Neil Morelli, Ph.D., Chief I-O Psychologist, Codility.
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When deciding who to hire, we think we're rational, logical actors. But sometimes, our logical brains get short-circuited when processing too much or too little information. Having too many choices can be paralyzing. This "paradox of choice," a term coined by psychologist Barry Schwartz, is the frustration we feel when choosing among too many options. Psychologists have also discovered the opposite phenomenon: "single-choice aversion," or the dissatisfaction we feel when choosing from too few options.
But what do these phenomena have to do with hiring? Managers often fall into the paradox of choice when they continuously ask to see more candidates until one "feels right" and revert to basing decisions on instinctual preferences through trial and error. Single-choice aversion occurs when managers, underwhelmed by too few candidates that meet every criterion, throw their hands up, exclaiming, "There are no good candidates!"
These phenomena may explain why hiring processes get stuck when there are too many or too few choices. Yet, these phenomena don't explain why hiring processes often fail to provide the optimal candidate volume in the first place. To understand that, we need to look at how the recruiting standards managers set (or fail to set) early on may get them stuck in a mental rut later.
According to Schwartz, setting the right expectations is the key to breaking free from the paradox of choice. In hiring, setting the right expectations means setting job-relevant standards, such as job description qualifications, résumé screening criteria or interview scorecards. Proper, job-relevant standards reduce choices to manageable levels (paradox of choice) and prevent perfection from being the enemy of the good (single-choice aversion) when making final decisions.
Here are three practical ways you can evaluate recruiting standards to optimize the number of candidates in your pipeline and set hiring managers up for decision-making success.
Understand 'minimum' versus 'preferred' skill qualifications.
Understanding a job's qualifications involves more than jotting down a few items on a wish list. It's taking the time to articulate the job's actual minimum ("need to have") versus preferred ("nice to have") qualifications by talking to job incumbents, observing the position and collecting critical data to learn what tasks are performed and what capabilities are needed.
When figuring out what's required at "minimum," ask whether an educational or experiential requirement identifies whether a candidate is acceptable from the outset. This means minimum qualifications must reflect a required, observable credential such as education, training or an equivalent experience. Ask yourself or your job experts, does a "barely acceptable" applicant really need 10 years of experience for an entry-level position?
It's not uncommon for job requirements to far exceed what's "minimally" required. If you're concerned about lowering the quality bar for applicants, put your gold standards and most desirable experiences or skills in your preferred requirements list.
Collecting and summarizing information about the job counterbalances the information hiring managers miss or the assumptions they often make. This deeper dive into what is genuinely required "on day one" will help set expectations early in the funnel to manage the candidate flow and the screening decisions made at this stage.
Set clear, job-related evaluation criteria in interviews.
You should not only set standards for what a candidate needs to do, but also for how a candidate is evaluated. For example, these are clear evaluation criteria that separate adequate and excellent responses from poor responses in a technical interview.
Whether you've listed them or not, hiring managers already have their ideas of good interview responses. But this subjective definition of "good" leads to hiring managers being overwhelmed with making too many decisions and, ultimately, making recommendations based on gut instinct. Instead, ask hiring managers to describe what interview responses would "meet expectations." From there, it will be easier to consistently gauge whether candidates exceed or fall short of expectations.
Follow a consistent and standardized hiring process.
A consistent, standardized hiring process creates a fairer experience for candidates. It also reduces the decision overload and redundant information-gathering common with traditional, unstructured hiring. This could include specifying the number of interviews and their duration, content and criteria before interviews start. It may involve dictating which interviewer will assess which competencies beforehand so that knowledge gaps are addressed and each interview adds information to the decision-making process.
By setting clear expectations for who should evaluate candidates and rewarding hiring managers for following a prescribed process, "analysis paralysis" can be overcome when it's time to compare candidates and choose a hire.
Hiring isn't easy. But there are ways to make it easier by avoiding too many or too few options. Plus, saving yourself from the paradox of choice or single-choice aversion keeps you from falling back into biased, knee-jerk decisions we are all susceptible to making.
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