The best person got the job

If I had a pound for every time I heard this phrase I would be… not quite a millionaire, but you get my drift.

Working with companies on how they can create and sustain diverse and inclusive teams, I hear this phrase a lot. It’s the first line of defence to why hiring a diverse workforce is so hard, or why the board all look the same, closely followed by ‘we struggle to find any _____ to recruit’.

The ‘best person for the job’ line stops the diversity conversation dead, and responding to it takes time and energy.

Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman

In one of my favourite reads of this year (yes I came to the party late) Daniel Kahneman talks about a concept called ‘What You See Is All There Is’.

What You See Is All There Is (WYSIATI)

You can watch Kahneman explain the concept in this 3 minute video.

In summary, the Nobel Prizewinner describes a cognitive bias where our fast thinking draws conclusions, constructs stories and hypotheses based only on the readily available information in front of us. We are not fully aware of what we don’t know, nor do we appreciate there may be additional evidence that contradicts what we have seen up to that point.

Why would we not assume the best people are being hired for the job? We have no hard evidence to the contrary and even though we are aware of unconscious bias, we mostly believe hiring managers are good people - fair and equitable - who surely want to hire the best person.

A Case Study

This linkedin post by Kirsty Baggs Morgan (used with permission) was a lightbulb moment for me.

Despite what appeared to be obvious discrimination in the hiring process many people, including the successful candidate, would have been completely unaware of the process that had occurred prior to their appointment. All they would have seen is the new hire, and they would be glibly trotting out that once again the manager had hired ‘the best person for the job’.

Biases in the hiring process

Now think of all of the other well-documented biases, conscious and unconscious, that we are aware of in the hiring process:

• CVs of candidates with European-sounding names being more likely to get an interview
• Graduate preference - managers who will only hire graduates, or those from certain universities; firms that actively target from particular red brick or Ivy League institutions
• Affinity bias - we have a tendency to hire people like us
• Job advert bias - gendered language, or unnecessary requirements such as industry-specific experience or a requirement for the candidate to have previously held a C-suite position, thereby reducing the diversity of candidates that apply.

When you weigh up all of the evidence, how confident can we be that the best person was even shortlisted for the job let alone hired?

The Myth Of Meritocracy

The recently published GOOD FINANCE framework, by Dr Grace Lordan of LSE, which was based on surveys and interviews of more than 2,000 workers (men and women) in financial and professional services highlighted the persistence of promotion and pay increases that were not related to skills or output.

Stepping out of this article momentarily to check in with your 'fast thinking', what is your gut reaction to this 'myth of meritocracy' section so far?

Have you clicked on the link to the GOOD FINANCE framework to read more?

Have you googled the author’s name to check out her credentials?

Have you clicked on my profile to see whether I am a credible source?

What thoughts have this triggered and why?

The backlash Dr Lordan received from men in particular who disputed the facts is worth reflecting on.?

Where is the backlash coming from?

Do men feel personally attacked?

Perhaps the following statement was the one that broke the camel’s back...

Reframing Positive Discrimination

I don’t know anyone who wants to be a token hire. We don’t want to be hired just because we are female, LGBTQ+, an ethnic minority, a person with a visible disability or holding a particular religious faith.

None of us wants to believe we weren’t the best person for the job.

Taking it a step further, nobody wants to be called incompetent.

Worse than that, it is bordering on offensive to tell people they have been hired or promoted only because they belong to a certain group, rather than based on their ability or output.

In-Group Bias

Is this why Dr Lordan’s findings hit such a nerve. She refers specifically to the “incompetence afforded to individuals who are in the in-group” and talks of mediocrity rather than meritocracy, within the sector under scrutiny.

Who is defined as the 'in-group' in her study is not clear and I would hate to fall into the WYSIATI trap of saying it’s simply white men. In fact, gender, social class, disability, and LGBTQ+ were all called out in the report as factors to address on the topic of broader inclusion. The dominant in-group within financial and professional services may be a combination of middle-class, white, male, able-bodied, hetero, cisgender but it could also be more nuanced and unique to certain firms.

Once we are reminded of the shortcomings of the hiring process we realise that it is actually the people fitting the existing in-group of an organisation who are most likely to benefit from invisible and unconscious positive discrimination, not the token hire that does not fit the mould.

Some people talk of 'lowering the bar' to enable diversity. Is it possible to argue that the bar is in fact already lowered for the in-group, rather than the out-group?

Enabling 'the best person' to get the job

In order for anything close to ‘the best person’ getting the job, the following would have to be true:

1. The unbiased job description, advertising and channels has led to a wide search reaching a diverse group of people with the right skills or potential to do the job
2. The unbiased filtering of cv’s and applications leads to the ‘best’ shortlist of candidates
3. From that shortlist, the unbiased processes (structured interviewing, objective scoring etc.) leads to the selection of the most suitable candidate

Then, and only then, can we say that the best (available) person probably got the job.