BEHAVIORAL SCIENCE PRINCIPLES FOR EFFECTIVE HIRING

“I would rather hire one great engineer rather than five average engineers”
ark Zuckerberg may have quoted controversy with the above statement, but it
highlighted the critical importance of hiring in defining the success of an organisation.
Recruitment & hiring process has developed into a sizeable industry, with marketing
and search firms and occupational psychologists at the forefront of this. However,
hiring process still heavily relies on human decisions, involving candidates, recruiters
& hiring managers. Due to this, a critical process such as hiring remains subject to
variety of biases.
The importance of bias-free hiring is further highlighted by the results of a recent
survey conducted by BCG. It says that profit in the companies with diversity in the
workforce is up to 19% higher than those with a uniform workforce. Diversity in
workforce also fosters innovation & higher employee engagement.
Some common Biases in Hiring
Biases are a part of human nature. While it might be difficult to completely avoid all
biases, awareness about these can help us take steps to consciously work around
these.
1. Confirmation Bias

Confirmation bias is the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall
information that confirms or supports one's prior beliefs or values. 
For example, If a hiring manger had rejected a profile but is asked to interview
the candidate, it’s more likely the manager will ask irrelevant questions to elicit
responses that support his initial decision

2. Affect Heuristic

The affect heuristic is a heuristic, a mental shortcut that allows people to

make decisions and solve problems quickly and efficiently, in which current
emotion—fear, pleasure, surprise, etc. —influences decisions.
This bias comes into play when the hiring manager reaches a conclusion
about a candidate’s ability to do the job based on this intuition without
carefully examining all of the evidence first.

3. Halo effect

Halo effect is the tendency for positive impressions of a person in one area to
positively influence one's opinion or feelings in other areas.
This happens when recruiter makes a decision based on one or two positive
aspects of a candidate like where they went to school, or what sports they do
4. Horn effect

The horn effect, closely related to the halo effect, is a form of cognitive bias
that causes one's perception of another to be unduly influenced by a single
negative trait. For example, if the recruiter is irked by personality of the
candidate, it’s very unlikely that the candidate will be successful.

5. Affinity Bias
Affinity bias is the unconscious tendency to get along with others who are like
us. For example, Interviewer and candidate might be from same
school/college or town leading to interviewer exhibiting an affinity towards the
candidate irrespective of his negatives.

6. Conformity bias

The conformity bias is the tendency people have to behave like those around
them rather than using their own personal judgment. This can happen when
one interviewer in the panel has a difference of opinion about the candidate’s
suitability for the role decides to go with majority

7. Illusory correlation
Illusory correlation is the phenomenon of perceiving a relationship
between variables (typically people, events, or behaviours) even when no
such relationship exists. For example, a recruiter may perceive a certain
connection with a sector expert the candidate has to mean that the
candidate is also an expert.
8. Overconfidence bias

Overconfidence bias is a tendency to hold a false and misleading assessment

of our skills, intellect, or talent. This occurs when the recruiter is so confident
in their own abilities to either pick a good candidate or to eliminate bad ones,
that they allow confirmation bias to creep in, to justify their decisions

9. Contrast bias
Contrast Bias is the tendency to mentally upgrade or downgrade an object
when comparing it to a contrasting object. Recruiters fall prey to this bias
when they constantly try to compare the profile of one candidate with that of
other profiles under consideration.
10. Expectation anchor

Expectation anchor bias is when we allow ourselves to anchor onto one

certain piece of information about a candidate and use it to help us make
decisions. Recruiter not believing that anyone other than replica of role’s
 predecessor can do the job properly, thereby discounting the majority of the
candidates as they don’t fit the biased expectations of the recruiter

Overcoming the biases in Hiring

The hiring process primarily happens in three phases namely attracting talent,
assessment and finally the decision-making process.

The first step to avoiding biases in each of these steps is to have an

awareness of the kind of biases that can occur. This allows us to modify our
thinking to an extent to avoid being biased.

Let us look at some of the ways in which biases can be avoided in each of
these stages.

Attracting Talent

 Taking a fresh look at person–organization fit, considering both current and

aspirational organizational culture
 Removing gendered wording & analyzing Job description to remove
unconscious biases
 Personalizing corporate outreach to encourage diverse applicants
 Making the process transparent & easy for candidates to apply directly
 Push for transparency in outreach even when using networks for recruitment
and selection

Assessments

 Group and ‘codify’ CVs during initial screening

 Following a structured interview process with each step specially tailored to
avoid biases. Steps could be pre-interview processes such as job analysis,
developing lead & probing questions and determining the grading scale.
 Using software to assist with various aspects of interview process. e.g. Gap
jumpers (blind auditions) , Textio ( write better JDs) , Search Party ( ML to
find right candidates)

Decision Making

 Collaborative hiring process - Including people in hiring decisions that were

not part of assessment panel
 Sticking to the scores from assessment phase
 Recruitment strategy
 Spreading assessments and decisions across days
With advancement in technology, several AI based technologies have been
developed to assist companies to develop an un-biased decision-making process.
However, AI is still in a nascent stage and may sometimes read patterns incorrectly.
This happened in the case of amazon, where the AI assistant read patterns in hiring
incorrectly and developed a bias towards women.
While the debate on the use of AI is hiring is gaining momentum – employers are
also being increasingly aware of the impact of these biases on innovation, employee
engagement and ultimately – the bottom line.
As the world moves towards inclusivity and workplaces begin to become diverse,
behavioral science and its principles become extremely relevant for managers. A
working knowledge of these principles and their applications is necessary aid for
managers to create a productive workplace with an engaged and motivated
employee population.