Hydrangeas, Narcissists & Intuitive Thinking · Intuitive Thinking Gerd Gigerenzer, director of the...

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Hydrangeas, Narcissists & Intuitive Thinking Better Data Balances Gut Instinct in Talent Selection For years, hiring managers have been warned of the dangers of using their gut for hiring. That’s overly simplisc and bad advice. In fact, cognive science shows we need to use every tool at our disposal, including intuive thinking. Hiring on gut feel is just as crical a part of the screening process as any objecve tool.

Transcript of Hydrangeas, Narcissists & Intuitive Thinking · Intuitive Thinking Gerd Gigerenzer, director of the...

Hydrangeas, Narcissists& Intuitive Thinking

Better Data Balances Gut Instinct in Talent Selection

For years, hiring managers have been warned of the dangers of using their gut for hiring. That’s overly simplistic and bad advice. In fact, cognitive science shows we need to use every tool at our disposal, including intuitive thinking. Hiring on gut feel is just as critical a part of the screening process as any objective tool.

Gut feelings are based on certain rules of thumb that take advantage of capacities of the brain

For years, hiring managers have been warned of the dangers of using their gut for hiring. That’s overly simplistic and bad advice. In fact, cognitive science shows we need to use every tool at our disposal, including intuitive thinking. Hiring on gut feel is just as critical a part of the screening process as any objective tool.

But our intuitive thinking is vulnerable to errors the same way rational analysis is. The trick is knowing when to rely on instinct and when to rely on reason and data. Using gut feeling alone – instead of triangulating that hunch with a validated assessment, reference checking and a structured interview – is where the risk comes in.

The Value of Intuitive Thinking Gerd Gigerenzer, director of the Max Planck Institute for Human Development, makes the case for intuition in his book, Gut Feelings: The Intelligence of the Unconscious. Malcolm Gladwell’s best-selling treatise on the power of gut feeling, Blink: The Power of Thinking Without

Thinking, also drew heavily from Gigerenzer’s research.

According to Gigerenzer, “gut feelings are based on certain rules of thumb that take advantage of capacities of the brain that have come down to us through time, experience and evolution. In most situations, when people use their instincts, they are heeding these cues and ignoring other unnecessary information.”

These cognitive rules of thumb allow us to make fast judgments that are, in some cases, more accurate than mulling over a decision at length. Our social intuition, especially, is intimately guided by such mental shortcuts and is likely a good indicator of the candidate’s organizational culture fit.

Stephen Balzac, consultant and adjunct professor of industrial/organizational psychology and management, has

dubbed this vulnerability “The Hydrangea Effect,” after the comments of a woman whose Montclair, New Jersey neighbors were arrested for being Russian spies in 2010.

Quoted in the New York Times, Jessi Gugig said she found the charges unbelievable. “They couldn’t have been spies. Look what she did with the hydrangeas!”

The spies were living what appeared to be utterly ordinary lives and their neighbors viewed all of the couple’s actions through this misguided lens. The pretty garden served as “proof ” that nothing sinister could be going on. “The fact is, planting hydrangeas is as much an indication of whether or not someone is a spy as being charming in an interview is an indication that a person is a good hire,” Balzac says.

The Risk of Gut Feeling With the Charming Candidate

A recent study by the University of Nebraska at Lincoln supports Balzac’s warning, showing that narcissists perform much better than non- narcissists in a job interview. They’re good at ingratiating behavior and, unlike non-narcissists, are natural self-promoters. Such qualities can blindside our intuition and completely throw off our gut instincts about how well they will fit in terms of culture.

Peter Harms, assistant professor of management at the University of

Nebraska- Lincoln and a co-author of the study said, “We find very little evidence that narcissists are more or less effective workers. But what we do know is that they can be very disruptive and destructive when dealing with other people on a regular basis.”

Some people are just good at interviewing and making others feel comfortable, but such skills don’t necessarily translate into positive job performance. As such, hiring managers who ignore a good or bad gut feeling open themselves up to other risks, namely letting a socially awkward high performer fall throughthe cracks or hiring a poor performer who’s articulate.

Balancing Gut Instinct and Data to Improve Quality of HireGut instinct does matter, but its obvious flaws require that it be supplemented by a structured hiring process. Automated assessment tools can objectively eliminate low potential candidates early in the process, minimizing the risk of bad hire sneaking through on their buzzword knowledge or ability to charm.

What’s more, a validated assessment like ChequedFit™ at the top of the funnel, based on benchmarks customized to the organization and job, yields data that can drive a more objective interview process. This further augments the standardization and compliance of your process.

ChequedReference™ online reference checking at the back end of the process also allows us to further

compare our subjective impressions of good interviewers against authentic data about candidate performance in previous jobs. With such pre-hire assessments, hiring managers are able to qualify hires in a job-relevant way, reserving their gut instinct until it’s time to decide between only those few proven top performers.

What Really Matters

The natural human tendency to shut out data contradictory to our gut is a major vulnerability in applying our instincts to the hiring process. But this tendency can be countered by remaining conscious of our initial assumptions and spending time to carefully consider the behavioral data.

A structured, job-relevant screening process utilizing behavioral assessment ensures our instincts are applied only to pre-qualified, high potential talent. This improves both the efficiency and efficacy of the process, as our intuitions about which of these candidates to bring in for further interviewing – and finally to hire – are much less likely to lead to a costly hiring mistake.

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