Author Archives: macleanchris

By Sizwe T Nxumalo

I have spent the last two days as part of a panel conducting interviews for volunteer positions for enke, an organisation that I work for (and love). During this period I have seen more than 20 candidates. I must mention that I have only ever been on one other interviewing panel, and the number of interviewed candidates was significantly less. The experience has been revealing in many ways, but the one thing that has been particularly enriching, has been my increased awareness of my inherent predispositions. I think my new found “enlightenment” comes from our need to think of ourselves as completely impartial and impervious to the temptation of noticing differences in people, and attributing particular characteristics to people based on those observed differences.

Truth is that we are all guilty of carrying biases which affect our decision making. Biases are rooted in our use of heuristics (http://bit.ly/xzQruA) in decision making, because we seldom have the time (or will) to conduct a thorough analysis of the evidence before making a decision. Michael Shermer has a great talk (http://bit.ly/zUCQcB) about the evolutionary necessity that led to our development of heuristics (or what he terms patternicity).

Fortunately, in the area of job interviews, research has discovered a broad set (http://bit.ly/AbI8VA) of biases that interviewers are likely to have, and there are strategies (http://aol.it/x4xPW4) that candidates can employ to decrease the likelihood of being disadvantaged by the biases that their interviewers may have.

These are the biases that I’m most guilty of:

The Similar-to-Me Effect

This is the tendency to have a preference for people who are similar to you physically, culturally or in disposition. I find that I respond disproportionately positively to people who articulate themselves in a manner that demonstrates a structured and logical thought-process which has clear lines of reasoning – even if I disagree with their assessment and conclusions.

This effect can be detrimental when selecting candidates for high-impact teams because it may compromise diversity – a necessary ingredient for effective teams – and increase the likelihood of continued compliance with the status quo without the interrogation thereof.

The Contrast Effect

This is the tendency to compare candidates to each other, instead of comparing them to the requirements for the role for which they are being interviewed.

This effect can have two problematic effects:

1. In groups where the majority of candidates are very poor, it can lead to the selection of a candidate who is also ill-suited for the role, simply because their suitability is overestimated due the fact that they were of the group.
2. In groups where there is a stellar candidate, there is a risk of overlooking other perfectly suitable candidates for a post due their comparing poorly to the stellar candidate.

Here is a visual illustration of the contrast effect that depicts two circles of the same colour against different backgrounds (http://bit.ly/xskPsA)

The Recency Effect (http://bit.ly/AnE8ol)

This effect is the tendency is remember the most recently interviewed candidates more clearly than those interviewed at an earlier time.

This is obviously problematic if there are a large number of candidates being interviewed at different times by the same people, because it creates situations where the perceived quality of the candidates interviewed early in the process is eroded by the passage of time – leading to compromised appointments.

The discovery of the biases that interviewers are prone to has given me a greater appreciation for the importance the design of interview processes, and how its impact on final appointments can supersede that of the (objective) quality of the candidates. Fortunately, the interview process that I was part of was designed to mitigate some of these biases.

For instance:

• Every candidate was interviewed by a panel instead of an individual, limiting the impact of the similar-to-me effect.
• There were standardised activities and questions that all candidates were required to perform and answer; as well as a complimentary standard framework against which they were all assessed. This limited the contrast effect.
• And lastly, the evaluation and assessment of all candidates occurred within 30 minutes after the panel had last seen them. This served to limit the recency effect.

The bottom line is that we are unlikely to eliminate our biases (because we take them for granted). And given that our ability to ensure that they don’t affect our decisions is still lacking, it is incredibly important that both employers and prospective employees account for the incidence of these biases when preparing for their next round of interviews.