3 Common Unconscious Biases When Hiring

For a more effective recruitment process, get to know your own cognitive biases.

We aren’t as objective as we think we are. Everyone naturally views the world from a unique perspective, colored by beliefs, emotions, and past experiences.

Cognitive biases refer to logical errors in our thinking. For example, when we’re in a group, we tend to believe what the majority agree with and doubt our own opinion. Naturally, these can lead to wrong decision-making–and it’s difficult for us to catch our biases because they happen at a subconscious level.

Being aware of these biases, though, can save you from picking wrong hires, which costs your company a significant amount of money in the long run. Recruitment is especially prone to bias, after all. There’s no standardized way to do it, and so much of the result depends on face-to-face communication and first impressions.

Here are three common biases that you should be wary of when recruiting:

1. Hiring based on similarity

Fast fact: we’re drawn to people who are similar to us. If you doubt this, just look around at who you hang out with. This is perfectly okay when we’re expanding our circle of friends or picking out a partner, but not when hiring. What makes this dangerous is that similarity here can extend to all sorts of traits–not only personality, but also appearance, place of origin, even favorite ice cream flavor.

Hitting it off with a job candidate (“oh, that’s also my favorite movie!”) leaves you with a positive impression, even if the person isn’t ideal for the job. This might eclipse someone who’s a great fit but who has less chemistry with you.

Repeatedly hiring people who are similar to you reduces the diversity in your company, which is a definite disadvantage. Worst-case scenario? Groupthink.

2. Confirmation bias

Recruiters have to make judgments about job candidates after a few encounters at most. One pitfall here is stereotyping: coming to an immediate conclusion about candidates based on their appearance, gender, race, or even school. This can be generalized into noticing a one-dimensional characteristic and letting that take over your entire assessment.

You might find out right away that a candidate comes from a popular graduate school. For the rest of the interview, instead of being neutral, you look for evidence that she’s good at what she does. This goes straight into confirmation bias–trying to fit things into your rigid interpretation.

It’s a very easy bias to fall into since we do it a lot in our everyday lives–whenever we make sweeping statements about people.

3. Context

The tiniest details can skew our decision-making: lack of sleep, how hungry we are, the temperature of the room. Context affects everything.

Even something as negligible as your posture–whether you’re leaning right or left–can influence how you think. Doing an interview when you’re in a bad mood or when your stomach is growling might make you inclined to view the candidate more negatively.

It’s also worth taking note of the recency bias, which states that you remember recent experience more easily. When you have a queue of five back-to-back interviews, unless you take notes and ask structured questions, the last interviewee would likely be the most memorable for you. Similarly, a candidate might be doing well in general, but if she performs badly at the end of the interview, that’s what will stick with you.

Conclusion

Cognitive biases are pretty much impossible to eliminate since we’re human, after all. We can never be completely dispassionate. However, we can minimize bias with enough self-awareness.

Structured interviews are a useful tool for guaranteeing a recruitment process that’s as impartial as possible. Interviewees would ideally pose similar questions to each candidate while making sure to tweak them so it doesn’t get predictable.

For more well-informed recruitment decisions, you can also take advantage of software tools such as Sprout Recruit, which we’ll be launching soon. It features an applicant tracking system that’s tailor-fitted to the Philippines, along with analytics that give you a 360-degree perspective on the interview process. Stay tuned here for updates!

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