What biases should I be aware of when evaluating candidates?

💡Why should I learn this? Our biases can prevent us from making impartial decisions. Understand how conscious effort and standardization can help prevent bias in interviews!

Why is reducing bias important?

Our human minds have evolved over time to help us make our many daily decisions more efficient through a strategy called ‘heuristics’. You can think of heuristics as mental shortcuts which make us more efficient problem solvers. But, they also make our decisions more susceptible to bias. 

Our biases can prevent us from making impartial decisions. We should be hiring people who are the best fit for the role. Allowing our biases to influence our decisions undermines this objective.

What are the most common biases in hiring?

Recognizing your biases improves the quality of your decisions. The most common biases in hiring are:  

1. First Impressions and Confirmation Bias. The judgments we initially form about a person tend to have a lasting effect. So, it’s easier to confirm our existing first impressions (whether positive or negative) than changing them or forming new ones. 
2. The Halo and Horn Effects. Have you ever learned something positive about a candidate and assumed other positive things about them?  This is the halo effect in action and the opposite is true for the horn effect. One positive (Halo) or negative (Horn) attribute can shape the rest of our perceptions about the candidate. 
3. The Similar-To-Me Effect.Humans have a tendency to gravitate towards others who they share similarities with. So, we tend to favor candidates who are similar to us (e.g., interests, backgrounds, education, career, etc.) even when this information is not job-related. 
4. Stereotyping. We’re all familiar with stereotyping as a tendency to generalize information about a social category. Our assumptions about a social category can lead us to believe that everyone in that category possesses similar traits.  
5. Conformity Bias. Hiring panels can influence one another when forming candidate perceptions. The act of matching your beliefs and perceptions to the group is conformity bias at work.