Are You Aware of Your Hiring Biases

Are You Aware of Yur Hiring BiasesAre You Aware of Your Hiring BiasesGender, race and beauty hiring biases have been well-documented, but theyre bedrngnis the only biases that come into play when hiring. A hiring managers cognitive biases matter, too.Cognitive biases are predictable patterns of thought that people unconsciously fall back on to navigate complicated decisions by making answers seem simple and intuitive even though they arent. In the worst of situations, says You Are Not So Smart author David McRaney, They cause us to mistake our shortcuts for logic. The result is an undeserved overconfidence that we arrived at our assumptions through logic and reason.Hiring decisions are complicated, yet how many hiring managers stop and think about the many seemingly innocent ways theyre biased? (You may pat yourself on the back if you have.)Over 100 cognitive biases exist. Here are a few that hiring managers should keep in mindAnchoring Relying too heavily on one piece of information when making a decision.Example You interview someone who was unemployed for a long period of time, and you let this fact weigh more heavily than the applicants otherwise solid qualifications.Bandwagon Effect Believing something because many other people do.Example You think a candidate is right for the job, but others disagree with you. Someone under the sway of the Bandwagon Effect might be convinced that the candidate is not right because the groups opinion holds higher value than their own judgment.Confirmation Bias The granddaddy of all cognitive biases. Its the tendency to prove that ones own assumptions about the world are correct by looking for confirmation of preconceived notions instead of testing those assumptions.Example When you interview graduates from a top university, you might look for evidence theyre good workers rather than testing that assumption.Decoy Effect When a preference for vorkaufsrecht A or B changes in favor to option B when option C is presented. Optio n C is similar to option B, but its not better.Example Youre struggling to choose between two good candidates, and then you interview a third candidate. Suddenly youre infatuated with one of your first two candidates even though the original candidates value has not changed.Illusory Correlation Inaccurately perceiving a relationship between two unrelated events.Example Lowering your opinion about a job candidate who worked at two companies that failed through no fault of the applicant.Social Comparison Bias The tendency when making hiring decisions to favor candidates who dont compete with ones own strengths.Example The head of a sales team who likes to think hes the funniest guy in the room favors the candidate who will not steal the spotlight.A close relative of the cognitive bias is the logical fallacy. You may have studied logical fallacies in a psychology class in college. Theyre worth brushing up on. Cognitive fallacies- like cognitive biases- reveal a lack of sound thinking.B ecause cognitive biases occur unconsciously, theyre difficult to eliminate. Being aware of them is not enough to tamp them down, according to bias researchers Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman. Jim Benson, the author of Why Plans Fail Cognitive Bias, Decision Making, and Your Business, encourages hiring managers to step back and think about their cognitive biases within the context of the system in which they occur.HR and our current hiring practices are built almost entirely on cognitive bias, Benson said. Reducing it involves major upheavals in the profession.You cant deal with cognitive bias without dealing with the systems in which those cognitive biases occur.Bensons advice to hiring managers1. Understand why you are hiring peopleJob descriptions are inherently biased. There is a drive to be overly precise in the job description because ambiguity is cognitively distressing. The fact is, the more precise you are the more limited your candidate pool will be.2. Understand that you are hiring peopleIndividuals are worth more than resumes. Many of the architects of the tech boom would not be hired by their own companies today because they did not go to college, did poorly in high school and would have arrived with zero references.3. Understand that any decision you make is greatly impacted by cognitive biasSo hire with more than one person and dont use a checklist.4. Understand that your checklist reduces options for your companyAsk, Why is this person right for the job? instead of focusing on why that applicant should be eliminated.5. Look for ways to be surprised or enlightened by candidatesExpect no one to be right for the job expect them to be perfectly not-right for the job.6. Understand that your company is a systemYou are plugging people into that system. Are you honest about how your company treats people? How does the company motivate people to innovate, improve and create? Will this person with the perfect resume actually survive in this culture? Will this person make the culture better?Cognitive biases are extremely difficult to eliminate, but with forethought and the proper systems in place, they can be mitigated, and thats a laudable goal.Read Related ArticlesBalancing Act Ethical Interviewing That WorksThree Simple Ways to Attract the Right CandidateAnd Deter All Others