4 practices to mitigate biased hiring

Hiring the wrong person is one of the most expensive errors a sales leader can make. It negatively affects the new hire, the hiring manager, and the company. Despite understanding the negative impact, it remains a common issue across companies of all sizes and industries, and across functions. Even with very well structured recruitment processes, at the end of the day it’s us making a decision between candidate A, B or C. And those decisions are biased; it’s popular knowledge that we make decisions emotionally and justify them rationally. Confirmation trap, affect heuristics, and groupthink are just three of the many biases that can affect hiring. A candidate who shares the same sport as us will score higher in our subconscious mind. If a candidate is recommended by our CEO, it directly and consciously influences our decision.

Even though there’s no magic recipe to make logic-based optimal decisions, there are some tools and techniques that can be applied to improve our chances of successful hiring.

It is essential to agree on a standardized method for evaluating all candidates before commencing the interview process. This ensures fairness and consistency throughout the hiring process.

1. Set Clear Objectives: Determine if hiring is indeed the best solution for your needs. Consider alternative options such as outsourcing. Define the timelines for the hiring process to ensure that it aligns with your business needs and goals.
2. Define Evaluation Criteria: Identify the key attributes that are important for the role. These may include background and experience, network of contacts, technical knowledge, values, location, and other relevant factors.
3. Assign Weights to Each Criterion: Determine the relative importance of each criterion. For instance, if you are looking to enter a new market, the candidate’s existing network might be crucial and thus carry a weight of 50%. Conversely, if your portfolio is straightforward to understand, this factor might be less critical and could be assigned a weight of 10%. Apply similar reasoning to assign weights to other criteria.
4. Score the Candidates: Evaluate each candidate against the defined criteria using a consistent scoring system, such as a scale from 1 to 5. This allows for objective comparison between candidates.
5. Calculate the Overall Score: Use the formula to calculate each candidate’s total score. Total Score = (Criterion1×Weight1) + (Criterion2×Weight2) +…

By following these steps, you ensure a systematic and objective approach to candidate evaluation, increasing the likelihood of making a successful hire.

Second suggested practice is to ensure that all candidates go through the same interviewing process, so an apples to apples comparison can be made. Consistency is mandatory regarding questions asked, interviewers, checklists. On too many occasions internal candidates get a lighter process than external ones, which is usually a mistake. Human Resources typically provide big help with this, assigning different topics to the interviewers, and helping to structure the questionnaire to cover those areas.

Regarding the actual evaluation of the candidate once the interview is finished, I recommend that it’s not done as soon as you finish talking to the candidate, but let it rest for a day, review the meeting notes (hopefully abundant if you did a good job), and then provide your conclusions about that individual. Emotions tend to decrease after a day or two, allowing rational arguments to prevail.

And finally, once interviewers have submitted their feedback and it’s time to make a hiring decision, it’s a good practice to review the evaluations of all shortlisted candidates in one session, rather than making decisions on each candidate individually. This comparative evaluation offers valuable perspective.

While completely rational hiring is impossible and perhaps even undesirable, implementing these best practices will help you identify the optimal decision based on logic.