Anyone who has ever met with a job candidate and had to decide whether or not to hire them may have found themselves weighing how much they ought to “go with their gut,” follow their heart, or trust a sense of intuition about the individual versus mentally sorting out and prioritizing the information available to the conscious mind about the tangible performance indicators of the candidate.
Psychologists and neuroscientists have long been puzzling over all the factors going on deep in our brains when we make life’s daily decisions, including whether to pass on or proceed with a job candidate.
Recently, I picked up the bestselling book Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking
While the book covers the decision-making angle on topics ranging from military strategy, to spousal communication, to the Aeron chair, he has a few choice stories and examples in the book that really drop a bomb on how people tend to make hiring decisions.
Gladwell makes the case that we are influenced by the pervasive, instantaneous influence of certain biases held deep in the subconscious brain that compel us to focus on a few key details.
In case you haven’t read it, let me give you a Cliffs Notes version on three anecdotes in the book that relate to recruiting and hiring:
- HIRING BY CHARM AND GOOD LOOKS: In a chapter called “The Warren Harding Error,” Gladwell gives the cautionary tale of US President Warren Harding, who was widely acknowledged to be beguilingly attractive and charismatic. Reports at the time described him as “beyond handsome.” His physical stature was akin to someone like football player turned media personality Terry Bradshaw, and he had a large face with striking features; big, sparkling eyes, thick black hair, and a bronze complexion.
He was impeccably groomed and dressed, and he had an ease about himself and his movements. His voice was like masculine honey to hear, and his personality bestowed friendliness and graciousness. Over a 20-year period, Harding rose from one political office to the next, ultimately becoming President in 1921.
He died of a stroke two years into his term. His political track record was mediocre at best, and historians widely agree that he is among the worst US presidents. He was not particularly bright. Senator William G. McAdoo once said that a typical Harding speech was “an army of pompous phrases moving over the landscape in search of an idea.” Nonetheless, he sure did look presidential.
- HIRING BY HEIGHT: Do you think that men who are taller than six feet are vastly more qualified and effective at leading the nation’s top public companies than people of average or below average height? Your subconscious may be certain of it.
Gladwell gives the results of a poll he took to find out the heights of CEOs on the Fortune 500 list. He discovered that the average Fortune 500 CEO in his sample was a white man of about six feet in height, some three inches taller than the average US male. In the US population, only 14.5 percent of men are six feet or taller, and among the Fortune 500 CEO’s he polled, 58 percent were six feet or taller.
Even more striking is that nearly 33 percent of the Fortune 500 CEOs in his poll were six-feet two or taller, a height reached by only 3.9 percent of the population of US adult men. This phenomenon is hardly one that begins and ends in the C-suite. Many studies have been conducted over the years showing that tall people have an advantage when it comes to earning money and career advancement. What gives?
- HIRING FROM BEHIND A SCREEN: Going back hundreds of years to the powdered-wig wearing days in Europe, the classical music world had been the exclusive domain of men. Gladwell tells the story of how, after years of unionizing efforts and struggles for fairer auditioning practices that really ramped up around 30 years ago, professional symphonies took a radical yet simple measure to eliminate “Warren Harding Errors” from influencing the selection of musicians for jobs.
They changed the whole context of the audition by placing a curtain in between the auditioning musician and the selection committee. Suddenly, it didn’t matter if the musician was man or woman, appeared to have a big or a small set of lungs, if they looked confident or nervous, had good posture or bad, or if they had a nickel-silver or a brass instrument. It didn’t even matter if they were short, green, had three heads, and held their instrument at an unconventional angle.
When the only data available to the selection committee during the audition was the music itself, the ranks of professional symphony players quickly began to diversify. In the 1970s, only 5 percent of these musicians in the US were female. Today, the number of women playing in professional symphonies is closer to 50 percent.
In the US, we have an agency called the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, established under the Civil Rights Act of 1964, to help fight work place discrimination. They are woefully understaffed and underfunded, and recent reports indicated that they had a backlog of nearly 75,000 complaints. The good news is that we don’t have to wait for another government initiative, corporate program, or industry association to help address biases in hiring.
What if corporate executive job interviews were also conducted behind a screen? Barring an actual curtain, we could develop a metaphorical screen. Gladwell’s book is a call to evolution and responsibility in decision-making.
We can decide now to open our minds, to fine-tune our decision-making process, and to focus on what really matters in hiring… getting results!
Rebecca Patt is an executive recruiter for the restaurant and food service industry nationwide with Wray Executive Search. She specializes in executing a customized, disciplined, and thorough search process for her clients to help them recruit the top talent available for upper management positions in all functions. Contact her at Rebecca.patt@wraysearch.com.
Rebecca Patt helps restaurant and food service companies hire game-changing executive talent.