CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Cangrade’s CEO, Michael Burtov, recently completed a review of job interviewing techniques and identified 5 common and often unconscious mistakes that interviewers make, providing simple techniques for avoiding these pitfalls and choosing the right people.
“How would you choose a quiz show partner?” asked Steve Lehr, Cangrade’s Chief Science officer. “A recent study from Eugene Caruso and colleagues in my lab at Harvard posed this exact question. Overwhelmingly, people say that they’d choose their partner based on intelligence, experience, or other relevant criteria. But when forced to actually repeatedly choose between hypothetical partners, people do something quite different. It turns out that participants were willing to trade off 11 IQ points in order to have a thinner partner on a quiz show,” continued Lehr.
“We are often not nearly as rational as we might think. For example, Alex Todorov, a psychologist at Princeton University, studied the past two congressional elections. Researchers in his lab had people independently rate how “competent” each candidate’s face looked – they had no knowledge of the candidate’s actual abilities, experiences, or positions,” said Burtov, Cangrade’s CEO. “These ratings predicted nearly 70% of election results. This is very significant, and shows that we strongly tend to vote for people that LOOK competent – without consideration of whether they actually are competent. And these issues can be magnified when we interview candidates for positions,” added Burtov.
Avoiding these 5 common issues can help us avoid unconsciously making inaccurate judgments.
1. Screening out candidates based on unobjective criteria – Rather than “screening-out” candidates based on our first gut feelings, or unpredictive criteria such as GPA, the address on the resume, or the sound of a name the interviewer should make sure that the job evaluation process is as structured, job-specific and objective as possible. This may allow you to hire great people that might not have even been considered otherwise.
2. Checking Social Media – Social media profiles often contain pictures of your candidates, as well as a plethora of information that is irrelevant to the job. Research like that discussed above has repeatedly shown that images and other irrelevant information can unconsciously undermine our rational decision-making.
3. Too Much Chatting – During the interview it is common for the interviewer to slip into monologues about the opportunity, the company, the culture and other job-attributes. While this can be an important part of “getting acquainted,” it’s important to give the candidate ample opportunities to talk. The more job-relevant information you have about your candidate the more likely you are to base your decision on objective criteria, rather than on incomplete (and possibly biased) impressions. A good rule while interviewing is 80% listening and 20% talking.
4. Asking ad-lib questions – During the structured section of the interview people often go off-script and wonder off into something that more closely resembles a friendly discussion. During at least part of the interview one should only ask the questions that are prepared as well as scripted follow-up questions. The more meaningful and standardized the information collected from candidates, the less room there is to inadvertently make decisions based on factors that matter less.
5. Being Swayed by Personal Preferences – As humans we tend to like people that share our personal preferences and interests, such as music, sports, TV Shows, lifestyle choices, and other behaviors that aren’t relevant to the job. While interviewing we should all keep in mind that liking the same TV shows is not related to on-the-job performance. Don’t let “being like me” unconsciously sway your judgment.
For more detailed information visit: http://blog.cangrade.com/2013/10/09/5-unconscious-mistakes-interviewers-make/
About Cangrade
Cangrade’s team of psychologists analyzed the personality, skills, motivation and performance of over 200,000 employees from over 500 companies and developed a breakthrough platform to organize, track and evaluate your candidates, collaborate with co-workers, set-up intelligent hiring criteria and use it all on your computer, smartphone or tablet.
We are also proud to power industry leading sales training tools that assess, benchmark, coach, engage, and train sales reps. for some of the most successful organizations in the word.
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