[MUSIC] How long do you think it takes for an interviewer to make a decision about a candidate? Let's use a countdown to find out. [SOUND] That's it, in just that period of time, an interviewer has decided if the candidate is trustworthy, hardworking, loyal, ethical, among other traits. In this video, we're going to look at how these fast decisions can really get in the way of making good hiring decisions. Let's take a look at what the research says. Researchers in Toledo found that judgments made in just the first 10 seconds of an interview predicted the outcome of the interview. That means that the interviewer made a decision whether or not to hire someone just based off 10 seconds. I'm sure we can agree that the first 10 seconds are pretty useless. Every day people have a number of decisions in the workplace. And often we have several candidates to interview. When we're overwhelmed by all of the information that we have to consider, we use mental shortcuts. A mental shortcut is called a heuristic. And they can be really helpful in making quick decisions when necessary. But they can also be problematic because of bias. And bias is a type of heuristic that doesn't always result in the best decision. It's unreasoned and can even be based on things like stereotype or prejudice towards particular groups of people. Let's take a look at the different types of bias. The first one is confirmation bias. And that's the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, recall information in a way that confirms our original beliefs or hypothesis about that person. In other words, we make up our minds about the candidate's worthiness, integrity. All these different things, their personality. And we spend the rest of the interview trying to confirm, less commonly deny, the original hypothesis. Let's just say that I'm interviewing a woman for a sales position. And she comes in for the interview and shakes my hand, and she has a very weak handshake. And perhaps I believe people with a weak handshake are not very assertive. Which is a key component of being a salesperson. So now throughout the rest of the interview, when I'm asking questions, I will interpret the things that she says that they show me that she is not assertive. My mind is trying to confirm the decision that I made early on in the interview, and because of that I don't give her the job. I don't seek alternative possibilities. Maybe her hand was sore. Maybe she's truly actually assertive but she's learned that you're not supposed to shake someone's hand with very much force. We could come up with a variety of reasons maybe why she had a weak handshake. But the point is, is that we may have lost a great candidate because of confirmation bias. Next is in-group bias. This is when we favor members of the in-group over out-group members. We look for people like us, in our in-group, instead of people who are different from us in the out-group. This is why it's important to be careful when organizations say they hire for cultural fit because cultural fit might promote group think and homogeneity instead of diversity. You can also see that this could be a problem in terms of employment discrimination actually if we seek people from the majority population. Majority race. People with a particular sexual orientation, color, religion, all of these different protected statuses. Contrast bias can work in a few different ways. One, you could have a candidate that you interview first, who you perceived as excellent. And you rate everyone else more harshly because of that first great interview. Or if one candidate seems weak in some area others may appear to be more qualified than they really are. Another type of contrast bias is called recency effect. And that's where you may only remember best the interview that happened last and you scored higher because it's fresh on your mind. The halo effect is exactly what it sounds like. It's as if the person being interviewed is wearing a golden halo. And that's because they've created a favorable first impression on the interviewer. And from that point forward, anything the candidate does or says, the interviewer interprets positively. Now this can be because of in-group bias as we talked about before. It could be the applicant's manner, his or her accent. Or perhaps the person came from our same city. They might have gone to the same college. Maybe they're just generally attractive. Once this takes place the interviewer may not be able to view the candidate's suitability for the job objectively. The converse is the horn effect. And that's where something negative, like my early example of a salesperson handshake, has now skewed the interviewer's ability to make a good decision. And that person now has a negative impression of the candidate. And the last one on our list here is prejudice. And really looking at this word, it's prejudgment. You're judging someone because perhaps you have an unfair feeling or dislike for a person or group because of their race, color, religion, sex, national origin, or whatever the reason maybe. But it's unfounded and it's not logical. I think of prejudiced as almost like a bad storm rolling in. It's ominous and it's a menace. And it will most certainly prohibit us from making the right hire, finding the right people Discrimination, prejudice, is risky, it's unethical and it's just plain bad business. If a company makes the mistake of rejecting a candidate based on stereotype or prejudice, they will miss out on good candidates as I said before, but they may also suffer adverse legal consequences. Okay, so the good news is that we can try to avoid bias and now that you know what biases exist in the interview process, how do you avoid them? First, remember that we need to know what we're hiring for. We need to have clear job selection criteria. This way we make a decision based on the person's knowledge, skills, abilities, their competencies, not their looks, their gender or something else that gets in the way of us making a good decision. Based on the selection criteria, we need to create scientifically validated processes to screen candidates and accurately assess their abilities. For instance, when done well, structured interviews that are documented, promote fairness, reliability, and they really help to assess true competencies. From my years of experience working in HR, I really became a fan of HR audit activities. Hiring an external auditor service to come in and look at your hiring and selection processes, and determine if there's potential issues. You can also use the team inside the organization as well. But, I found that hiring someone from outside the organization helped us be a little bit more objective. All interviewers within your organization should be trained on biases. They should also be trained on using structured interviews, job descriptions, documenting interviews and they should also be trained on the evaluation process, how to better evaluate candidates after the interview and during the testing process. Of course, like structured interviews we need to revisit our other assessment tools. Do they measure what they're supposed to measure? Are they valid? Do they generate consistent, reliable results? When possible using more than one interviewer is helpful as a number of trained assessors may likely generate better results, rather than the opinion of just one person.
