impressions are subject to stereotyping and prejudice. These preconceptions, commonly associated with race, gender, and other forms of identity, lead to a lack of diverse perspectives and experiences in organizations. The impact of first impressions is problematic beyond even the traditional definitions of identity. Stereotyping and prejudice describe any belief you cast upon an entire group. I’ve co-interviewed with people who have beliefs about how a resume should look. Anything other than Times New Roman or Arial font is too creative for their tastes. Before the candidate has even entered the room, a first impression—informed by the interviewer’s belief—exists.

First impressions impact decision-making. They are often instinctual and based on what matters to that specific interviewer. But what if the interviewer’s interpretation is not what matters most to the organization or the role being hired for? If they are not aligned, the first impression can lead to the wrong hiring decision.

The goal is not to develop absolute objectivity during interviewing. That can be just as troublesome because psychological, emotional, and physical reactions exist for a reason. Sometimes first impressions are accurate. It’s not that intuition doesn’t have a place, but that you must know its place. To increase the odds of making a strong decision, you need to manage subjectivity, so you can determine the relevance of a first impression.

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It’s not that intuition doesn’t have a place, but that you must know its place.

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PRACTICE: PARK YOUR FIRST IMPRESSIONS

The problem to resolve is not whether first impressions exist. Nor is the question whether they have an effect on our decisions during interviews. Research indicates the answer to both questions is yes. A trio of researchers, each from a different university, worked together to address this question by conducting a study on decision-making during job interviews.³ The study was designed to learn how quickly interviewers make decisions about job applicants. Twenty-five point five percent made their decision within the first five minutes. Sixty percent made their decision within the first fifteen minutes.

It is impossible not to have a first impression, even if that impression is neutral. Eliminating first impressions would go against human nature, so don’t try. Instead, go in the other direction. Acknowledge that first impressions exist and then use a practice that allows you to determine if the early impressions are accurate and relevant. That practice is called “parking your first impression.” You park your first impression by documenting it the moment it happens. That practice moves it from the brain, where it quietly impacts decisions, and places it in the open where it can be examined.

Personal Protocol

Parking your first impression allows you to capture it and make it a data point to be discussed later. To get a feel for it, begin by using the practice independently as you interview. It is simple and takes five seconds of preparation. Before you are about to interview someone, draw the following on the bottom of their resume or the document on which you will take notes.

Yes

I don’t know

No

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Once the interview begins, within the first few moments, make a mark on the line indicating what your first impression is:

• Yes, they are a strong candidate.

• I don’t know if they are a strong candidate.

• No, they are not a strong candidate.

This protocol acknowledges your first impression and allows you to actively “check it off” as an assessment. This imposed discipline helps you separate your first impression from the remainder of the interview when you may not have the self-discipline to take this step yourself.

Now that you have logged your first impression, your job is to ignore it. This part of the process is critical; otherwise, you will seek evidence during the interview to justify your first impression. In psychology, this is called confirmation bias. To avoid it, remind yourself that your first impression is a single data point to be considered after the interview along with other evidence.^* Physically logging your first impression is a reminder that it exists and that it will taint the evidence you are collecting unless you put it aside.

This practice will have an interesting effect on you. First, you will begin to realize how often you do have an opinion before you’ve gathered enough answers to have one. Second, the documentation allows you to realize that sometimes your first impression aligns with how well the candidate interviewed and sometimes it doesn’t. Those moments when it doesn’t are the most important part of this practice. Those are the candidates with underestimated talent who had the odds against them from the start. By putting aside your first impression, you even the odds and open the door to finding unrecognized talent.

Over time, you will find yourself increasingly marking “I don’t know” at the start of the interview. Because if you did know, why would you waste time interviewing them? Through consistent use of this protocol, you will begin to more quickly notice your first impressions and will develop the habit of controlling them in the moment.

This is the shift you want. It allows you to cut through interference and focus on who the candidate is, not who you think they are.

Team Protocol

Once you’ve implemented this practice on your own, turn it into a protocol that all your interviewers can use. Include the following template as the first page in the question packet that your interviewers use for the interview.

Before beginning the interview, mark your answer to the following question. On which side of the mid-line does your first impression of the candidate fall?

Now that you have logged your first impression, your job is to ignore it.

Your first impression is a single data point—don’t allow it to impact the rest of the interview.

During the remainder of the interview, resist temptation to justify your first impression.

Only assess the candidate on the questions you ask them.

The final result may or may not align with your first impression.

There are two things to note about this template. First, the diagram only asks on which side of the mid-line the first impression falls. Second, the last line of instruction explains that the first impression may or may not align with the final result. Both instructions must be included to prevent the self-fulfilling prophecy that confirmation bias leads to. You want to avoid forcing a commitment to one end of the spectrum or the other. Anyone interviewing must remain open to the possibility that their first impression may be different than what happens during the interview.

It is critical to make this second point clear to anyone interviewing. Talk through these instructions line by line with your interviewers and ensure that everyone understands the underlying concept and potential risk if not done well.

During the post-interview discussion, the facilitator should acknowledge the first impressions interviewers may have had. For example:

Lead Interviewer: I want to take a moment to acknowledge that you’ve parked your first impression. As we discuss the content of the interview, feel free to reference your first impression in one of two ways. First, if you think your first impression was relevant to the job being hired for. Or, if you feel your first impression may have influenced you one way or another. By raising it, we can discuss it as a group . . .

This creates a space to discuss the first impressions and treat them as data points. Once they are in the open, the group can determine their relevance. Now that you know how to capture first impressions, let’s learn what to do with them.

PRACTICE: KNOWING WHEN TO TRUST FIRST IMPRESSIONS

It is important to reme...