The Art of Thin-Slicing

The term “Thin-Slicing” belongs to the field of psychology and its basic meaning is to "find the patterns in events by narrowing down the experiences and related events". The purpose of “Thin-Slicing” is to narrow down the information clutter that helps us in better decision making instinctively. It is believed that the judgements we make based on thin slicing are as accurate as compared to the ones we make after lot of information gathering. The use of this technique of “Thin-Slicing” is extensively used in the areas of clinical studies, interactive relationship and education.

Malcolm Gladwell’s explained the term “Thin-Slicing” in his book “Blink” where he explained it through many different examples from various domains. He simply described it as “snap judgment” based on thin-slicing of past experiences.

It is more like making an informed and thoughtful decision without going through the process of thinking. It’s not like we plan to thin-slice every time when we make a decision, but it’s an intuitive process that takes place while making any decision. There are many interesting exercises mentioned in the book “Blink” that shows how our unconscious mind performs like characteristics and words association.

As I said the use of “Thin-Slicing” can be done in various fields and it is very interesting how we can incorporate this technique in “Human Resource Management”.

Thin-Slicing in HRM

If we notice, then recruitment function of HRM is very much based on “thin-slicing” because most of the time recruiter and interviewee don’t know each other and based on few questions recruiter analyze the right fit for the job.

I am not saying everyone is pro at “thin-slicing” but people with vast experiences and abilities to build connections between behaviors and characters can be good at it.

Many times we are not even aware that we are thin-slicing the experiences as many times it’s an unconscious phenomenon. The individuals who are not able to thin-slice their subconscious properly, then they end up making wrong decisions. For recruiters, snap judgements at the time of hiring is one of the most costly decision because a lot effort and resource are going into it and if you make the wrong decisions all goes into waste.

• There are tests like “Implicit Association Test” (IAT) that recruiters can use to understand the candidate’s beliefs and values. The use of this test is to evaluate the strength of connection between factors, for example association of (black and white) with (good and bad). This is the most basic example I shared with you can simply amend it as per your requirement.

Like the recruitment function, we can also apply thin-slicing to other HR functions as well.