Which company, which headhunting office, which recruiter will be able to say that they do not want to hire the best people… or should we say « the best, if possible? It seems to make sense, and yet….

First of all, what does that mean? Among the possible translations, here are 3 proposals:

a) The best candidates for the position AND those who also possess additional qualities, skills, abilities that we believe are essential and that it would be a pity or even harmful to deprive ourselves of

b) The best candidates for the position, i.e. those who best meet all the criteria sought

(c) The best candidates from the selection of people at our disposal, with whom we must agree to be satisfied (or not), even if they do not meet all the recruitment criteria’s, at the risk of failure, knowing that the alternative would be to prolong the research and thus increase costs.

On the other hand, no one involved in a recruitment process will be able to certify that they have never made any mistakes, either when hiring a candidate or when rejecting a candidate. It is generally accepted that it is the experience with this new recruit that will help show or even demonstrate how effective his commitment has been, how realistic or exaggerated this employee has been during the interviews, how talented, farsighted and effective the headhunter, the recruiter or the member in this HR chain has been.

It takes talent to interview a candidate, to identify his motivations, his potential, his aspirations, his points of attention, the match with the function and the company.

It is so important to take into account intercultural and personal elements (colour, religion, ethnicity, gender, generation, disablements, etc.), without creating an inappropriate, even unhealthy or harmful climate, without putting oneself in the position of illegality (and its multiple consequences) or without feeling obliged to accept more, under the pretext of respecting these elements.

It is essential to take into account the communication styles of the interlocutors, the needs, motivations, wishes and « fantasies » of the company we represent, to overcome our personal barriers, values and beliefs and to avoid falling into all our mind traps: judgment, reasoning, reflection and memory biases.

This requires a solid knowledge of oneself, the ability to step back, to keep one’s distance from one’s ego and to clear one’s mind of these too many obstacles in everyday’s life.

As far as biases are concerned, we could imagine getting around this difficulty. Would it be enough to know them and avoid them? Unfortunately, it is a chimera, because these mechanisms are unconscious. They act without our knowledge and their consequences are often exposed when it is already too late to react.

What should we do now? Three elements:

• Understand and know the most common ones, in this specific context
• Put a solid process in place to avoid the pitfalls of these shortcuts, exactly as in any decision-making process
• Rely on the power of the team because we often notice biases in others, not in ourselves

Let us review some of the mind traps that affect the quality of our recruitment work.

1) The confirmation bias

Imagine: you have read a resume and formed a first opinion. Right now, nothing extraordinary, it’s human and perfectly normal. You know that during the interview, you will have to check the person’s ability to manage a team. You haven’t found much convincing elements about it, and as it is part of the job requirements, it needs to be investigated further. It is important to avoid thinking that this person may not have the required skills in this area because at the slightest hesitation on his part, during the interview, at the slightest mistake, as soon as he tells you something that you think is wrong, you could not help but say to yourself: « This confirmed my reading of the resume ».

2) The Halo effect

Not to be confused with a « homonymous » effect of a « French celebrity », it is an extension of the first impression of sympathy or antipathy. It can already take place when reading a resume, it can arise from an untimely sharing with another person in the recruitment process (even if this should not happen), or at the time of the handshake and the first hello.

During an exam in the second year of my engineering studies, a professor came out of his exam room and asked us, in a tone of amazement, who was the weirdo who had entered and was being questioned. The answer came immediately: he was a classmate.

The disappointment was visible on his face because this student, with very long and not very clean hair, shaggy beard, stained shirt, shorts and open sandals on toes with black nails, showed up for the exam and automatically gave the teacher the feeling that he was an uninteresting and disrespectful tourist, who would know nothing. And yet, he gave him 20 out of 20, explaining that he was smarter than him, professor.

3) The groupthink

At the end of a recruitment process, you meet around a table with your colleagues and examine the advantages and disadvantages of hiring the remaining 2 candidates on the shortlist. Which one will you choose?

You have taken notes and completed a form. Now you’re going to share your observations. When a team operates in this way, it makes it sometimes more difficult to access alternative opinions. Any contradictory data could then be rejected. The difficulty is even bigger when some individuals have less self-confidence, doubt and hesitate about the behaviours to adopt or the decisions to make.

It is easy to deduce the danger of a less or unwise choice to satisfy the group’s momentary needs, not the purpose of the meeting.

4) Recency and primacy biases

The job of recruiter often requires long hours spent meeting candidates as they march past one after the other. Everyone deserves optimal attention, full availability, genuine interest. Yet, we are only human beings with our weaknesses.

In addition to fatigue, in addition to the individual biorhythm (the one that highlights the superior severity of a judgment before lunch, for example) there is also another phenomenon, related to our memory. Many studies have long shown that we are better at retaining the first and last elements of a list.

By extension, we may come to understand that the first and last candidates we meet leave a deeper imprint on our memories.

5) Principle of liking and similarity

Why are we more accommodating with a nice little girl ringing at our door to sell us support cards for her school and not by an adult who would try to do the same thing? Principle of sympathy.

Why do we feel more comfortable with a person who shares certain characteristics with us (place of birth, city of origin, sport played, fan of the same artist, singer, actor, food…)? Principle of sympathy and similarity.

This principle goes even further because persons we find physically attractive may unconsciously influence our behaviour towards them.

6) The contrast effect

You are in a store contemplating the pair of sunglasses of your dreams. It costs 125€. Just before you pay, you remember having seen the same pair in another store located 30 minutes walk from where you are, displayed at a price of 100€. Will you decide to take this « walk » to spend 25€ less?

You are in a store contemplating the watch of your dreams. It costs 2500€. Just before you pay, you remember having seen the same awning in another store located 30 minutes walk from where you are, displayed at the price of 2475€. Will you decide to take this « walk » to spend 25€ less?

Contrast effect

If you put your left hand in a bucket of cold water and your right hand in a bucket of hot water for 2 minutes, what do you think would happen if you put both hands in a bucket of warm water?

Contrast effect

Imagine that you are in one of those days when you have to meet 5 candidates for the same position. If, by bad luck, the first 4 make a bad impression, the last one, which may not be suitable or has an average adequacy, could appear to be better than in the reality.

7) The affect heuristic

The famous « gut feeling » is at the heart of the functioning of this heuristic which reminds us in short of the importance of the emotional dimension in any decision (see on this subject the article https://www.linkedin.com/post/edit/6572846570662961152/).

Depending on our mood, our mindset w.r.t. the activity at hand, the emotional state of the moment, our reasoning, judgment and decisions can be altered. After all, we are not machines, and that is a good thing.

There are other shortcuts affecting our work in recrutement, including:

• Stereotype, labelling, exaggeration, generalisation
• Overconfidence
• Mere exposure
• Availability of information
• ….

This represents a very serious challenge and, in my opinion, one of the main reasons for failure. Having participated in many recruitment processes, I can attest, as a candidate for various headhunter firms and as a member of an HR team, that there is enormous room for improvement to do a good job. How can we prepare ourselves, then, to limit the impact of these biases?

Let’s apply 4 principles from the world of decision-making:

• Actively seek out what could contradict the current decision
• Express disagreements, especially in public
• Share your uncertainties
• Define explicit and objective criteria’s

There’s work to be done!