When hiring we can too easily fall victim to the Trap of First Impressions.
There's data that says we form first impressions of people we meet in less than three seconds. If we are going to take on a potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars investment in hiring onboarding and hopefully keeping a new team member basing most of our decision something that happens in three seconds or less is probably not the most effective way to determine if someone is a good fit!
As we go through the hiring process it's beneficial to have a second set of eyes and ears either in an interview with us or to debrief with to check if we are falling victim to one of many biases that are wired into all of us. For example, if we are falling victim of confirmation bias, we may over emphasize negative or positive traits in a particular candidate which could ultimately mean we disqualify a good fit candidate or onboard someone who's a bad fit.
One of the key parts of evaluating our first impressions of candidate, that we recommend to our clients is to use some kind of independent scientifically validated assessment or survey very early on in the process because that will give us data that we can use to also check our first impressions.
When we wait to do an assessment later in the hiring process, we tend to discount the results of the surveys because we've already formed an impression of a candidate.
For example, when I asked a leader who was arguing with me over a candidate’s survey results about their interactions with this candidate, they shared with me that they had already interviewed the candidate on a couple of occasions and just wanted to “check their impression,” which was code for they wanted confirmation that their first impression was correct.
Our first impressions are important, and they should not be the ultimate deciding factor in our decision to hire.
Until next time… go lead.
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