Trust when the Stakes are High: in Fashion + Hiring Alike
Nikki Adamson
???? #CeaseFireNow ???? | Founder | Leader | DEIB Hiring | Startups | ??? Racial Justice | ?? Podcast host | Mama to Izzy ????
A main component of hiring is trust -?
But today I’m thinking about how we leverage the word of others as one pathway towards building trust with a candidate.
I was dress shopping for a wedding this summer and often go straight to the photos and reviews of folks wearing the dresses first - as my body type is often more close to theirs than the model’s - and was noticing how many folks mentioned the volume of compliments they got while wearing a specific dress as a way of substantiating their own positive recommendation for it.
This parallels so closely to how many of us feel when taking the risk of bringing someone onto our teams.?
We might trust our gut enough to make the purchase, but often rely on the confirmation of our thinking from others before sharing more broadly and even wearing it out to a big event.
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One person’s word is great, but especially if this “word” is coming from a stranger - it’s even better to have validation from even more strangers to help us trust this first stranger’s viewpoint.?
There’s a primal fear in being the first to “bet” on something or someone. As the stakes increase (for instance, due to less external funding and a new focus on profitability) our tolerance for risk often decreases, leading us to seek extra validation before making a move. Knowing that other bosses/managers/leaders have taken the leap to bring this person onto their teams is often enough to quell this fear and let us evaluate more rationally again. Even more so the better we trust that third party’s judgment.?
There are a couple of ways that we vet candidates to build enough trust to make an eventual offer which I’ll unpack in the next few pieces:
But today I’m curious - what helped you get to that moment recently of making a risky decision? How did you gain enough trust in yourself and the person/thing you were investing in to make the move?
PS - for those wondering, I too think I looked great in the dress. But I'll have to dig up some photos for y'all to let me know if I should leave my own positive review!
People Experience & Culture Leader // Building empowered teams and personalization at scale with a healthy dose of empathy
1 年A few things that stand out to me here where I always flag as risky areas for introducing bias to hiring managers: - Network recommendations: nepotism is one of the more obvious concerns, as is questioning whether you trust your network to be diverse and inclusive to benefit your search - References: similar to above. Most candidates "stack" their references in a way that in theory, is impossible to get less than a positive referral. We try to be explicit about what we want to know from the reference and to see a wide representation of their working relationships. - Known validation milestones: aka my least favorite indicator of trust. I call this "borrowed credibility" because we may make assumptions of their work ethic/skill to land in a particular institution or organization. Realistically, factors like nepotism, social proximity, etc play into those decisions often enough to question the quality of this as a reliable data point. (See also: arguments supporting Affirmative Action ??).