Biases and Errors in Selection Decision

•Title
page
•Table of contents

Acknowledgements

Abstract

1-‐0 Introduction

2-‐0 Literature Review

2-‐1 The Importance of Human Resources within organizations

2-‐2 Selection as a cornerstone of HR practices
2-‐2-‐1 Selection Methods’ Ranking in terms of Credibility and
Popularity
2-‐2-‐2 Interviews

2-‐3 Decision-‐making
2-‐3-‐1 Heuristics
2-‐3-‐2 Biases

2-‐4 Biases and Errors in Selection Interviews’ Decisions

3-‐0 Methodology

4-‐0 Findings and Analysis

4-‐1 Interview Results

5-‐0 Discussion (the combination of literature review and finding and
analysis)

5-‐1 Context
5-‐2 Limitations
5-‐3 Future Research

6-‐0 Conclusion

7-‐0 References

8-‐0 Appendix

•List of tables
•Introduction

1
Introduction

‘Making decisions’ is an inseparable part of life. The overall quality of one’s life
highly depends on how superior his/her decisions are. In the business world no
one can survive without possessing and nurturing ‘decision-‐making’ skills.
According to “normative theories for cognition”, there are a number of rules to
guide decision-‐makers to make rational judgments. But in the real world every
decision has particular variables, attachments, and deviations from the
conventional models, which make it impossible to follow normative approach
(Baron, 2004).
For instance in organizations the decisions’ context and environment is
complicated and not easy to understand, the existing data is unstructured, and is
not readily applicable in a strict rational model. Moreover there are some other
factors that guide and impact these complex irrational decisions such as personal
interpretations and unconscious psychological forces.
Therefore as human beings most of our decisions are not infallible. In fact
decision-‐makers are often entrap in their own biases. These psychological forces
are naturally present during the entire process of decision-‐making from data
gathering to making the final decision, thus even knowledgeable experienced
managers fail to take them into consideration (Larrick, 2004).
However according to Baron (2004), if these biases can be found they are
resolvable. He believes that after recognizing the bias it should be thoroughly
understood and explained and a “descriptive model” has to be made. This
descriptive model accompanied with normative approach will lead the decision-‐
maker to develop a prescription to eliminate the bias, which is called a
“prescriptive model”. Thus a good understanding of normative, descriptive, and
prescriptive approach will help to enhance decisions’ quality.

Considering the significance of human resources within organizations, selection
decisions have substantial consequences. A wrong decision in selection can
cause serious damages not only to the business and its image but also to the
employees’ career life. Unfitting employees might cause costly errors, need direct
careful observation and excessive trainings and eventually will not be satisfied.
Dissatisfied employee results in high employee turnover. Besides it is evident
that hiring the right person who also fits in the environment and the job will
benefit organizations by increasing productivity and motivation (Risavy and
Hausdorf, 2011).
Taking the importance of selection decisions and their vulnerability to biases
and unconscious errors into consideration, a thorough research to study the
relevance of cognitive biases in selection in the existing literature is missing.
Surprisingly the literature has been rather silent on this issue and to this point,
few studies, if any, have explicitly examined the presence of biases and their
implications in selection decisions while most of existing researches are
discussing a very limited number of biases such as stereotyping.
After examining all the selection methods and their reliability and popularity and
also probing into different theories of decision-‐making and a wide range of
biases, this study intends to identify where and how selection decisions are
vulnerable to biases and how to eliminate their impact to enhance selection
decisions by following Baron’s (2004) approach.
2
Using the data gathered through semi-‐structured, in-‐depth interviews with
selection decision-‐makers, this study looks for action plans to reduce the
influence of biases and errors in the selection process and consequently decrease
the costs of high employee turnover and wrong hires.
Larrick (2004) grouped the biases’ prescriptions into three categories of
motivational, cognitive, and technological strategies, according to which the
recommended strategies for improving selection decisions will be presented.
Under an ideal circumstances this study could be done by observing real
processes of selection and analyze the results with assistance of a team including
a psychologist, however considering the limitations of this research, it is not
viable.

•Literature review

2.1 The importance of human resources within

organization

For several years, HR professionals have sought for proof to confirm that
employee is truly the most valuable asset of a company, and its good
performance directly leads to a better business outcome. Eventually by the mid-‐
1990s a growing number of researches emerged to prove this fact1 (Redman and
Wilkinson, 2006).
The role of human in organizations has changed through time in accordance with
the modifications in manager’s point of view. From when ‘Personnel
Management’ was converted to ‘Human Resource Management’ followed by
‘Strategic Human Resource Management’. Basically as Ackers and Wilkinson
(2003) suggested, as of the traditional PM 2 to SHRM 3 is kind of a gradual
progress towards maturity in the perception of human role within the
organization.
During the recent years, considering the dramatic growth in business world’s
competition, the quality of employees’ performance has become an even more
serious concern in every organization. Since developing a sustainable
competitive advantage over firms’ competitors is highly dependent on human

1 E.g. the study by the ‘Institute of Personnel and Development’ in the UK, Patterson et al research
conducted in 1998, ‘NHS’ study carried out by West et al in 2002, and ‘Chartered Institute of
Personnel Development’, and etc.
2 Personnel Management
3 Strategic Human Resource Management
3
resources functioning, their influence on organizations’ success level in achieving
their strategic goals is inevitable (Gatewood et al, 2008).
As asserted by Aggarwal and Bhargava (2008) HR practices, in accordance with
firms’ organizational strategy have an impact on employees’ manner and attitude,
both individually and collectively, and result in a tacit, psychological
commitment.
Erickson and Gratton (2007) denominated commitment as “contagious”, which
can be spread out among current and future employees and also customers.

2.2 Selection as a cornerstone of HR practices

“Literally nothing is more important”; Success of almost every manager directly
originates in his/her skills to pick “the right people” for the team.
Experts believe that selection decision-‐makings are not demanding just for
organizations’ sake, but also similarly important for the one, who is going to be
selected. It is not the new employee to blame for a wrong selection decision,
however s/he is the one who is taking on much of the burden of being in a
mistaken role (Fernandez-‐Araoz, 2007).
Apart from that, selection process is costly. As stated in CIPD annual report
(2010), 85% of organizations evaluate their selection expenses by calculating
cost per hire. Considering this cost, most of organizations have analyzed their
selection process carefully and found those points, which are vulnerable to
inaccuracy and error but unfortunately not a lot of attention has been focused on
unintentional biases.
As a result of numerous studies it has become more clear for any employer that
investment in human resources will have relative returns, as 48% claimed that
they are planning to increase their investments, in terms of time, effort, and
money in order to develop the quality of their selection process compare to 30%
in 2009 (CIPD annual report, 2010).
The last but not the least influential factor in significance of selection is the
current financial situation. The worldwide economic recession has influenced
the balance of ‘supply and demand’ in the labor market. Although some believe
that the economical situation is pulling through, according to CIPD annual report
(2010), still lots of employers are facing financial difficulties. Many organizations
are yet compelled to cut their costs to survive in this tough, challenging
environment 4.

2-‐2.1. Selection

In general, in terms of human resources, an organization has two options to
fulfill its needs, either hiring entities with desired abilities and skills or give

4 Statistics reveal that 53% of organizations have decreased their 2010 resourcing budget (CIPD
Annual Report 2010).
4
those abilities to the existing employees through training. Thus ‘selection’ in a
firm is one of the only two alternatives to assure that employees are able to
handle the work and consequently lead to the firm’s progress.
Selection also refers to the process of promoting the existing employees,
however, since the organization already knows enough about the existing
employees, the methods of data collection are different. Similarly to external
selections, internal employments might include an interview as well. Although
there are different techniques being used but the fundamental concepts are the
same, either way organizations have to match the applicants KSAs with the job
vacancies requirements (Gatewood et al, 2008).
Selection by the simplest definition is picking one out of a pool of applicants. This
individual should meet some criteria to be able to perform well for that specific
job, which s/he has applied for. Hence, for evaluating all the candidates and
choosing the qualified ones a firm needs a systematic method to gather data
about the applicants and measure their KSAs5. This data collection can vary from
a simple interview to very complex combination of psychological tests,
interviews, and work simulations (Gatewood et al, 2008). No matter what kind of
selection method is going to be used, as Newell (2001) has observed, all of the
applicants first have to go through a pre-‐selection filter, which can be an
application form, and/or a CV screening, and/or more recently according to
Konradt (2003) observations, an online testing, and/or phone interviews.
Examining different pre-‐screening methods, Bauer et al (2004) found that, as
well as in selection, there are several factors to be considered in order to choose
a pre-‐selection method, such as fairness, validity, ability to examine
interpersonal behaviors, openness, and cost. They also argued that every
organization’s decision on its selection method is unique and it is depending on
the firm’s selection strategy for a certain position’s job vacancy.
Going some steps backward, there are a number of critical stages prior to the
‘selection’ process. Job analysis, identifying pertinent measurement for job
performance6, determination of desired employee’s characteristics, KSAs, and
competencies, deciding on the most appropriate method of assessment are the
key activities, which should be implemented. Also in order to verify the
employed method after every selection, there is a validation phase, which is
highly dependant on the identified job performance measures (Gatewood et al,
2008). The main purpose of the ‘validation’ stage is to examine the ‘selection’
process and evaluate the level of fairness, flawlessness, and impartiality. The
major problem with the “selection decisions’ validity analysis” is finding an
accurate benchmark. The most typical validating method is ‘supervisory ratings’.
Yet this criterion is still highly dependant on many variables such as the length
and the frequency of the supervision, and also gender of the supervisor7 (Kacmar
et al, 2003). Clearly, the more variables involved the higher the level of
uncertainty would be.

5 An abbreviation for ‘Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities’
6 Practically, there are several other factors that affect the performance of an employee, such as
training programs, organizational strategies, work design structure, and so on, which make the
process of identifying performance measures even more challenging and complicated.
7 According to Sundvik and Lindeman (1998), the level of accuracy in female supervisors’ reports
is higher compare to male supervisors.
5

2-‐2.2. Selection from a Decision-‐making point of view

By definition, decision-‐making is a cognitive process of picking one or more
options between at least two alternatives. This process is conscious and needs
some previous assessments (Newell, 2001).
In fact, selection engages a process of predicting about which candidate fits best
in that particular job vacancy. As it is mentioned before, some evaluations need
to be made prior to any final decision. Apart from the nature of ‘prediction’,
which is associated with ambiguity and uncertainty, due to the diversity and
complexities of human beings personality, traits, and abilities, this decision is not
an easy one. In order to make a better decision, researchers are trying to come
up with the most rational, objective model possible. However, for anything
associated with human being, there is no prescription of a rational way, which
always ends up to success. There is also always a set of limitations involved
(Redman and Wilkinson, 2006).
Nevertheless an optimal result for a selection process would be when the
interest of both sides8, has been taken care of. As it has been mentioned earlier in
general there are some criteria that would help the organizations to measure the
level of success of their selection decisions. These benchmarks are only reliable
when their effects are analyzed over time though (Gatewood et al, 2008).
It has been proven in several studies that in practice, decision-‐making in
selection process is irrational (Redman and Wilkinson, 2006).
Essentially, there are five different sources for decision-‐makers in order to
acquire information about candidates. The applicant him/herself, references,
peer group, and ex-‐colleagues, demonstrated information via different tests,
documented qualifications e.g. different courses’ certificates, and lastly
involuntary tests such as psycho physiological assessments or graphology (cook,
2009).

2-‐2.2.1 Rational steps of decision-‐making in selection process

In theory, the first step of a logical decision-‐making process is reviewing and
understanding the situation and recognizing the problem 9 . In the case of
selection, this means a thorough appraisal of the situation to ascertain that there
is a real need of recruiting an employee10. The second step is carefully analyzing
the specific job and identifying the key responsibilities and role prerequisites.
Determining a proper assessment technique to employ. Recruitment will be the
next stages of this process, followed by evaluating the candidates by whichever
means that have been decided on before. Making the final decision and certifying
it through measuring the future performance are the ending point of this

8 The employer and the applicant
9 Normally there are some signs that initiate the entire process including retirement, termination,
resignation, or temporary long leave/transfer of an employee, or establishment of a new position,
or emergence of temporary extra workload (hr.ecu, 2010).
10 In some cases there are some alternatives for recruitment, such as automating the task or
reassigning it to the current employees (Redman and Wilkinson, 2006).
6
procedure. However, in practice applying the exact mentioned prescription is not
always possible (Newell, 2001).

2-‐2.2.2 And in reality…

It is not impossible in some routine decisions to take a rational approach and
rely on explicit information available. For example to decide about ‘working
hours’ in an organization, since the problem is clear and all the required
information is structured, taking a consistent and systematic approach is feasible.
However this rational model has some limitations in practice. There is always a
limited amount of information available, so having a complete knowledge of the
situation is not viable. Also with the information on hand, there are always some
subconscious, unintentional perceptual restriction and cognitive biases involved.
Conflicting objectives of different groups of stakeholders also leads to
disagreements, subjective evaluations, and biases in the final decisions.
Moreover, this process requires some predictions, which signifies uncertainty
and consequently irrationality. On the other hand there are some other factors
such as organizational goals, which limit decisions (Redman and Wilkinson,
2006).
Yet in an ideal situation of a truly rational decision procedure, in which a number
of assessors would grade every applicant on each required competency, with
specific weightings, both the weights and each candidate’s grade are completely
up to the assessor’s evaluation and therefore subjective. Some even believe that
the weightings are sometimes just a mean to justify the final decision, rather
than a helpful strategy to make a more accurate decision.
Thus as Ryan and Tippins (2004) suggested according to the poor results of
validation test in selection process, some advanced, systematic, and more
structured techniques are needed.

Selection Methods

Not every selection method is an effective and appropriate tool for every job and
in every organizational setting. Thus organizations should consider a number of
elements before deciding for an assessment plan for specific circumstances,
including the deadline for filling the vacancy, the nature, sensitivity, and
complexity of the job, and also staff and financial resources on hand. Eventually
according to all mentioned points in addition to the validity and reliability of
each method they can decide what method to be used (U.S. Office of Personnel
Management, 2010).

2-‐3.1 Interviews

Several studies (Shackleton and Newell, 1994; DiMilia et al, 1994; Robertson and
Smith, 2001) prove that interviews in general are the most common used
selection methods in many countries. According to Meyer (2011) almost 76% of
organizations consider interviews to be the most important selection tool.
7
Historically, as Redman and Wilkinson (2006) stated, it started with
unstructured interviews and since they became very popular all around the
world, a considerable amount of effort has been devoted to enhance its validity.
Gradually by increasing its structure it became more reliable in terms of fairness
and also it has developed into a more straightforward system since the
prediction factors and dimensions are preset and fully patterned.
Mainly, structured interviews can be categorized into three groups of:
“behavioral”, “situational”, and “comprehensive structured” interviews. Basically
both behavioral and situational interviews are more concentrated on the
candidates’ behavior or past experiences while in comprehensive structured
interviews there is an emphasis on a mixture of job specific knowledge,
candidate’s motivation to do the job, personal traits and characteristics and some
kind of situational interview (hrjournal, 2010).
The main difference between behavioral and situational interviews is in a
situational interview the applicant is facing a full hypothetical scenario to deal
with and to explain what s/he would do in such a situation, while in a behavioral
interview the candidate is asked to say how s/he actually reacted to the given
specific situation, according to his/her past experience (hrjournal, 2010).
Although the efficacy of all three types of structured interviews have been
proved through several studies (e.g. Barclay, 2001; Sue-‐Chan and Latham, 2004),
Heffcut et al. (2004) suggested that in some particular situations for more
multifaceted jobs, behavioral interviews would result in more accurate decisions.
In general, since these selection methods provide a better opportunity to gather
information and consequently a more reliable, consistent decision. On the other
hand from the applicants’ perspective in these kinds of assessments they have a
better chance to exhibit their skills (Newell, 2001).
From another point of view, interviews can be grouped into three categories of,
single interviewer, panel interviews, and serial interviews. As their names would
imply, they refer to an interview with only one interviewer, a group of
interviewers, and a series of interviews in a row respectively.
In general depending on the job vacancy and also organization’s HR strategy
different people would participate in the interview process including team
leaders, line managers, HR managers or staff, or consultants (Barney and Wright,
1997).
In panel interviews and serial interviews people from different areas of expertise,
including HR specialists and professionals from various departments to verify
the candidate’s technical knowledge, will interview the candidate. In some cases
the panel consists of current employees, managers, and a number of customers11.
As a matter of fact arrangement of attendants in a panel interview is vastly
dependent on the organizations’ culture (Barney and Wright, 1997). Mostly
panel interviews lead to group decision-‐makings, which will be discussed more
later on (hrjournal, 2010).
Regardless of the number of interviewers or what their background is, all of
them have to take part in training courses because although interviews are
known as the best and most wildly used selection method, in the hands of
unskilled interviewers it can end in a failure (Hackett, 2003).

11 “Southwest Airlines” selection process
8

2-‐3.2 Biographical Measures

Biographical measures also known as Biodata are based on the notion of
‘behavioral consistency’, which essentially means, “Past behavior is the best
predictor of future behavior”. It assumes that past behaviors can be fairly
accurate in reflecting one’s attitude, personality attributes, and experience, skills,
and abilities. Thus by measuring past performance a reasonably correct and
realistic prediction of future performance will be possible (U.S. OPM, 2010).
These tests are mostly developed by “Subject Matter Experts”, via behavioral
examples. A typical question can be asking about candidates’ reaction in a
predetermined scenario, which is likely to have occurred in his/her life.
Normally there are 10 to 30 questions, which have to be measured using a five-‐
point scale12(U.S. OPM, 2010).
In general there are a number of evidences that suggested a reasonable validity
level for this method. However, it varies a lot depending on the nature of the job
(Cook, 2009). From the applicants’ point of view, since some Biodata questions
might not seem to be relevant to the job, it is likely to be seen as unfair and
invasive.
Development costs of these scenarios can be high, considering the required time
and expertise to develop the items, set the scoring strategy, and also validation
process. On the contrary utilizing computerized scoring system; the
administration costs of this method can be reasonably low. However it should be
taken into account that this method is not sufficient as the solely predictor,
especially if it is not a face-‐to-‐face, and a better result can be provided by
employing it along with another method such as cognitive ability tests or merged
with an interview (Hough and Oswald, 2000).

2-‐3.3 Work samples and simulations

This test is based on an observation on applicants’ behavior in an almost
identical situation, as they will face at work. Candidates are asked to do, as s/he
would perform in a real working situation dealing with the given hypothetical
scenario.
This “role play” exercise can be used for those jobs that applicants are expected
to already have the essential skills and knowledge and there are no trainings
planed for the applicants after selection.
Scoring applicants in this method requires highly trained assessors, who can
distinguish fake behaviors and avoid objectivity and bias in rating. Although this
method is considered as a valid predictor of job performance and appeared to be
a fair method to applicants, considering high development and administrative
costs, better to be employed for limited number of applicants applying for a
competency-‐dependant, critical job (U.S. OPM, 2010).

2-‐3.4 Psychometric tests

12 1 for “Strongly disagree” to 5 for “Strongly agree”
9
In general, there are two types of tests used in selection process, cognitive and
personality tests. Typically cognitive tests (e.g. general abilities) have been found
as reliable predictors, while it is still arguable that whether the results are worth
it compare to other methods of evaluating candidates’ abilities such as academic
qualifications, which can be implemented cheaper and easier (Newell, 2006).
Personality tests were traditionally known as a measurement with low validity
predictor for employees’ future job performance, however the poor image of
these measures has been moderated or even amended to a positive confidence,
as a result of several researches (from Guion and Gottier, 1965 to Robertson and
Kinder, 1993), which supported the credibility and usefulness of personality
measures in selection.
Among all of the “big five personality dimensions”13, as Salgado (1998) reported
conscientiousness and emotional stability have been found as more relevant and
valid than “general mental ability” measures (Salgado, 2003).
Emotional Intelligence (EQ) tests can also be categorized in psychometric tests.
EQ tests essentially measure self-‐awareness, ability to manage emotions,
motivating oneself, empathy, and handling relationships, which are of the key
factors for various types of jobs. Although their validity is considerably higher
for those kinds of jobs with high involvement of interpersonal relations and
teamwork, they evidently have a correlation with job performance (Ones et al.,
2007).
As long as they are not customized specifically for an organization, in general
these tests are cost-‐effective methods. The problem with non-‐customized tests is
as they are available to applicants for an inexpensive price; one can memorize
and fake them (U.S. OPM, 2010).

2-‐3.5 Assessment centers

Assessment centers in general can have fairly high prediction validity and also
are evaluated as a fair and comprehensive method by candidates. However it is
still debatable that allocating weight to different dimensions and also ranking
candidates makes it vulnerable to error and subjectivity. Based on a thorough
review on several studies Lievens (1998) suggested some practical ways in
terms of dimensions, assessors, and situational exercises, and also the procedure
of observation, assessment, and integration, to enhance the results of assessment
centers.
Among several different exercises being used in assessment centers, Lievens et al.
(2006) has proven that some are more effective than the others. Using a panel of
experts, they found that competitive group discussions are one of the most
revealing methods. Their findings generally confirmed Gosling et al.’s (1998)
conclusion, that there are some aspects of personality, which candidates only
expose in a group discussion.
After all, considering high expenses of assessment centers and the fact that there
are other selection methods with the same level of validity and more cost-‐
effective, it is an important decision for organizations to make (Newell, 2006).

13 Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism
10

Assessment
Personality
Center Neuroticism Extroversion Openness Agreeable Conscientiousness
Factor
Exercise
Competitive
✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓
Group
Co-‐operative
✗ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓
Group
Oral
✓ ✗ ✗ ✗ ✗ ✓
Presentation
Role Play ✗ ✓ ✗ ✗ ✓ ✗
Case Analysis ✗ ✗ ✗ ✗ ✗ ✓
In Tray ✗ ✗ ✗ ✗ ✗ ✓

Six assessment center exercises and their ability to reveal candidates’ personality
aspects (Cook, 2009)

On the other hand one of the contributing factors that might lead a final decision-‐
maker to bias, is getting information about the applicants from multi channels,
which is inevitable in assessment centers (Kennerley and Mason, 2008).

2-‐3.1 Other selection methods

There are a number of other selection methods such as telephone interviews,
physical abilities test, graphology, and reference checking, which some are
mostly applicable in screening stage and as pre-‐interview tools, and some turned
out to be not good enough to be used anymore. For example Neter and Ben-‐
Shakhar (1989) suggested that there is no worthwhile information in examining
candidates’ hand writhing. However they recommended future studies to ensure
that their conclusion was not just a result of lack of knowledge in extracting
useful information from applicants’ hand writing sample. Yet, there are not many
constructive studies in this field afterwards (Cook, 2009).

Selection methods, popularity and validity

As a significant factor in selection, the validity and effectiveness of different
methods and their correlation with job performance has been the subject of
numerous researches for several years (such as, Barrick and Mount, 1991;
McDaniel et al., 1994; Schmidt and Hunter, 1998; Salgado, Viswesvaran, and
Ones, 2001; McDaniel et al., 2007) (Oostrom et al., 2010).
Apart from accuracy and reliability there is another factor, which affects the
popularity of selection methods. This very important factor is the selected
11
employee’s future motivation, commitment, and sense of belonging after joining
the organization. Thus those methods, which involve more actual contacts and
consequently provide more chance to negotiate both the applicant and the
employers’ concerns, would be more popular (Redman and Wilkinson, 2006).
According to CIPD Recruitment and Talent annual report (2010), similar to
previous years, “competency-‐based interviews” have been selected as the most
common used selection method, followed by other types of interview. As stated
in this report there is a dramatic decrease in using “general ability tests”14.
However the popularity of skill-‐specific tests (literacy and numeracy) has
remained quite stable.
According to the association of the selection decisions’ validity and employees’
future performance Newell (2001) suggested that traditional methods of
selection such as unstructured interviews and references do not lead to reliable
predictions.
Table below demonstrates the ranking of selection methods used (in percentage)
according to CIPD survey results in 2009 and 2010.15

2010 survey 2009 survey
Competency-‐based interviews 78 69
Interviews following contents of CV/application
64 68
form
Structured interviews (panel) 61 59
Tests for specific skills 48 50
Telephone interviews 47 38
Personality/attitude/psychometric questionnaire 44 35
Literacy and/or numeracy tests 43 39
Assessment centre 42 35
Group exercise 30 26
General ability tests 27 44
Pre-‐interview references (academic or employment) 16 19
Video CVs 1 n/a
Other 4 6

The importance of ‘decision-‐making’

Making decisions, either big or small, is usually not simple due to uncertainty
and conflict. It becomes more complicated when we face a larger number of
options to choose among, various contingencies, and complex, multi dimensional
values (Payne et al, 1997). Obviously in selection process, involvement of human
behavior and judgment in both sides of the decision process (alternatives and
decision-‐maker) makes it much more vulnerable to errors.

14 27% in 2010 compare to 44% in 2009
15 473 participants in 2010 and 754 in 2009
12
Since a decision often has many variables with different levels of importance, a
decision-‐making process with a complete consideration of all the associated
factors is practically unfeasible. Even if hypothetically, we assume that every
aspect is being considered still there are some cognitive errors and spontaneous
biases that might occur. There is a fundamental approach to decision-‐making,
which presumes every option has its advantages and disadvantages. In the most
basic situation, a decision-‐maker has to consider the environment associated
with a decision, such as all of the alternatives, any related contingencies and
their linked probabilities, and also the value incidental to the outcomes (Payne et
al, 1997).
As has been mentioned earlier, several studies have been conducted to find a
recipe of a rational and logical procedure in decision-‐making and come up with a
tool that would help all the way through this process from gathering data to
forming a decision. However, decisions by definition are concern with the future
and inevitably involve some judgments and predictions.
Regarding to the ideas of Stanovich and West (2000) and Kahneman (2003),
there are two different approaches towards decision-‐making. First refers to
human intuitive system, which is normally immediate, spontaneous, and
emotional. It is typically inherent and does not require conscious effort, while the
second system refers to a gradual, deliberate approach, which is more precise
and rather logical.
Within a similar context but from a different point of view, Daft and Marcic
(2003) categorized decision-‐making methods to “Classical” and “Administrative”.
Basically the classical model follows the pattern of rational problem solving, in
which aims, problems, and all of the available options and their possible
outcomes are crystal clear and accurately defined. In this model measures are
carefully examined and agreed upon and everything is as rational and logical as
possible. On the other hand, administrative approach is how the process of
decision-‐making happens in reality. When in actual, complex situations
managers have to make decisions under uncertainty, it would not be a perfect
rational decision.
Most of decisions in the real world include a certain degree of uncertainty and
complication. To get the best result, a reasonable amount of data from a number
of qualified, knowledgeable sources is needed.

2-‐5.1 Bias

Several studies on human decision making behavior indicate that human being
judgments are often flawed and biased. From the influential groundwork of
Tversky and Kahneman (1973) until now it is generally accepted that in spite of
the fact that human being is capable of acquiring plenty of information through
experience, its ability for dealing with the absorbed data is controversial
(Kennerley and Mason, 2008).

Decision maker’s emotions, perceptions, and various subjective judgments often
influence the final decision. In fact, according to the famous “bounded rationality”
theory of Simon (1983), making a neutral and entirely objective decision is
13
almost impossible in the real world. On the other hand Gkeredakis et al. (2011)
doubted the impossibility of fully rational judgment and argued that rather than
considering it as an unfeasible ideal, decision-‐makers should modify their
approach and look at it as a “complex practicable activity”.
The result of Slovic et al.’s (2004) study on the effect of emotion and rationality
on decision making, supported a previous finding of Hsee et al. (2003), which
introduced the concepts of “hot” and “cold” influential factors on decision
making. Hot or emotional and cold or logical factors from both neurological and
psychological perspective are proven. Similar to much of the literature in this
field Slovic et al. (2004) also claimed that emotion is an indispensable
constituent to rationality.
In a selection decision-‐making process there are two points that are exposed to
bias, first is the data collection process, in which listening skills and knowing
what data to absorb are very important, and second one is making the final
decision.
Among all of the social and decision-‐making biases the ones mentioned below
are some relevant ones, which are more likely to happen within the entire
process of an interview.

2-‐5.1.1 Affect as Information Bias

The “Affect as Information” hypothesis explained how individuals usually over
rely on their feelings in order to form decisions and make judgments. Having
said that feelings only disclose information concerning value, by weighting pros
and cons of things. Affective feelings as opposed to “affective concepts” just
convey those information, which are possible to experience physically, and
seemingly this is the main reason that mostly people find them more reliable
(Gohm and Clore, 2002).
Considering traditional theories of attitude and judgment correlation, assessing
applicants depends on decision-‐makers’ beliefs about their attribute, whereas in
affect as information theory suggests that actual feelings towards applicants
mostly comes from the direct experience with that person during interview.
Although these two theories go hand in hand, research evidence that the
decision-‐maker’s mood state, during his/her direct interaction with the applicant,
influences the final decision independent of his/her beliefs about the object.
Therefore the effect of feelings in decision-‐making is irrefutable as a key source
of information to decision-‐maker (Gohm and Clore, 2002).

2-‐5.1.2 First Impression Bias

Interviewers in some cases are prone to judge applicants according to their first
feelings towards them. This process is mostly subconscious and on the basis of
intuitions (Abraham and Morrison, 2002). Essentially, first impression is not just
about appearance. Gestures or facial expressions including eye contact, postures
or body language, manner of speaking, and also way of expressing emotions are
other factors that might influence decision-‐maker’s judgment about a candidate
(Smith and Mackie, 2007).

14
2-‐5.1.3 Confirmation Bias

Decision-‐makers tend to seek for evidence, recall information, or interpret the
existed data to “confirm” their preconceived idea (Oswald and Grosjean, 2004).
In an interview it can be the influence of an impressive report of prescreening of
a candidate or the effect of “first impression”, which leads to a preconception. It
also might cause “selective attention”.

2-‐5.1.4 Selective Attention Bias

“Selective attention” or “selective search for evidence” happens mostly when the
interviewer’s characteristics, attitude, situation, past experiences, or interests
influence his/her attention points in a data gathering process. It also can happen
as a result of a “confirmation bias” just to approve a preconceived view (Griffin
and Brenner, 2004).

2-‐5.1.5 Similar to Me Bias

The right person for the vacancy does not mean a replica of the manager or the
decision-‐maker (hbr, 2011). However in some cases decision-‐makers tend to
rate those candidates, who have a similar background, attitude, or have anything
in common with them more positively than others. Consequently it might lead to
neglect or possibly accentuate some details about that particular candidate
(Sears and Rowe, 2003).

2-‐5.1.6 Salience Effect

Several studies evidence that there is a connection between decision-‐makers’
memories and her/his judgment. Intuitively decision-‐makers are biased in favor
of salient information since distinctive information compare to moderate
information is more memorable, attract more attention, and therefore
disproportionately influence judgment (Kahneman and Tversky, 2001).
Similarly in case of selection any kind of extraordinary factor, either negative or
positive, might draw more attention, last longer in decision-‐maker’s mind, and
affect the final decision.

2-‐5.1.7 Positivity Effect (Memory Bias)

This bias basically states that older people tend to remember positive
information rather than negative ones (Mather and Carstensen, 2005). Thus this
effect is likely when older adults are involved in any part of the selection process
from interview and data collection to the final stage of decision-‐making.

2-‐5.1.8 Recency

The tendency to pay no attention or even forget information, which are more
distant and focus more on recent data in order to make a decision is called
15
“recency” effect. In a more detailed examination if the target is asked to recall
things that have happened in the past s/he more likely remember them in an
order of the latest, the first, and then the middle events respectively (Murphy et
al., 2006).
This effect can influence the decision-‐maker in an interview when the decision is
being made based on a delayed recall of the interview.

2-‐5.1.9 Role Fulfillment (Self Fulfilling Prophecy)

This bias usually occurs when decision-‐maker wants to match him/herself with
the expectations of others from one in that position. It can also happen when
being in a specific position makes an individual to expect a particular result or
performance from him/herself and believe that his/her expectations should
come true (Biggs, 2009).

2-‐5.1.10 Stereotyping or Source Credibility Bias

Stereotyping is a common prejudice, which occurs when the decision-‐maker
generalizes a specific attribute of the group to which the applicant belongs, to
one applicant. This group can be an age, gender, ethnic status, religion, sexual
orientation, or an organization, which the candidate comes from (Abraham and
Morrison, 2002). Apart from these famous stereotypes, Kahneman and Frederick
(2002) argued that judging a bank teller to be tedious or not creative and active
is also an example of prejudice.
There are many studies on the most obvious and evident biases and
subconscious prejudice such as age, sex, marital status, and race biases in
practice. Considering that biases are inherently unintentional and happen
unconsciously, most of these studies were carried out by assistance of “Implicit
Association Test”(Cook, 2009).
An “IAT” is a computer-‐controlled test, which basically provides an evaluation of
unconscious association of an attribute with a chosen concept by observing the
subjects’ response delays16 (Greenwald et al., 2009).
Davison and Burke (2000) study on gender bias, which proved that regardless of
the decision-‐maker’s gender, both male and females were biased in favor of
selecting male applicants17.

16 In the first phase there are a group of mixed words (e.g. different kinds of jobs) and the subject
is asked to press the right key when an art/culture related job pops up and the left key if a
science/engineering kind of job appears on the screen. Depending on study’s objective, in the
second step some face images, names, or genders randomly appear and the subject is asked to do
the same as the previous step. So far the questions are simple and the reply time is fairly short
(some ½ second per question), in this stage a scrambled mixture of the first two phases’ objects
will pop up, which two group of them share a key and the subject is suppose to classify for
example ‘female’ with ‘art/culture related jobs’ and ‘male’ with ‘ science/engineering jobs’ and
then vice versa. A careful observation of response delays will depict if the subject is
subconsciously biased towards the association of one gender with a certain kind of job. When
someone genuinely believes in a relation between two concepts it takes much less time to press
the key, while if the subject is asked to share a key between two concepts that s/he does not
actually believe in, his/her response time will be considerably longer.

17 Similar results from Ding and Stillman (2005) study in New Zealand.
16
Similarly the results of 25 studies conducted by Gordon and Arvey (2004)
concerning age bias demonstrated an insignificant bias against older applicants.
Also Benard and Paik (2007) found that there is a sensible tendency to filter the
female applicant with children out.
There are numerous studies that prove noticeable existence of race bias in
selection decisions, for example the findings of a study carried out in The
Netherlands by Derous et al. (2008) depicted that the chance of a job seeker with
Arabic-‐sounding name to get selected is one quarter of an ordinary applicant.
The same story is applicable for ethnicity bias. The chance of a White to get a job
is 1.5 times more compare to an African American (Cook, 2009).

2-‐5.1.11 Restriction of Range

Naturally, decision-‐makers tend to avoid using the outermost of the rating range
in evaluation and even if the ratings are not numerical assessors mostly prefer to
“take the middle lane” (Abraham and Morrison, 2002).

2-‐5.1.12 Rosy retrospection Bias

The “Rosy retrospection” can be categorized in memory biases. Mitchell and
Thompson (1994) stated that it basically occurs, when there is a gap between
information gathering and decision-‐making process since human beings tend to
grade past incidents more positively than they would grade immediately after
their observation and data collection.

2-‐5.1.13 Familiarity bias/ Mere Exposure Effect

Preferring an alternative to other options only because it is familiar is called
“mere exposure effect” (Bornstein, 1989). This effect can lead to a bias, when the
selection process is taking place for both internal and external applicants. In
such situations decision-‐maker might express an unjustified partiality towards
those who s/he already knows in the organization.
2-‐5.1.14 Contrast Effect

As Plous (1993) defined, “contrast effect” is judging options either more
positively or more negatively by comparing them with other options, which the
decision-‐maker has been exposed to recently, instead of benchmarks. This effect
influences the results of decision-‐making when decision-‐maker evaluates
candidates relative to other recent ones. If the previous candidate was graded
very poor, the next one might be assessed more optimistically and vice versa.
2-‐5.1.15 Framing Bias

Getting impacted by the way, in which the information is presented is called
“framing bias”. Tversky and Kahneman (1981) introduced this bias and stated
that framing similar information differently can change human being’s decision.
Thus in an interview different self-‐presentations or use different wordings can
affect the decision-‐maker’s judgment, even though the candidates’ skills and
competencies are in the same level.
17
2-‐5.1.16 Halo/Horn Bias

This bias occurs when the overall perception of an applicant is influenced by a
strong trait. “Halo Effect” refers to overrating the candidate since the dominated
feature is a positive one and “Horn Effect” is when it is a negative point and
works against the applicant (Bogardus, 2004).

2-‐5.1.17 Satisficing Bias

When the decision-‐maker is under pressure to make a decision shortly or with
not enough data about the candidate, the decision, which will be made in this
situation is just satisfactory and not the best possible.
This notion originally comes from the concept of “bounded rationality”, which
was introduced by Simon (1960). In fact this term points out the situation, when
the decision maker is under pressure to make the final decision, therefore they
do not have enough time to search thoroughly and seek to optimize their
decisions. Then he proposed the term “Satisficing”, which refers to an insufficient
search for solution that is not more than satisfactory. Unlike what would be
expected, optimizing more often leads to regret, which can be because in this
kind of processes the decision-‐maker is more likely to discern better possible
options that s/he could have chosen than one who go for the first ‘good enough’
choice (Lehrer, 2009).
When managers face a complicated situation, which is difficult to examine
carefully and search exhaustively, or when gathering accurate data is not doable,
they often rely on past experiences, intuitions, general sense, and hunches. These
kind of decision-‐making is quite common, however in British or North American
culture, where rationality is the dominant, approved method, trusting intuitions
is mostly undercover or concealed (Redman and Wilkinson, 2006).

2-‐5.1.18 Possible Threats to Group Decision-‐Making

The growing popularity of team-‐based activities in organizations has provoked
many researches on the quality of group decision-‐making outcomes 18
(Hollenbeck et al., 2010).
In fact, group decision-‐making outcomes are supposed to be better than
individual’s. In the group decisions any disturbing information is suppressed,
thus the process is more efficient and concentration on the main goal is easier
compare to individual decision makings (Janis, 1972). Even only with a common
sense, a group of diverse ideas generates better results than only one perspective.
Moreover members would be able to correct each other’s errors as well.
However there are many arguments about the possible threats to group
decision-‐makings. As the keystone of the studies of this nature, Janis (1972)
observed that when a decision is being made in a group, individuals often censor
their ideas, and enormous unreasonable risks are more likely to be taken.
Another problem with the group decisions might be “overestimation” of group’s
abilities and morals. This delusion of immunity from any mistakes will guide to
“close mindedness” and consequently ignoring any given advises and notices.

18 From under 20% in 1980, to approximately 50% in 1990, to more than 80% in 2000 (Garvey, 2002)
18

2-‐5.1.19 Conforming Bias in Group Decision-‐Making

This common bias is also known as “Groupthink” and “Peer pressure” and it
eventually results in a poor decision-‐making. Its symptoms are “self-‐
suppression”, censoring any disagreement and questions, and also an “illusion of
agreement” would occur in the final decision, since any conflict between
different ideas is getting suppressed, and not the entire group members, actually,
are agreed on the conclusion (Redman and Wilkinson, 2006).

2-‐5.2 Heuristics

In order to make a good decision there are always a sort of trade offs involved. It
is evident in Tversky’s (1996) research that decision-‐makers sometimes make
some decisions that contravene fundamental concepts of rationality. However
according to Payne et al (1997), to deal with complex and unstructured issues
people usually tend to adjust to an effective trade off between effort and
precision.
Depending on the amount of data involved, decision-‐makers normally use
‘heuristics’ to make the problem more comprehensible via either simplifying the
processing procedure or ignoring some of the information available. Some of
these heuristics are in a formal and mathematical pattern (for example
‘elimination by aspects19’) and some are verbal descriptions (e.g. the ‘majority of
confirming dimension’20) (Payne et al, 1997). In more general terms when there
is a gap between demand and capacity in data processing, decision-‐makers tend
to see, hear, and select the set of data selectively according to their level of
simplicity.
In initial experiments, every heuristic was linked with a set of biases (Kahneman
and Frederick, 2002). A close attention is needed since heuristics have two facets,
they can save us time and effort while giving a fairly accurate result and on the
other hand they can also result in significant decision errors. Thus we cannot
consider heuristics and biases as synonym concepts (Payne et al, 1997). Under
certain circumstances, when decision-‐maker is facing an unmanageable amount
of information, or time constraints taking advantage of heuristics is not only
more efficient but also inevitable.

2-‐5.2.1 Representativeness (Heuristics)

Tversky and Kahneman (1982) introduced the notion of “representativeness” as
a form of stereotyping, which refers to the situation that due to a past experience
decision-‐maker generalizes an observed characteristic of a sample to the entire
original population of that sample.
For example in selection process, rejecting all the candidates applying from a
certain university because an applicant from that university has been graded as a

19 Elimination By Aspects (EBA) is excluding options, which do not meet a minimum level of a
certain criteria from the attributes list (Crow, 2004).

20 The Majority of Confirming Dimensions (MCD) is when the decision-‐maker chooses the option
with the most attributes that meet a minimum level of a certain criteria (Fisher, 1999).
19
substandard candidate before is a trap of representativeness. It shows that the
decision-‐maker assumes that that sample is representative of the whole
population.
Summary

To sum up, taking the importance of HR functions and especially selection into
account, making a flawless decision in both choosing the most appropriate
selection tool and selecting the best possible candidate is a crucial issue for any
organization.
A good selection decision not only benefits the organization by adding value to
its structure, performance, and consequently outcome, but also helps the
employee to enjoy the experience of organizational commitment and job
satisfaction as a result of being fit for the role.
While a bad selection decision can cause many financial and functional problems,
increase the number of complaints21, and therefore damage the organization’s
image. It also might waste a lot of time and energy to be compensated (U.S. Office
of Personnel Management, 2010).
A thorough study on different selection tools depicted that interviews are the
most valid and popular tools, which also have the advantage of face validity22.
Moreover since interviews can embrace other reliable assessment methods such
as biographical measures, and also assessment centers as one of the increasingly
more popular tools include at least one interview, thus examining the process of
decision-‐making based on interviews would be practically more helpful.
There have been numerous studies on how to measure the success or failure of
selection method. As it is not the main focus of this study it has been just briefly
mentioned.
Rational and real decision-‐making process has been explicitly described and also
through a close study on a variety of biases, it has been discovered that some of
them are more likely to happen during selection process. To clarify the
correlation between the selected biases and selection decisions, a brief
explanation of each is provided.
As mentioned earlier there is a gap in literature on the interrelationship of biases
and selection decisions, which will be discussed further in the following chapters.

21 Customer/manager/employee complaints
22 Face validity or applicant reaction reveals the popularity of a method among candidates and
also applicants’ opinion about the fairness of the test.
20

Chapter 3
Methodology

Research Question

The present research intends to discover the biases and errors during selection
decision-‐making process and their implication on the final decline/accept
decision. In the end by recommending a number of action-‐plans, the author has
tried to help organizations to alleviate the impact of these unconscious biases
and enhance their decision-‐making.
To identify the research question and develop the foundation of this research an
extensive study has been conducted on selection methods and also decision-‐
making process, heuristics, and biases to discover the correlated areas. A list of
possibly relevant biases was set according to the existing literature. Initially
‘interviews’ were selected as the most reliable and popular method to discuss
but after implementing the interviews and by analyzing the results it has been
discovered that to enhance the final outcome, exploiting a number of methods in
conjunction can be beneficial; hence the main focus of the study has slightly
amended23 to embrace the ultimate decision even if it involves other methods of
selection such as assessment centers.

23 According to Kvale (1996) applying some minor changes during the qualitative research with
a ‘miner’ approach is predictable.
21

Research design
Qualitative vs. Quantitative
Although the term “qualitative research” is yet an ambiguous concept and refers
to a broad range of methods there is a general agreement on its meaning and
contextual use.
Qualitative research is a “systematic empirical inquiry into meaning”, which
basically means an organized investigation based on people’s experiences and
their ways to make sense of them, with a realistic interpretive approach.
According to this all-‐embracing definition of qualitative research stated by Shank
(2002) and the nature of this study a qualitative method was adopted.
In general, through qualitative method a profound understanding and a great
chance of exploring the subject are achievable.
According to the literature, in order to be able to address potential relevant
biases within selection process, studying people’s decision-‐making subconscious
behavior, in organizational context and more specifically selection process, a
qualitative research seemed to be the most appropriate approach.

Inductive vs. Deductive

From a completely different perspective, which is the logical point of view,
researches group into two main categories, ‘inductive’ and ‘deductive’.
Essentially a ‘deductive’ or ‘top-‐down’ approach refers to the studies, in which
the reasoning begins from more general to more specific and it is basically
“knowledge-‐driven” while an ‘inductive’ or ‘bottom-‐up’ approach works the
opposite way and it usually is “observation-‐driven” (Skinner, 2010).
In this study a combination of these two methods has been employed, which
means that in one point the theoretical part required some observations and
then as a result of interpreting those observations, some new patterns have been
identified and it eventually led to development of new knowledge.

Research method

Essentially data in qualitative research comes from different sources such as
interviews, reports, feedback notes, observations, and open-‐ended surveys24,
among which interviews were adopted as data gathering tools in the present
study. Along with the interviews due to the essence of this research, which is
related to unconscious factors, a careful observation was in place as well to

24
Open-‐ ended surveys do not limit respondent to a number of responses and s/he is free to
answer in his/her words. This type of survey essentially provides qualitative data as opposed to
Closed-‐ended survey with predetermined options to choose among, which provide quantitative
data (qsrinternational, 2011).
22
scrutinize the interviewees’ reactions, tone of voice, and facial expressions to
each question and analyze their answers accordingly.

Interviews; Semi structured vs. Unstructured

Depending on its objective, qualitative research can be done through either semi-‐
structured or unstructured data gathering. Since a great deal of data should be
collected from different sources and also carefully analyzed, qualitative research
is “resource intensive” in terms of time and material (Ritchie and Lewis, 2003).
According to this study’s requirements, a semi-‐structured interviewing approach
was selected. Given the fact that in semi-‐structured interviews, apart from the
preset questions the interviewee is free to guide the interviewer to a direction,
which s/he has not well thought of before, it was a great opportunity for the
author to probe new information and in some cases undiscovered aspects of this
study.

Interviews; Miner vs. Traveler

From another point of view, Kvale (1996) introduced two interesting contrasting
types of interviews, based on interviewer’s approach. A “miner” and a “traveler”;
In the miner type the information need to be discovered by digging and
exploring the data obtained from the interviewees’ responses and his/her pure
experience should be translated to useful knowledge. In this kind the interviewer
have to mine deeper and seek unconscious responses as well. While in the
“traveler” approach interviewer explores more subjects superficially and does
not have a rout plan. Thus s/he goes freely with the flow of the conversation.
Essentially the interviewer is a listener and follower more than a guide and
based on where s/he has been taken, in the end the key question might
fundamentally change. By gathering his/her observations and analyzing them
from a new experienced perspective the interviewer might form a new
knowledge.
Regarding Kvale’s theory, as it is expected the researcher have been taken the
“miner’s” role during this study.

Data collection

Data collection and research methods should properly match the objective of
study. In many cases using more than one tool results in having more
comprehensive data (Axinn and Pearce, 2006).
In the present study understanding the existence and correlation of these
phenomena could be very difficult or impossible to achieve through a
quantitative research. And also given the fact that a very systematic and
exhaustive examination was needed on every matter, an improved and reliable
method of data gathering was necessary. Thus interviews were preferred to
questioners.

23
Interviews

The interview questions have been designed based on the existing literature
concerning the main and subordinate research areas.
The interview questions were designed in a way to encourage the interviewees
to participate actively and also according to the ethics and regulations of the
university and the targeted companies.
Initially the target was sending out 20 interview requests and was expecting to
get some 10 positive responses. However the query turned out to be too invasive
to the organizations’ privacy, and the author encountered difficulties gaining the
target organizations’ agreement to disclose their selection decision-‐making
‘secret’ strategies and a significant amount of those approached, refused to have
an interview due to the confidentiality of the requested information and the
privacy policy of the organizations. Eventually the author has managed to
conduct 2 interviews with the ‘recruitment project manager’ at Accenture and
the ‘resourcing relationship manager’ at Telefonica (O2).
After arranging the interviews the researcher was asked to send the questions
beforehand to the target organizations to obtain an approval, according to their
policy.
During the interviews in many cases, since the interviewees were not aware of
specific types of biases occurring in their decisions, initially they claimed that
they have never faced such a bias in their selection decisions, thus a number of
tangible examples were needed to help them picture the situation and find the
similar stories in their organizations.
Besides, considering the sensitivity of this study’s subject and questions, only a
poor question wording or a simple misinterpretation could make it worthless.
Thus both in the questions, which were sent to the interviewee and also in the
actual interview situation a very careful awareness of what words and phrases to
use was a major concern.
Since the emphasis of the study was on interviews, the target organizations had
to have at least one kind of interviews within their selection tools, which was
another restricting factor.

Telefonica
Telefonica is one of the world leaders and the first in Europe in the
telecommunication sector. It is an entirely private company providing
communication, information, and entertainment solutions with 25 branches in
Europe, Latin America, and Africa. Telefonica is known with its 5 different
brands all over the world25 and it operates under the ‘O2’ brand in the UK.
Approximately 63,000 candidates apply for a job in Telefonica every year and
currently it has some 285,000 employees around the world (Telefonica, 2011).

Accenture
Accenture is an international company functioning in management consulting
and technology service. With over 223,000 employees it is active in 180 offices in

25 Telefonica, Movistar, O2, Vivo, and Terra
24
more than 120 countries. There are about 60,000 applicants every year that
apply for a vacancy in this well-‐known and successful international company
(Accenture, 2011).

Analysis

As stated by Van Aken et al. (2007), analysis of the semi or unstructured data
will provide researchers with a comprehensive insight into human beings’,
organizations’, and cultures’ attitudes, values, incentives, and actual behaviors
(Ereaut, 2011). It also assists in understanding people’s psychological
perceptions and interpretations in decision-‐making (Ritchie and Lewis, 2003).
To understand the underlying meanings of the interviewees’ responses and
extract the relevant required information out of semi-‐structured interviews a
thorough analysis has been undertaken. Reviewing the pertinent academic
literature and comparing it with the findings of the present study to identify the
overlaps and also find the gaps has helped a lot to verify the final results.
During the present study the researcher has tried to be impartial in collecting
information by recording the interviews and also take some notes meanwhile.
The recorded interviews have been transcribed carefully and convey the exact
words of the interviewees’. The researcher also has attempted to be realistic and
avoid any biases in interpreting the obtained information.

Summary

In the end the results depicted that human subconscious biases in decision-‐
making is an influential factor in selection decisions. However it has not received
enough attention so far. The results also showed a more evident relation
between particular kinds of biases and certain types of selection methods.
A number of suggestions are recommended in the final chapter to be employed
by organizations in order to alleviate the damages caused by subconscious biases
and errors in selection decisions.

25

•Analysis and Findings
Analysis and Findings

The premise of the present study was to identify likely subconscious errors and
biases, to which selection decisions are exposed as well as finding solutions to
dispel the impact of those addressed biases in order to enhance the final decision.
As explained in chapter 3, two semi-‐structured interviews were conducted. The
targets of the interviews were selection decision-‐makers from recruitment
department of two significantly big companies with the average of 60,000
applicants per year.
Essentially the interview questions were designed in three sections; the target
companies’ selection process, their method of decision-‐making, and the decision-‐
makers’ opinion about a number of biases, which were found relevant in
selection decisions.
Selection Process

Company A

26
In company A the selection process starts with submitting an online application
form accompanied by applicants’ CV. An outsourced team in India is in charge of
pre-‐selection process (screening) based on a number of criteria, which is
provided for them in form of a checkbox list. As the first filter within selection
process it can have a great impact on the quality of the final outcome.
In this company the selection process consists of a face-‐to-‐face interview
followed by a half a day assessment center.
The first round of interviews comprises three sections, which all together take
approximately 40 minutes.
The first section is about the candidates’ interest in the company and according
to Marti “it is just to ensure that they know what this is all about and are actually
interested”. The second section is “competency questions”, which are technical,
job related skills, and the third part is a mini case study. “We give the candidates
a paragraph to read and ask a number of questions around what they thought
the issues were in the case and what they would do to resolve them.”
Overall in the first round of interviews, company A is deploying a wide range of
questions to evaluate the candidates against a variety of aspects such as
motivation, general knowledge about the industry, behavior, job related
competencies, and comprehension and problem-‐solving abilities.
The assessment center counts for roughly 70% of the entire process. There are
usually between 6 to 10 candidates. In-‐tray exercises, writing an email to check
their literacy skills, and another case study are some of the exercises in this part.
In the end they have a one-‐to-‐one interview, in which applicants are asked to
reflect what they think about their performance during the group work.
Although they are utilizing a broad range of different tools, they have never
deployed any sorts of ‘psychometric’ tests. They do not believe in their reliability
since they are available for an inexpensive price and people can learn them and
misrepresent themselves.
“The selection method in this company changes occasionally”, they recently
changed the format of the assessment center, “the in-‐tray exercises just added to
this part because they thought that in-‐tray tests are more relevant to the type of
work”. They also design new case studies quite frequently based on their new
experiences.

Company B

In company B the selection method is not only dependent on the vacant position
but also on the country. As an international company they face this serious
problem of lack of consistency in their methods, values, and approaches.
In general for junior positions like retail and customer service the process starts
with an on-‐line application. Those who meet the required criteria then have a
telephone interview, which is a competency based interview. Successful
applicants are invited to an assessment center including an interview with the
line manager, a competency-‐based interview, and also an exercise related to the
27
role they have applied for26. This is normally the last stage and after that they
will be accepted or declined.
For higher managerial specialist hire the on-‐line application form is more
detailed and if they get through they will be invited to an interview. Interviews
are normally between 60 to 90 minutes with the line-‐manager and are followed
by another interview with the second line-‐manager and then it will be an offer or
decline.
Moreover depend on the role type and the country they might have assessment
centers and/or psychometric tests as well. “For example in Germany they tend to
have more assessment centers, which is something just historical, since they
have been doing it in the past” explained Martin.
In the UK a member of resourcing team and the line manager in collaboration
usually conduct the interviews while in some countries like Czech republic it is
only the resourcing team and in Germany just the line manager.
Martin explained that their method is “consistent in country but not necessarily
in different countries”, which is not what it can be seen. There is an obvious
inconsistency in their entire selection process not only across countries but also
in the UK.
Marti added, “We are going to operate as one team and it means one behavior,
one culture, and one identity as a company.” However this is yet to be discovered
that whether this uniform culture and approach is a proper solution.
They strongly believe in investing in resourcing. Martin explained “we have to
make the right investment in right place because if you get it wrong the
consequences are much more expensive”. She added “we have to make sure that
everyone who is doing the interview is trained properly, which probably is not
the case right now.”
They currently have changed to a resourcing model for managerial hiring in the
UK called RPO27, which has made the managerial hiring more robust. Prior to
that hiring managers were responsible for the whole recruitment and they did
not necessarily follow ‘best practice’, they did not reject candidates in a timely
way and back it with a feedback.
In general it has been observed that in the selection process in this company
there are many subjective decisions involved, which makes it highly
unstructured, erratic, and difficult to control.

Overall the selection methods in these two companies have significant
differences and the interviewees had their own analysis of advantages and
disadvantages of their methods, which will be discuss in the following chapter.

Decision-‐making Methods

26 As Martin explained, “For example in retail it might be like a mystery shop exercise and in
contact centers it might be a role-‐play”.
27 Recruitment Process Outsourcing
28
Company A

The pre-‐selection process keeps changing to find a way to handle some 60,000
applications per year as accurate and cost-‐effective as possible.
Marti expressed that “from the beginning it is not a perfect selection method,
there has been a lot of complaints from the rejected applicants. The difficulty is
finding a balance between efficiency and accuracy”.
Regarding to the structure of the interview Marti explained that “the
interviewers are provided with a sheet of potential questions and they have the
candidates’ CVs, so depending on the position the candidate has applied for, the
interviewers would choose what questions to ask.”
The interviewer in the first round is either a member of Recruitment Team, or a
Manager from Consulting. In Marti’s opinion decision-‐makers are noticeably
different in terms of scoring applicants and decision-‐making approaches
depending on their background. For example strategy people tend to be more
careful into details and also tougher in scoring, and in general “not as generous
as HR people”, explained Marti.
In this stage the decision-‐maker is the interviewer him/herself. They are
provided with a list of questions with four options to score28 while each question
is associated with an importance level.
Here the decision-‐makers have a list of phrases and points as indicators and
pointing to particular things results in getting certain scores.
About the candidates, whose scores are on the edge there has been always a
dilemma whether or not they have to get through to the next stage. This is one of
the other vulnerable spots to be biased since it is after the interview, there is no
other guidance, and it is completely dependent on how the decision-‐maker feels.
“It is one of the situations that you need to trust your gut feelings. Here I would
ask myself whether I can see this candidate working for me or not”.
All the interviewers should have many years of experience and also must go
through extensive trainings. “It is a lot of guidance but the decision is still partly
subjective, I think these things are always subjective to a certain extent”.
In general Marti believes that junior interviewers turn out to be better decision-‐
makers. The reason might be they are closer to the experience of candidates.
Decision-‐making in the assessment center is more complicated. There is usually
one assessor per two applicants and they are observing their activities both
directly and indirectly throughout the exercises.
The final interview reflects how well applicants can criticize themselves and
their performance and as Marti said, “that pulls out a kind of self awareness”.
“Right at the end of the day, the assessors come together and discuss their points
and share their comments. “They usually come to an agreement in the end!” said
Marti.
The interviewers are asked to make notes and comments in addition to the
scores they give. Thus in general the decision-‐making process in this company is
a combination of reason-‐based (comments, notes, and justifications) and value-‐
based (questions’ weight and marks).
This suppose to help them to think more carefully while they are scoring the
applicants, as they need to have a kind of written justifications for every mark.

28 1: Very bad, 2: Bad, 3:Good, and 4: Very good
29
However according to Marti in this company these notes are just being used as a
major problem arises. Thus obviously they do not take note taking as serious as
they should. Marti added “very rarely in case of a major problem or complaint a
‘recruitment senior manager’ would be resolving it with talking to the
interviewer and going through the notes”.
The final decision is made on the same day. As Marti said “I do agree that
sometimes maybe thinking things over, might make more sense but I think
immediate reaction would be probably more relevant.”

Company B

Normally the line manager makes the final decision and the resourcing team
controls the entire process. If the line manager did not interview the candidate
s/he gets the interviewer’s recommendations and notes or might meet the
candidate in the final stage.
Martin added, “As a line manager normally you want somebody who does a great
job. Not many line managers think about progression planning unless they have
been asked by HR”. Thus consulting with the line manager is very important as it
gives context to the hire and assures the decision-‐maker that from high level
strategy perspective this is the right person to choose.
The structure of the questions very much depends on the type of role. In
technology roles is very specific and in check box format just to see whether they
have the required skills or not. In the competency-‐based questions is mostly
‘give me an example of when you demonstrated an excellent performance?’ and
will be rated against competencies and for more managerial roles is much more
about their experience, ambitions, goals, and also insight about the company.
Nevertheless for each role they have a set of points that the interviewers are
looking for.
Regarding to the interviewers gut feelings and their influence on the final result
Martin stated “there is always a place to use your gut feelings and it is very much
about how you get on with somebody, but you have to make sure that you are
going through the structured interview procedure as well.”
However they train their managers to recognize their gut feelings and put them
aside during the interview and come back to them in the end to see if they are
relevant.
“With some of our line managers because they use their gut feelings more than
they should do, they make their decisions very quickly and it is a real challenge”,
added Martin.
It takes about 5 days on average to make the decision about the candidate after
the last interview. Martin explained, “After the interview you have a
conversation with the line manager and negotiate with the candidates about the
different packages they might want.”
The rating system is based on weighted questions and the interviewer rates the
candidates from 1 to 5. However the decision is not based on the total score an
applicant can get. They believe that the new employee’s KSAs should complete
the team and cover the team’s deficiencies.
30
As a highly team-‐oriented company fitting in the team is one of their most
important concerns.
In the end when they call the applicants to inform them about the results, no
matter if it is a yes or no, they have to provide a feed back and tell the candidate
the positive and negative points in his/her performance within the process.

Biases

Affect as information
Company A
It was one of the biases that Marti simply confirmed its existence. Generally
speaking, during an interview there are always some sort of feelings involved,
either negative or positive, that might influence the final decision, even
interviewer’s mood on the day. “Despite all the trainings it happens especially
when someone is really on the edge.”
Company B
“I do agree with that and I think one of the things that I experienced is the effect
of fatigue particularly by running long assessment centers or back to back
interviews.” To reduce its effect they designed a job rotation plan for their
interviewers and assessors on a 6 months basis.
Moreover in this company since in the end the final decision is a combination of
ideas the impact of the interviewers’ feelings towards an applicant will be
considerably blunted.

First impression
Company A
“It definitely affects the decision, when you have someone’s CV the first thing you
want to know is how s/he looks like.” It is clearly written on the website in the
dress code section that you have to dress formal and smart on interview day, so
“if someone even has not bothered to look smart for that day, probably s/he
would not be for your company”, but it does not work vice versa, another suit
and tie does not make a difference.
It more happens for interviewers with less work experience, because after a
while you will find them all the same, and just something too different would
influence your decision.”
Company B
Martin believed that first impression has an undeniable unconscious affect on
the decision.
Apart from training the interviewees in this company they planned a ‘refreshing
session’ in the end of the day. Basically in these sessions a number of line
managers and HR specialists gather to discuss all the interviews of the day and
31
the interviewer shares his/her observations, notes, and reasoning about every
candidate with the group.
Although getting help from fresh minds and unbiased third party might help, it
will increase the risk of negative group effects and also it very much depends on
how the interviewer conveys the situation and describes the applicant. Since
these people were not directly involved with the applicant, the interviewer might
communicate the bias unconsciously.

Confirmation bias
Company A
Partial interpretation in order to justify the interviewers’ gut feelings or what
they have got from the candidate’s first impression is common and unfortunately
they do not have any strategies to deal with its effects.
Company B

It is very difficult to deal with the impact of this bias since it is extremely hidden;
therefore the most important thing is to recognize it.
In this company they try to make sure that they have the recruiter and the hiring
manager side by side so they can challenge each other’s opinions.

Selective attention and familiarity bias
Company A
“I think that does happen”. Marti believes that it depends on the decision-‐
maker’s work experience, “I think where we do have this kind of bias is in the
consultants who are interviewing. Of course you try not to be biased but it is
inevitable when you interview someone who has got very similar background to
you, you sort of warm to him/her more.” In some cases it seems to be the matter
of getting into a proper conversation within an interview, when the conversation
goes on spontaneously, naturally the interviewer feels closer to the applicant.
Basically in the first round of interviews they do not have a strategy to deal with
this kind of bias, “because it is all individual one-‐to-‐one interviews”. However in
the second round with choosing the assessors usually half/half from HR and
Consultancy Team, they have tried to moderate the effect of this bias.

Company B
Martin believes that it does happen and it also affects the interviewers’ notes. “In
the refreshing session we try to reduce the effect of these biases” stated Marti.
However these biases also make the interviewers notes and comment selective
and biased thus how the interviewer transfers his/her observations is important
as well. Seemingly panel interviews can be a helpful way to decrease ‘selective
attention’ and ‘familiarity bias’.

Similar to me Bias
32
Company A
“I would say ‘self reflection’ is the biggest problem,” stated Marti. Most of the
interviewers score the candidates who are more similar to them higher.

Company B
Martin explained that she has faced this problem several times in her career and
she undoubtedly added, “Yes they do think that the more similar to them the
better”.
There is a tendency of self-‐reflection in hiring managers to look for what they
can see in themselves or in their own experience to judge candidates. They
basically project their behavior to the candidate. Martin subtly described, “This is
a real challenge because they do not really see the candidate they just have a
mirror of themselves.”

Memory biases: Salience effect, positivity effect, Recency bias, and Rosy
retrospection
Company A
In this company the decisions are made on the spot and by adding up the scores
in the first round of interviews. For the second round with discussing ideas and
referring to the notes taken during the day, they try to prevent memory biases.
Regarding to ‘Positivity effect’, Marti pointed out an interesting view that it is not
a matter of age, but how positive they are, clearly depends on where they come
from. “It is more noticeable between professionalism and experience.” For
example interviewers from IT department or HR specialists are much softer than
people from strategy or finance. Moreover it is about the gender as well,
conflicting with one would expect, female interviewers tend to be harder than
males.
Company B
As it takes up to 5 days to make the final decision after interview in this company
they are prone to memory biases. It seems to be a challenging problem in this
company as they normally have 4 to 5 days interviews in a row and a number of
interviews a day. Martin agreed, “There is the risk that the candidate you saw the
last you remember the most”. However they believe there is a benefit in delaying
the decision. As mentioned earlier consulting with a higher manager takes place
during this period.
To reduce the impact of memory biases they normally have a ‘wash-‐up’ session
at the end of the day. This mind refreshing session is essentially to reflect what
they thought about the candidates by going through their notes and review their
memories. Martin added, “You have to make sure that you have really good notes
and write up exactly what it was so you can trust them and reflect on them”.
Note-‐taking skill becomes very effective in this matter. As Martin has
experienced “Sometimes notes can be very bad or I have seen people coming out
of the interview with absolutely nothing”. Therefore making sure that the hiring
manager is trained enough to produce very good interview notes is essential.

33
Role fulfillment bias
Company A
According to Marti in this company they have not faced this problem.

Company B
Martin found it very interesting and said, “It is not necessarily something that I
have personally come across but I would imagine it probably does happen”.

Stereotyping
Company A

“I think what is quite interesting is that when you read someone’s CV, and you
see what their background is, you definitely form preconceptions about them,
which might turn out to be true and might not.” She admitted the fact that
stereotyping happens very often for example people who have a lot of charity
work in their CVs, would always be viewed as good, caring, responsible people,
which might be wrong. But definitely something like gender, age, and race are
not the case for stereotyping.

Company B
“I definitely think it happens,” said Martin. However it seems that the main
problem with stereotyping is decision-‐makers do not know that they do it. In this
company since ‘organizational culture’ is a very important factor they mostly
stereotype people according to the background they come from and judge
whether or not they can fit in this culture.
Marti believed, “People bring their behavior with them from their previous
working environment” and decision-‐makers usually presume that applicants are
institutionalized with the culture of where they come from, which sometimes
turns out to be relevant.
According to Martin some types of stereotyping such as religion or sexual
orientation is completely inappropriate to judge people upon but she admitted
that there are always some people stereotyping and it affects their judgments
inappropriately.

Restriction of Range
Company A
In this company they solved this problem by giving just 4 options to the
interviewer to rank the candidate. Although it makes them to decide whether
they want to say ‘Yes’ or ‘No’, she agreed that people usually give 2s and 3s much
more than 1s and 4s.
34
Company B
In this company they have 1 to 5 ratings as a benchmark but accepting or
rejecting a candidate is not necessarily based on the numbers. Martin expressed,
“people tend to choose the middle one and it makes it useless. I have definitely
experienced that”. Apparently they did not find it a substantial problem because
their decisions are not dependent on these ratings and they do not really value
them as a tool of selection.

Contrast effect
Company A
“That is very interesting and I definitely agree.” Unconsciously the decision-‐
maker’s expectations lower after a number of weak candidates in a row.
She added, “If I get 3 of bad ones in a row and the fourth one is pretty good I
would give them the benefit of that, someone that I would not choose after a very
good applicant.”
Company B
“I definitely agree that it happens and it is a really hard question” Martin
expressed. It is very difficult to prevent this bias but apparently one of the
advantages of their delay in final results and also the wash-‐up session is to help
them to assess again what they have been doing during the day.

Framing bias
Company A
“It depends on what they are presenting and also depends on their justification”.
Normally the interviewer would challenge it and ask the candidate to give some
examples or explain it more detailed.
Company B
Interestingly they are taking advantage of this bias rather than getting deceived
by it. Martin explained, “Actually it is quite useful because you end up with a
candidate who is a great sales man!”. However the most important part, which is
recognizing the bias is yet a challenge.

Halo/Horn effect
Company A
Marti again believes that “It depends”. If that outstanding feature is a key criteria
that one have to have for the role they have applied for, it tend to be effective.
Company B
“It surely happens” Martin stated. She also believed that the only way to combat
that is using different kinds of questions to give candidates the opportunity to
35
tell us about their negative aspects as well as positives. However again the
biggest challenge is identifying this bias to be able to control and guide it.

Satisficing bias
Company A
The initial interview is supposed to be 40 minutes but officially the interviewer
have one full hour to discuss something further if it is necessary, so interviews
are more flexible in terms of time. But it definitely does happen in pre-‐selection
process, sometimes the assessors do not even read the entire notes. That is why
the applicants are highly advised to write the most important things in the
beginning of each paragraph.
Company B
Since the selection process in this company is not strictly structured they have
the flexibility to re-‐invite the applicants to another interview if they think they
need more information. “There is no harm in inviting an applicant for another
interview but I personally think it is a result of lack of experience,” Martin stated.
She believed that getting the right information in the set time is a skill, which
every interviewer should acquire.

Group decision-‐making
Company A
If you consider all the assessors within the entire process as a group, the
decisions made in the first round of interviews are most of the times not as
accurate as it has to be only because the decision-‐maker often relies on the next
round of selection. They often think that ‘I will get this candidate through and if
s/he does not deserve it, will not be able to pass the next round’.
Marti explained “there have been situations where the group has not been able
to come to a decision on a particular person”. In such cases usually the group will
present the case for a ‘senior recruitment manager’. “S/He might phone the first
interviewer and go through all the notes and comments about that candidate to
make the final decision.”
Company B
Group decision-‐making is a challenging trade off. According to Martin, “You have
to decide who are the people in your group of decision-‐makers”. In their ‘wash-‐
up’ session they have a combination line-‐managers and decision-‐makers and also
someone as the controller of the group to ask every single member’s feedbacks.
Martin believed that making sure that the session is structured and everybody
gets a chance to speak would enhance the outcome.

36
Representativeness (heuristics)
Company A
It seems to be a common phenomenon and Marti believes that it make it more
difficult for that particular candidate to prove him/herself.
Company B
Martin confirmed that this is a big problem in their company and added, “I think
the only way to deal with that is to make sure that you are keeping your line
manager as open minded as possible and get them into challenge and ask them
why did they make a particular decision to make sure that is not because of
representativeness”.
However being open-‐minded is easy to say and very difficult to put into practice.
Merely asking the decision-‐makers to be open-‐minded, definitely is not the
solution as all these biases and errors happen unconsciously.

Conclusion

Comparing these two companies’ methods and approaches illustrates a very
noticeable point. They are employing two very different methods and they both
strongly believe in it and can justify every difference. Both their reasoning makes
sense within the context. They have considered a wide range of contextual
factors and also available financial and human resources to decide for all the
details during the selection process. As stated earlier making decisions is always
a trade off, in which maintaining a balance while considering all the influential
elements is the best can be done.
In both companies the emphasis of trainings is always on being open-‐minded

and taking every thing into account but not being aware of some biases and also
not being able to find a solution to those they identified make all the training
materials mostly general points rather than specific guidance in order to avoid
subconscious errors.
In company A despite all the trainings they get, to become a decision-‐maker,

apparently there is not a complete insight of ‘what can go wrong’. Most of the
issues seemed to be surprising to the interviewee while she found some of them
relevant and confirmed the possibility of their occurrence. Obviously as a result
of this ignorance, they never sought for a solution to them.
In company B numerous people are involved in selection process and a lot of

conveying information is taking place, which can cause a great deal of
misrepresentation and personal interpretations. A lot of observers and a lot of
people are concerned with the decision and the process itself is very long and
also very expensive. Seemingly there is not enough training in place, which
makes it more complicated.

37
Overall from the analysis of the interviews it can be inferred that some of the
biases are more relevant to selection decisions. They can be the ones that their
existence and consequences are not clearly known, or organizations have not
been able to find a practical solution for them yet. In the following chapter a
further examination on those biases, which appeared to be more likely to take
place and influence the results, will be discussed.

38

Chapter 4

39

•Discussion

Discussion
Primarily this study intended to explicitly examine the presence of inherent
biases and unconscious errors in selection decisions and their pernicious impact
on organizations. It also tried to find practical ways to alleviate these influences
and enhance the final decision.
Summary of the main findings

According to the findings of this study there are a variety of selection methods’
combinations being used in different organizations. Organizational culture, past
experiences, regional culture, and level and nature of the vacancy are a number
of influential factors on organizations’ choice of selection methods. It has been
observed that contrary to Bauer et al.’s (2004) belief about the cost as a limiting
factor, in big companies financial matters are not considered as a restricting
element anymore. Generally it has become obvious for companies that investing
in human resources is beneficial in a long-‐term perspective.
It has been discovered that even if the selection methods are similar in two
organizations, decision-‐making strategies are not necessarily the same. ‘Who
makes the decisions’ and ‘how the decision is being made’ is highly dependent on
the selection methods in use and also all the factors mentioned above.
Regarding the biases examined in this research, it has been observed that not all
of them are relevant in selection decisions and their prevalence in selection
process is contingent upon the context while some of them turned out to be
irrelevant and some occurring in a sequence as a result of each other.
It also has become evident that although most of them are serious problems in
selection decisions, not all of them are known and taken care of.
Selection process

In general both of the examined cases supported the growing popularity of
interviews as demonstrated in CIPD annual report (2009 & 2010) since they
have more than one interviews during their selection process.
In company A they are employing interviews in conjunction with assessment
centers as their selection method. As stated earlier they also have a combination
of three categories of questions in their interviews. Referring to HR Journal
40
(2010), this is basically a mixture of “behavioral”, “situational” 29 , and
“comprehensive structured” interviews, which helps to measure candidates’
behavior, past experiences, job specific knowledge, motivation, personal traits
and characteristics. Thus it can be inferred that their process on the whole is one
of the most extensive selections of methods possible.
Their approach towards interviews’ structure is essentially supporting
Highhouse’s (2008) opinion, which says the quality of final decisions will
improve with structuring the interviews. However Newell (2006) believes that
there is a limit for this structuring, further than which the outcome will not be
more valid, while it has been observed in this company that the interviews are
strictly structured.
In this company they confirmed Gosling et al.’s (1998) findings that there are
some facets of personality that just become uncovered in a group work. Also
considering the increasing trend of team-‐based activities in companies, it seems
undoubtedly essential to have one kind of teamwork exercise within the
selection process to assess the applicants’ performance in a group.
Barney and Wright (1997) argued that the arrangement of attendants in a panel
interview is vastly dependent on the organizations’ culture. In this company
based on their experiences they realized that with a combination of strategy and
HR specialist they could maintain the balance in their group decisions.
They do not believe in psychometric tests since they think applicants can
memorize them, which can be true for non-‐customized tests (U.S. OPM, 2010).
However referring to Cook (2009) oral presentations, role-‐plays, case analysis,
and in-‐tray tests do not reveal much of applicants’ personality. Thus taking these
facts to consideration any judgment on applicants’ personality will be entirely
subjective in this company.
On the contrary in company B although they have structured interviews, the
selection process is completely unstructured. There are several people involved,
who are not all necessarily trained sufficiently and the order of methods
employed keeps changing depending on the nature of the job and complexity of
the case. They do not see candidates as numbers and contrary to what Newell
(2006) introduced as a rational process of selection decision-‐making they mostly
value the fittingness of the candidate rather than rating based on classical
decision theory. Overall a substantial inconsistency is noticeable, which leads to
subjective decisions.

Decision-‐making methods

The results of this study confirmed Sundvik and Lindeman’s (1998) findings that
women are more accurate than men in decision-‐making, it also revealed that
decision-‐maker’s background is an influential factor as well, for example strategy

29 The case study is kind of a ‘situational interview’ with providing the candidates with the
hypothetical scenario and asking for their reactions (HRjournal, 2010).

41
people are more precise in information gathering and more stern in making
decisions, whereas HR specialists are softer in that sense.
Findings of this study showed that setting a unified culture for organization is
considered as an action plan against poor selection decisions. According to the
literature this is essentially establishing cohesive values and reference points,
which on one hand facilitates the process of understanding and structuring
decisions and on the other hand can increase the threat of biases such as
anchoring. These predetermined frames that guide the general line of thoughts
affect many of the decisions made in an organization (entrepreneur, 1991).
Moreover unlike what the findings of this study showed, Hough and Oswald
(2000) argued selection tools’ credibility and popularity and also decision-‐
making methods cannot be generalized internationally due to potential cultural,
behavioral, and habitual variations.

Biases

Interestingly the results of this study strongly supported Kuncel’s (2008) idea
about the role of awareness in the level of trainings’ effectiveness. Since despite
all the rigorous trainings for interviewers in company A, an obvious lack of
awareness of probable errors and biases has considerably lessened their efficacy.
Similarly in company B not being aware of possible biases resulted in not setting
any strategies to reduce them. Moreover in this company there is a serious
insufficiency in training interviewers and decision-‐makers, which leads to biased
decisions.

Affect as information

Generally the findings of this study supported Slovic et al.’s (2004) opinion about
undeniable role of emotion as one of the main sources of information in human
beings’ decisions and also Gohm and Clore’s (2002) view about the influence of
decision-‐makers’ mood state on the final decision.
Moreover the findings confirmed Vecchio et al.’s (1996) belief concerning the
impact of tiredness on decisions’ quality and suggested job rotations as a
solution to this problem.

First impression inevitably follows by Confirmation bias

Findings of this study supported Pollitt’s (2005) belief about overall effect of
candidates’ first impression on interviewers and decision-‐makers. As argued by
Pollitt decision-‐makers usually favor better-‐looking applicants who have a
positive first impression on them. Inevitably this bias follows by ‘confirmation’
bias, since the interviewers often ignore information that is not congruent with
their overall impression of a candidate and only seek for what supports their
initial feelings.
In both cases the interviewers strongly confirmed Abraham and Morrison’s
(2002) opinion that this is an unconscious process, which is mostly based on
42
intuitions. They both believed that not only is the ‘first impression bias’ an
undeniable fact but also they found it really hard to avoid confirmation bias as its
consequence.
As mentioned earlier although in both companies they ask their decision-‐makers
to put their intuitions and what they get as the first impression aside and decide
based upon robust and structured decision-‐making patterns, they practically do
not have any strategies to do so. To prevent these biases as all the other ones, the
first and most important step is to recognize them and distinguish them among
what is considered as ‘information’.

Selective attention and Familiarity bias

Although the findings of this research corroborated Griffin and Brenner’s (2004)
belief about ‘selective attention’, an interesting point came out; the interviewees
asserted that it has positive aspects as well since similar characteristics, past
experiences, and interests sometime make the conversation flow.
However the findings also confirmed the negative aspect of similar background
or interests, which according to Sears and Rowe (2003) might lead to neglect or
possibly accentuate some details about a particular candidate, who shares
something with the interviewer.
Regarding to ‘selective attention’ the findings also supported Fraidin’s (2004)
opinion that decision-‐makers mostly consider the applicants with the same
expertise as them, more qualified.
In both cases the results suggested that ‘familiarity bias’ also happens under the
same circumstances, which according to Lewis and Sherman (2003) all lead to
‘in-‐group favoritism’.

Similar to me bias

The findings of this study are consistent with Huffcutt’s (2011) idea, which
suggests that even very structured interviews are not immune from this bias.
Interviewers tend to rate the applicants with similar background or attitude to
them higher than others. The reason that the interviewers saw behind this bias
was that it is more tangible to see someone similar to them to achieve what they
have achieved thus it is a safer decision and reduces the risk of a wrong hire.
Memory biases: Salience effect, Positivity effect, Recency bias, and

Rosy retrospection

Interestingly in two examined cases in this research two completely different
approaches are taken. However none of them confirmed the occurrence of
‘positivity effect’ or any correlation between decision-‐makers’ age and their
memory patterns.
In one case since the decisions are made on the spot immediately after the
interview, memory biases in general are much less likely to occur. Although right
after the interview the memories are still fresh according to Murphy et al. (2006)
the recalling order in terms of time sequence and quality is the last, the first, and
43
then the middle. Their only strategy to help here is to ask the interviewers to
take precise notes and make comments all long the interview.
In the second case their approach is to think and discuss the decision for 1 to 5
days, which makes it highly vulnerable to these three memory biases. While the
interviewer agreed with Raghubir and Valenzuela’s (2006) findings about the
unconscious priority of extreme behaviors in recalling events, she believes that
this is a trade off and they decided to choose extensive consultancy after the
interview, which needs some time, rather than reducing the risk of memory
biases.

Role fulfillment bias

As mentioned earlier, the literature has generally deemed this bias as ‘what one
in my position would do?’. The findings of this research did not depict a visible
distortion in judgment in order to fulfill what decision-‐makers’ position would
impose.
Stereotyping
Although in both cases the results supported Ployhart and Holtz’s (2008)
opinion that having a completely diverse workforce is a must in their businesses
to be able to fulfill a wide range of customers’ needs, there are some
contradictions observed in the findings of this study on stereotyping. While in
one case the findings were in contrast to Segrest Purkiss et al.’s (2006) belief and
they confidently asserted that they do not have any kinds of stereotypes in their
selection decisions against applicants with different ethnicities, accents, genders,
or ages, the other one realistically confirmed the existing literature and
described that one cannot ever say for sure that their decisions are not affected
by stereotypes since they are always too hidden to be seen. However according
to Rees and French (2010) stereotypes are not inevitable, they can be avoided by
teaching the decision-‐makers how to recognize their inaccurate perceptions.

Restriction of range

In consistent with Abraham and Morrison’s (2002) observations, the findings of
this research showed that when it comes to decision-‐making human being tends
to ‘take the middle lane’. It mostly happens when the decision-‐maker is hesitant
or want to keep it ‘within his/her comfort zone’ with putting the burden of
making the decision on someone else’s shoulder. While in company A with
limiting the decision-‐makers to 4 options, have made them to decide more
precisely whether the applicant is ‘Good’, ‘Very good’, ‘Bad’, or ‘Very bad’. Thus
there is no chance to stick to the middle of the road.

Contrast effect
As Plous (1993) asserted, assessors tend to judge the candidates compare to the
other recent ones. The findings supported the presence of this bias and found it
44
very difficult to recognize it as it is naturally hidden. They also confirmed
Highhouse et al.’s (1996) opinion, which said contrast bias makes decision-‐
makers to unconsciously frame the options in a different way, in which the
benchmark is the recent interviewed candidates.
Framing bias
According to CIPD (2009) framing can result in either overselling or underselling
a candidate. As stated in the findings of this research both of the targets admitted
that they have experienced this bias but they stated two interestingly different
approaches to manage it. While in the first company similar to what Tversky and
Kahneman (1981) suggested, challenging the candidates and probing the actual
information from them is their strategy to neutralize it, in the second one they
take advantage of this opportunity to find the right sales people. However in
general conducting interviews in a way that all the candidates find the
opportunity to exhibit their KSAs and weaknesses equally is the ideal situation.

Halo/Horn Effect
Contrary to the findings of Pollitt’s (2005) research, which stated that decision-‐
makers weight negative information more than positive, the results of the
present study did not indicate any significant difference between the impact of
negative and positive information about the candidates on the final decision.
Similarly, as opposed to Bogardus’ (2004) theory of Halo/Horn effect, findings of
this study did not reveal considerable correlation between the final decision and
too positive or too negative applicants’ responses except for those, which are
considered as major required competencies.

Satisficing bias
Considering the strictly structured selection process in company A, it can be
inferred that in a similar tone with Schwartz’s (2005) idea, their decisions can be
just ‘satisfactory’ based on what the interviewers elicit during the interview and
within the tight time they get to make the final decision. While in contrast for the
second company their flexibility in re-‐inviting an applicant if it is necessary or
extending the decision-‐making time to contemplate more on a complex case,
makes it much less prone to such a bias.

Group decision-‐making
As stated in the findings of this study in company A the existence of all the group
decision-‐making biases such as relying on each other, self suppression, and
conforming bias was rejected, which can be partially because the target had not
been involved in group decision-‐makings. While in the second company the
findings confirmed Redman and Wilkinson’s (2006) belief in the possible group-‐
45
related biases and suggested a qualified observer to control the decision-‐making
meetings as a solution to these biases.

Representativeness (heuristics)
The findings showed the undeniable presence of this bias in different contexts
such as candidates from a certain college, with particular names, or even with
specific appearance30, which according to Shafir and Tversky (1992) due to
decision-‐maker’s past experience are generally considered as better or worse.

Summary
Overall most of the examined biases proved to be relevant in selection decisions.
In all the cases the findings of this study corroborated the existing literature’s
view that the first step to protect decisions from these biases is awareness. If we
fail to recognize them, no one is immune from these biases and it is their
invisibility that makes them more threatening.
Asking the decision-‐makers to widen their frame of reference and push their
minds in fresh directions are all theoretical ways, which without an effective
practical guide would be worthless. In the following chapter a number of
practical ways will be recommended to decision-‐makers, which might help them
to enhance their decisions.

30 For example judging people with bleached hair usually are not as smart as other candidates.
46

• Conclusion

Implications and conclusion

The present study intended to highlight the scope of biases and errors in
selection decisions and the findings indicated that unconscious errors have a
significant impact all the way through this procedure. Comprehensive study in
relevant literature and in-‐depth interviews aided to find the correlated areas of
specific biases likely to trap decision-‐makers particularly in selection decisions.
The findings of this research confirmed Arkes’ (1991) argument that there is no
need to discuss an extensive list of biases, as there are a few underlying reasons,
which provoke a broad range of biases. Therefore taking care of these causes
assists to identify different vulnerable points and the appropriate strategy to
counter them.
In the end by putting the findings in the context a number of strategies are
recommended to enable decision-‐makers to take those core factors under
control and enhance the quality of their decisions.
Recommendations
What to do to prevent bias: A preventive approach

Although this is not an easy goal to accomplish in practice, it is viable to
eliminate biases by applying some tactics.
Debiasing

As biases are present during the decision process from the beginning of data
gathering to analyzing and interpreting information to making the final decision,
strategies to avoid them should cover the entire process. In 1982 Baruch
Fischhoff grounded the concept of ‘debiasing’ with suggesting a four-‐step
procedure, warning decision-‐makers about likely biases and describing the
contextual factors and their effects, and also providing comprehensive training
and feedback. Numerous studies have been conducted on this subject since
Fischhoff’s research, but they have not been able to learn any significantly
different solution for this problem (Merkhofer, 2010).
Larrick (2004) grouped debiasing tactics into three categories, “motivational”
strategies, which include incentives and accountability. “Cognitive” tactics, which
47
are achievable through listing reasons for an opposite decision31 and comprise
all the methods that can answer, “What are some reasons that my initial
judgment might be wrong?” and “technological” strategies that unlike what its
title would imply refers to methods such as group decision-‐making (Larrick,
2004).
Following a number of debiasing strategies particularly in selection decisions are
presented. Although some of them are not included in Larrick’s research results,
the author has tried to sort them according to his classification concept.

Motivational Debiasing Methods

• Incentives
Incentives can be categorized as internal and external. “Internal incentive”
generally refers to inherent motives, which drive decision-‐makers to do their
best in a process, in order to fulfill a need to demonstrate expertise, superiority,
and victory or some times to make a good impression on others. In the second
category, “external incentives” are kind of tangible, explicit motivations such as
accountability, bonuses, and rewards (Marquis, 2008).
Incentives can facilitate reducing biases and making more accurate decisions by
encouraging decision-‐makers to expend more effort. However according to
Larrick (2004) there are some risks attached to this method. Without possessing
necessary knowledge, skills, and appropriate tactics incentives will not improve
decisions. They should be employed carefully otherwise they might make
decision-‐makers to only seek for justifications for their biased decisions or result
in role fulfillment bias and consequently inferior outcomes.
Although ‘external incentives’ have their own risks and might result in decisions
only for pleasing the audience, it is vastly evident that they are more effective
than internals.

Cognitive Debiasing Methods

• Accept it, Recognize it, Solve it

Although biases and errors are very powerful, research indicated that what
makes them such a substantial problem is that not only decision-‐makers are not
aware of their presence but also when they are asked to explain about their
decision-‐making methods they confidently claim that their decisions are solely
based on “cold, hard facts”.

31 For example if the decision is hiring an applicant, list the reasons for not hiring him/her and
vice versa.
48
For the first step every decision-‐maker has to accept and believe that no one, not
even experienced knowledgeable managers and decision-‐makers, are immune
from these biases and errors (entrepreneur, 1991).
According to Arkes (2003), decision-‐makers tend to deny that they might be
biased because they do not want to admit that they have been wrong before.
They also might feel that they are loosing their control over their decisions and
are being dictated to do or not do something. Apart from these reasons
controversial and small benefit of debiasing in some cases can discourage them
from putting an effort into it.
While numerous studies (Nisbett, 1993; Sedlmeier, 1999) proved the
effectiveness of training in enhancing decisions’ quality, it is also evident that
without recognition skills training is not enough. As mentioned earlier decision-‐
makers tend to think that their decisions are all rational and objective, but the
reality is everybody is prone to biases (Hammond et al., 1998). Many studies
demonstrated similar results and proved that one of the practical ways to attract
decision-‐makers attention to their unconscious biases and make them believe it
is to go further than only theoretical trainings. Essentially what needs to be done
in such an experiment is to create scenarios similar to what they deal with in a
selection decision-‐making process and ask them to response.
When they are taking part in the experiment and they clearly face their biased
decisions and identify the causes and effects of their unconscious errors it is
much more likely for them to be able to pin point similar situations during the
real process and then try to keep it under control with implementing what they
have learned to deal with every bias.
To produce the scenarios, put them into practice, observe the results, and clarify
them for the decision-‐makers participating in the training experiment
organizations may well need a competent team including psychologists and
expert recruiters (Duchon et al., 1989) (Dunegan and Duchon, 1990).
To enhance the results of decision-‐making all the possible biases, which might
occur while analyzing a piece of data, interpreting what the applicants have said,
and particularly what they have communicated by any means must be fully
known by the decision-‐maker. Being aware of them will make it feasible to avoid
them (Kennerley and Mason, 2008).
As mentioned in the previous chapters openness and understanding are of those
desired factors that organizations always ask their decision-‐makers to maintain,
while they are not achievable through theoretical trainings. However if
organizations conduct this process properly it will lead to openness and mastery.
A very important step after understanding the biases and recognizing their
context is self-‐awareness. Decision-‐makers should be fully aware of their own
character, feelings, motives, and desires. Therefore they will be able to realize
the underlying assumptions that they base their decisions on and consequently
will be able to put their knowledge into practice to enhance their decisions
(entrepreneur, 1991).

• Red Flags

As Campbell et al. (2009) suggested, checking for “inappropriate self-‐interest or
distorting attachments” will help to identify any factor, which is particularly
attractive or unreasonably unattractive to decision-‐makers and find the reason
49
behind it. If it originates from personal interests, emotions, attachments, or
misleading memories from decision-‐maker’s past experiences it should be
detected and taken to consideration before making any decisions in order to
avoid any distortions and errors (hbr, 2009).

• Active, focused training

It is evident that training, particularly psychological training, will promote
mind’s habits in long term (Lehman et al., 1988).
To increase trainings’ effectiveness they should be specialized and targeted to
mitigate particular identified biases (Young, 2010). Moreover enhancing
decision-‐makers’ personal, interpersonal, and analytical skills will boost the
trainings’ efficacy (Hackett, 2003).

• Consulting; injecting fresh experiences and new viewpoints

Getting help from a trustworthy outsider and making counterarguments helps
decision-‐makers to recognize their biases and make sure that their reasoning
makes sense for others as well. It is also beneficial to hear fresh ideas from a
different point of view.
In order to get the best results, decision-‐makers should make sure that they are
just giving all the facts and also are not leading consultants’ thoughts with the
way they represent the information (Hammond et al., 1998).

• Learning from feedback

In spite of the fact that feedbacks are ambiguous by nature, they convey two
important functions, inferential and evaluative, which essentially means that
feedbacks can provide decision-‐makers with the structure of the prime task and
also inform them about the quality of their performance in decision-‐making
process, thus actively seeking for feedbacks will enhance the final outcome
(Hogarth et al., 1997).

Technological Debiasing Methods

• A combination of methods

Interaction skills and team-‐orientation are undeniable desired abilities, which
recently have come to the center of employers’ attention. Although face-‐to-‐face
interviews are one of the most common used and reliable methods, appraising
interaction competencies through face-‐to-‐face interviews is not as accurate as it
could be measured via a team-‐based observation. Thus in line with the firm’s
budget, deploying a combination of group-‐based activities, psychological
interviews, and technical interviews is recommended.
Designing the selection process, as a combination of two or more methods, can
contribute to alleviate those typical biases that are more likely to happen in
some specific sorts of selection method (Hackett, 2003). For example Newell
50
(2006) suggested that employing psychometric tests provides decision-‐makers
with an objective and rational outcome, although it is clearly not enough to make
an accept/reject decision and needs to be accompanied with other methods to
improve the final decision.

• Clarifying the desired competencies and prioritizing skills

In general complexity and lack of structure makes the final decision more prone
to biases and errors. Thus regardless of the selection method and process, the
first and most important step should be clarifying the required competencies
and skills in terms of ‘what an ideal candidate should have’ and ‘how an ideal
candidate should behave’. Generic and prescriptive job specifications do not
work anymore. It is broadly evident that skills and technical knowledge are still
possible to learn after getting selected through an “integration support program”.
Hence behavioral matters are much more critical to focus on.
There are many cases of successful employment by considering this point and
numerous examples of, when decision-‐makers prioritize candidates’ technical
skills and experience over their behavioral issues and ended up with a failure
(hbr, 2010).

• Balanced structure

Employing precise methods of selection with ranked and weighted competencies
enables the assessor to score each candidate according to preset structures and
regardless of subjective interferences and therefore prevents biases to some
extent in early stages of selection (Gatewood et al, 2008).
Setting structures for decisions does not mean that any choice that the decision-‐
maker is subconsciously drawn to should be ignored. These kinds of decisions
sometimes even serve us well. Thus the only point that decision-‐makers have to
take into consideration is making sure that it supports the rational decision and
if not where the difference originates from (Hammond et al., 1998).

• Interview Reports

Asking interviewers to write a detailed summary of their observations during
the interview session and a report on how they assessed each candidate against
the selection criteria checklist not only results in a more thoughtful decision but
also works as a future reference in case of any problems (hr.ecu, 2010).
Note taking and paying attention to the applicant simultaneously is an essential
skill, which is very difficult. Well-‐written notes will help to reduce salience effect
and other memory biases. It also assists the decision-‐maker to reflect candidates’
performance for an outsider accurately.

• Be decisive

51
Restriction of Range Bias usually ends in some ambiguous information for the
final decision-‐maker about candidates, which are all in an average range. This
often boosts the probability of other biases’ occurrence.
Thus setting a strategy to avert this bias seems beneficial to lower the likelihood
of overall biases within the selection process. In order to do so one tactic can be
limiting interviewers by inquiring a final estimation, which is clearly oriented to
one direction, either negative or positive. Moreover they should be asked to
write a detailed explanation of their ideas about the candidates, giving the
decision-‐maker no chance of taking the middle-‐of-‐the-‐road approach.

• Emotional Intelligence

The results of a study conducted by Gohm and Clore (2002), revealed that
entities who are aware of their emotional intelligence and trust in their feelings
show a better result in complicated decision-‐making processes and are able to
control their emotions and also employ them to get a better result. These
individuals are also more adaptive and are able to cope with unexpected
situations better than others. On the other hand the ones with lower level of
emotional intelligence, by attending to their emotional experiences, appreciating
the significance and usefulness of them, and also having faith in their
understanding of their emotions can perform equally well.
Thus according to the finding of this study, a comprehensive understanding of
the level of emotional intelligence together with the matching approach will help
the decision-‐makers to reduce their emotional biases to the least possible level.

• Group decision-‐making

One of the recommended methods to deal with individual deficient decisions as a
result of self-‐interests, selective attentions, personal perception, and time
constraints is making decisions in groups. Considering their increasing
popularity and also their vulnerability to several biases, they should be
excessively taken care of.

• The meeting should be structured with a template for discussion and a
clear agenda.
• A careful observer and a good team leader should:
o Maintain the cohesion within the group to enhance the
performance.
o Make sure that every member is following the procedure and also
everybody is getting equal chance to speak and any opposing view
is presented.
o Ensure that no one is misrepresenting his/her judgment and
suppressing his/her ideas because of the fear of being attacked or
disturbing the cohesion of the group (Larrick, 2004).
o Prevent “free ride” or overly relying on others’ efforts,
contaminating other ideas, and also following the opinion of the
majority (Larrick, 2004).
52
o Seek out contrarian opinions by giving equal opportunities to each
member to speak out and encourage everyone to express their
disapprovals (hbr, 2009).
o Encourage and empower all the members to speak out, make their
own decisions, and back them up with proper reasoning (Pugh et
al., 1968).
o Develop a number of questions to discuss after presenting every
opinion such as ‘is the logic correct?’ ‘According to the reasoning,
what kinds of biases could be influential in this decision?’
o Keep track of time and ensure that the meeting is holding for a
reasonable duration to avoid exhaustion and also hasty decisions.
o Prevent group isolation by members’ rotation and bringing in new
perspectives by participating new experts (referenceforbusiness,
2011).
o Maintain the balance in group’s structure in terms of members’
attitude and personality to prevent dominant individuals to guide
and form the final decision (hbr, 2009).
o Avoid mentioning names, age, and sex of the applicants for the
outsiders to prevent any judgments based on this information
(Young, 2010).
o Make the final decision by 65% of the way through the meeting
thus there is still sometime to discuss any problems
(referenceforbusiness, 2011).
o Review the meeting in the end to make sure that nothing is missed,
misunderstood, or misinterpreted (referenceforbusiness, 2011).
o Maintain the diversity of group and get individuals from different
disciplines involved (Hackett, 2003) (Ellis et al., 2003).
o Employ fresh graduates as a part of the team to prevent the biases
that might be triggered from decision-‐makers’ experience such as
familiarity bias, similar to me bias, and representativeness
(Hogarth, 2001).
o Generally know the members’ background, strengths, and
weaknesses, and rely on them more in their fields of expertise and
aptitude (Van Ginkel and Van Knippenberg, 2009).

• Quality of a decision is highly dependant on the quality of the information
that the decision is made upon. If the data is biased the final decision will
inevitably biased as well. Therefore gathering accurate, relevant,
comprehensive, and impartial information from the first step in selection
process will enhance the final outcome (Kennerly and Mason, 2008).

• Constant monitoring
All tools used should be validated and constantly reviewed to ensure their
fairness and reliability.

53
•Limitations

The present research has a number of limitations that should be noted. The most
important one is that according to the nature of the study, which is concerned
with unconscious behavior of decision-‐makers that they mostly are not even
aware of them; observation of a real procedure could enable the author to draw
more descriptive and inferential outcomes than direct interviews. Although the
author did not have the opportunity and facilities to conduct such an experiment,
by producing some scenarios in interview questions it has been tried to situate
the target decision-‐makers in familiar context as they might have experienced
within a real interview settings.
Moreover the confidentiality of the data needed for this research was another
barrier to expand it further. As stated in the methodology chapter getting
permissions to interview selection decision-‐makers was another issue associated
with this study. The majority of the target companies refused to disclose their
selection process’ information due to confidentiality concerns. Even though
efforts were made to answer the main question of the study and based on
relevant literature the purpose of the study was fulfilled, a more extensive study
with a larger group of samples could be more reliable in terms of generalizing
the findings.
Regarding to generalizability of the findings, as stated by Myers (2000) the
results of small qualitative studies cannot be generalized in conventional ways,
however they have some compensating values, which make them reliable.
Generally speaking for a perfect result a relatively large number of observations
throughout the selection process and a team including a psychologist to
profoundly interpret decision-‐makers’ behavior in different situations is ideal.

•Recommendation for further studies

According to the findings of this research the existence and vast impact of
unconscious biases in selection decisions has become clear. While this effect can
significantly reduce the quality of employment decisions and end in substantial
losses in organizations, surprisingly scant attention has been paid to this subject.
The existing literature is only focused on a small number of biases such as
stereotyping. Yet few researches, if any, have discussed the occurrence of all
these biases and their consequences in selection decision-‐making process.
This study has attempted to prepare the grounds for future research on the
similar subject yet by resolving the limitations. Meanwhile a number of gaps
have been identified, which are potential areas for further research.
• Discovering the impact of organizations’ size on errors in selection
decisions by targeting a combination of large and small companies in
future studies.
• A research on “how to moderate the effect of emotions on selection
decisions” and find out some practical methods to counter this problem.
• Based on the findings of this study “How to encourage decision-‐makers to
adopt suggested strategies”.
• A comprehensive study on group decision-‐making and its relevant biases
by striving to obtain data through careful observations.
54

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•Appendices

The target interviewees will be selected from a list of UK companies, which
first will be asked (via e-‐mail) if they definitely have at least one kind of
interviews as their selection method.
Interview questions:

Interview questions regarding to study the methods of preventing errors
and biases in decision-‐making process in organizations.

Ø Name:
Ø Age:
Ø Gender:
Ø Education:
Ø Position:
Ø For how many years have you been with this company?
Ø How many applicants do you have per year?
64

1. What are the selection methods in your company? Do you have a fixed
method for selection or it is depending on the situation? (Could you
please explain the entire process very briefly, what happens during a full
process of selection?)
• References
• Interviews
• Assessment centers
• Biographical measures (Biodata) *past behavior is the best predictor of
future behavior (tell me about the time… how did you handle…)
• Video CVs
• Psychometric tests (cognitive tests, IQ tests, EQ tests) vs. (documents
and certificates of a course or a degree)
• Telephone interviews
• Literacy and/or numeracy tests

2. If ‘interviews’ is one of the answers then: what kind of interviews are you
using?
• Informal/ unstructured interviews
• Semi – structured interviews
• Formal/ structured interviews
• Other

3. If ‘Formal interviews’ is one of the answers then: what sort of formal
interviews specifically do you usually use?
• Behavioral (in which hypothetical situations are posed to the
candidate and the candidate is asked to say how s/he would react
to this situation)
• Situational (in which candidates are asked to identify where they
have experienced certain job-‐relevant situations and to report
how they responded to these situations)

4. Do you have any kind of constraints that limit you to some certain kinds
of hiring methods?
(E.g. financial or expertise limits).

5. For how long have you been using this method? …………………….
Years

6. What was the previous method? And why did you change it? (If
applicable)

7. Do you predict any kind of changes in this process in future?

65
a) No
b) Yes-‐ due to…

8. On what basis did you choose your method?
a) Trial and error
b) Based on successful incumbents’ experiences
c) Based on market study and our company’s past experiences
d) Based on the common trend in the industry
e) Based on the applicants’ feedbacks
f) Based on our studies on the most reliable and valid ways of
selection methods
g) Other
……………………………………………………………………………………………………
………………

9. Are you happy with your selection method?
10. Are you happy with the results of the current technique of personnel
selection?
a) Yes
b) No
c) To some extent, however it would be better if…
……………………………………………………………………………………………………
………………………….

11. Who designs the interview questions? (Psychologists, HR, line managers,
senior managers, etc.)

12. Who conducts the interviews in your company?
• Work/ organizational psychologists
• Trained interviewers
• HR people
• Line managers
• General managers
• A panel including …………………………………………………
• Other……………………………………………

13. Who makes the final decision to hire/ not hire an applicant in your
organization?
(Are the decisions being made by individuals or in groups?)

• Is it a panel interview and the decision is being made in a group
decision-‐making
• It is an individual who interviews and makes the decision
66
• It is an individual who interviews and reports to someone else and
the decision is being made by the third person

14. Although there are some ways to reduce the subjectivity in assessment in
the selection process, interpretations are still highly subjective. Do you
have any suggestions about how to deal with the ‘objective
interpretation’?

15. How do you take care of the selections’ validity, fairness, and reliability?

• “Affect as information” Generally speaking, during an
interview there are some sort of feelings, either negative or
positive, that might influence the final decision, even
interviewer’s mood of the day. Especially whenever
someone is really on the edge and not too obviously bad or
good the decision-‐maker is always slightly inclined to either
Yes or No.

• “First impression” not only appearance, something like
gesture and facial expressions, posture and body language.
(Can I ask if accent is a factor?!!)

• “Confirmation bias” when influenced by one of those
previous 2 biases the decision is made in your mind and
you are subconsciously interpreting everything you get
from that candidate to confirm your initial, pre-‐determined
decision. Looking for indications to justify what you have
already decided.

• “Selective attention” according to the interviewer’s interest,
background, past experience, expectations, and attitude the
interviewer’s attention points might be distorted.

• “Similar to me”/”familiarity” bias: rate those similar to us
higher/ rate the ones that you can connect with higher

• “Salience effect”/”positivity effect” if the decision is not
being made on the spot, too negative and too positive
points are more memorable/ older adults favor positive
over negative information in their memories.

• “Recency bias” again if the decision is not being made on
the spot. To weight the more recent data more. The
67
attention points and the most part of our recalls is like “the
latest – the first – the middle” so the entire things in the
middle might get ignored.

• “Rosy retrospection” then again when the decision is not
being made on the spot, recalling past events more positive
than they actually were.

• “Role fulfillment bias” what one in my position would do?

• “Stereotyping” the bank tellers, my psycho test, age, sex,
nationality

• “Restriction of Rating” always would rather to take the
middle lane, this makes it much more difficult when it
comes to a final decision (on the edge).

• “Contrast effect” Interesting one! When you have got some
very bad ones, the next one would be rated more positively
and vice versa, basically we tend to compare every
candidate with the previous ones of the day subconsciously.

• “Framing bias” some people are good speakers, can
positively package everything nicely and big, just a different
presentation would make a difference!

• “Halo/horn effect” tendency to look at every other thing
more positively when there is something too good e.g.
intelligence and vice versa. (What if their willingness to
learn is fake?)

• “Satisficing bias” after the interview you would think you
really don know/not sure but since you do not have any
more chance to speak to the candidate or because of the
time limit you have to decide based on what you have got.

• “Group decision-‐making” e.g. relying on each other, self

suppression, conformity bias (go with the flow)
68
• “Representativeness (heuristics)” judging everybody from a
certain background (e.g. college) when you have had a bad
one (it happens even with names)

16. In the list of criteria that every applicant should meet in order to go to the
next stage of the process, what kind of assessment technique are you
using?
a) Equally weighted
b) Weighted according to importance

17. How long does it take to make a decision about a candidate?

18. How do you prefer a candidate to another one?
a) Reason-‐based (reporting kind of reasons or comments to accept or
reject a candidate)
b) Value-‐based (associating values to desired factors and assess the
candidates upon the overall value (a number) they get)

19. Do you usually think of later justifications you might need for the decision
you are making?
a) No
b) Yes-‐ I have to explain my decision to…

20. To what extent do you trust /use gut feelings, hunches, and intuitions?
a) The selection decision is a completely rational process in our
company
b) The effect of gut feelings and intuitions is inevitable
c) Just to some extent like the first impressions
d) Other...

Appendix 2
Different sources of gathering information about candidates:

Advantages and
Source of information Examples
Disadvantages
Written and/or spoken Cheap, convenient, easy to
Application forms
Self-‐Report; Information collect
(online and/or
from the Candidate However, sometimes
paper), interviews
him/herself difficult to analyze and
69
needs to confirm with the
information obtained from
other sources
Sometimes difficult to
distinguish biased from
References, peer
unbiased data, Require to
Other people Report group, and in some
verify by matching with
cases psychologists
the data gathered from
other sources
Less limitations than the
EIQ test, IQ test, skill
other sources, more
and knowledge tests,
Demonstrated Evidence reliable
work samples,
More difficult and
simulations, etc.
expensive to collect
Should not be over relied
University degree,
on this kind of evidence
recorded prove of
and certificates and ignore
work experience,
Recorded Evidence what the applicant actually
published work,
presents. More reliable
medals and prizes,
than self and other reports
etc.
though.
Expensive to implement,
Graphology,
Involuntary Evidence not a good impression on
Polygraph32
candidates

Appendix 4

History of decision-‐making

Traditionally there are two different models of decision-‐making; one is the
formal, value-‐based model, in which elements are correlated with numerical
values and the choice is based on maximizing the value, and another one is
informal, reason-‐based model. Typically the second model points out assorted
reasons that might influence each option and the choice is on the basis of
maintaining a balance among the pros and cons of the various alternatives.
These two approaches can be utilized interchangeably, reason-‐based method can
be translated into value-‐based by assigning values to different factors and
similarly the value-‐based approach might be paraphrased to a kind of informal,
reasoning system. Obviously both models have their own pros and cons. The
value-‐based model is careful and precise and its results are assessable. It is also
naturally quantitative, which makes the comparison among the options easier.
However on the other hand sometimes the same criteria make this model

32 A device to detect and record physiological changes such as heart rate or
respiration to classify true claims from untrue ones
70
difficult to exercise. In the real world people usually fail to consider every aspect
of a decision and also the precise value associated with each factor involved in
choices. Whilst naturally we tend to use the reason-‐based model, since reasoning
seems closer to our mentality rather than value estimation. However decision-‐
makers might face a problem when they have good enough reasons both in favor
of and in oppose to an option. Moreover in decision-‐making based on reasons
there is a higher chance of elicitation and framing33 effect (Shafir et al, 1997).

33 Framing
Effect is a kind of cognitive biases, which explains that people may make different
choices among the same options in different situations with different presentations.
Specifically, people tend to make erratic choices, depending on how the question is framed in
terms of the focus on losses and gains (Plous, 1993).

71

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•Title

2.1 The importance of human resources within

2.2 Selection as a cornerstone of HR practices

2-­‐2.2. Selection from a Decision-­‐making point of view

Selection methods, popularity and validity

The importance of ‘decision-­‐making’

certain criteria from the attributes list (Crow, 2004).

Inductive vs. Deductive

Interviews; Semi structured vs. Unstructured

Interviews; Miner vs. Traveler

Analysis and Findings

Restriction of Range

In both companies the emphasis of trainings is always on being open-­‐minded

In company A despite all the trainings they get, to become a decision-­‐maker,

In company B numerous people are involved in selection process and a lot of

Summary of the main findings

Affect as information

First impression inevitably follows by Confirmation bias

Selective attention and Familiarity bias

Similar to me bias

Memory biases: Salience effect, Positivity effect, Recency bias, and

Role fulfillment bias

Restriction of range

Implications and conclusion

What to do to prevent bias: A preventive approach

Motivational Debiasing Methods

Cognitive Debiasing Methods

• “Group decision-­‐making” e.g. relying on each other, self

respiration to classify true claims from untrue ones

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2-‐2.2. Selection from a Decision-‐making point of view

The importance of ‘decision-‐making’

In both companies the emphasis of trainings is always on being open-‐minded

In company A despite all the trainings they get, to become a decision-‐maker,

• “Group decision-‐making” e.g. relying on each other, self