January 2008
When to Use your hiring INSTINCTS
We have all done it; hired the person who was nearly perfect in the interview process—they said the right things, did the right things and then turned out to be a fake, a liar--a disaster! Where did we go wrong? Why didn’t our instincts alert us to the imposter?
Instincts Need Harnessing
Instincts can be very useful in the recruitment process however, they must be harnessed in a very conscious way or they can lead us in the wrong direction. For example, if you are trying to decide between two candidates with relatively similar experience and you ask your instincts which you should choose you will likely choose the most attractive of the two, or the one with the same skin color as yours, or the most outgoing. This is where our instincts can mislead us—we cannot help it, our instincts are loaded with our personal biases.
Instead, try and set that part of yourself aside and ask your instincts how the two candidates would do under pressure or how they would deal with the most discouraging part of the job they are about to be hired to do. Another great way to use your instincts is to pay attention to hunches you get during the interview process. Try to ask questions and let the candidate talk and then let your instincts tell you where to pry a bit deeper or ask for more specifics. Everyone has good instincts—harnessing them is what makes them useful.
“Truly successful decision making relies on a balance between deliberate and instinctive thinking.”
—Malcolm Gladwell Bestselling Author of Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, 2005
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Prepared exclusively for clients of Brenda Abdilla and Management Momentum — Sent Mid-Monthly
