Introduction

In this article, we overview some of the cognitive biases that exist and how they impact various stages of a company’s hiring process. There are in fact well over a hundred distinct cognitive biases that affect how we think and judge. Cognitive biases are, simply put, a systematic deviation from rationality in our judgements and thoughts. In just a single day, we tend to be faced with situations that require that we process enormous amounts of information in relatively short periods of time. To do this our brain takes a number of shortcuts – many to our and others’ detriment.

Needs Analysis

In this section, we review the types of biases that occur in a company’s needs analysis stage. This is the process whereby the needs, goals and aspirations of either the business itself, or of its customers, are determined [1]. Since this process depends on a human element, it is a prime source of bias that can heavily impact both the company’s culture and workforce, as well as the way that it delivers its products and services to its customers. Some of the biases that occur during the needs analysis stage include:

Automation Bias

The automation bias refers to our tendency to rely too heavily on automation and technology to the point that we tend to trust it over our own [2]. This can lead us to rely on mistaken information generated by a computing system instead of on our sense of rationality and reason. Take, for example, a group of tourists visiting Australia in 2012 that drove into the ocean by following their GPS system [3]. Dealing with high pressure situations can incline us to outsource part of our decision-making process to automation systems but we also need to be cautious with technology and remember that our insights are just as important as a machine’s. This is a central element to our philosophy here at MeVitae. Our data-driven technology is designed to automate several steps in the recruitment process while determining your company culture and finding the right candidates that fit that culture. In the process, our algorithms eliminate as much bias as possible from the hiring decision but, at the end of the day, the final say will and should always be left up to a human being. Technology is designed to enhance the way we live and work, not replace it.

Expectation Bias

An expectation bias occurs when our individual expectations about an outcome influence the way we perceive that outcome, ourselves, or other people [4]. In other words, when we have a strong belief about a particular event we actually affect the manner in which we perceive that event playing out. For instance, a recruiter analysing applications to a role might harbour pre-existing views on the way in which a candidate belonging to a particular gender or ethnicity will express themselves. If the candidate happens to conform to one of these views the recruiter might be inclined to assume that the candidate is just as they expected them to be and neglect many of the candidate’s more distinct, and relevant, qualities.

Bias blind spot

The bias blind spot is a cognitive bias that arises when an individual is able to recognize the use and effect of biases in the judgements of others but not in their own judgements. This is one of the most common forms of bias that exists today. In a study of over 600 U.S. citizens, roughly 85% of them regarded themselves as being less biased than the average American [5]. To run a successful business, we need to be almost as critical of our own thought processes and judgements as we are of others.  

Sourcing

Here we discuss the biases that arise during the sourcing process, which refers to the procedure where companies search for, find and contact potential talent. Since this is where the recruitment process starts, it is a natural source of bias. This includes:

Google effect

The Google effect, which is sometimes also referred to as digital amnesia, refers to the tendency that people have to use online sources of information as their personal memory banks. According to recent research performed at Columbia University, when information is stored somewhere that is easily accessible—such as ATS systems—people tend to remember where the information is stored instead of the information itself [6]. This kind of bias can be especially damaging to implementing an effective recruitment process. If recruiters need to decide between a large number of applicants, each with an extensive number of skills and employment backgrounds, they could end up forgetting a slew of details about each applicant while they conduct their shortlisting process.

Hot-hand fallacy

This bias is particularly relevant to a business’s recruitment process. It refers to our propensity to assume that people who have been successful with a task in the past are more likely to be successful with the same task in future attempts [7]. Since we are relying on so little data to support this assumption, often just a sample size of one, we need to be careful to recognise that a history of past successes does not imply future success.

Shortlisting

The shortlisting, or selection, process is where businesses start to entify the candidates that are the best fit for a role and their siness ethos more generally. More than half of talent acquisition aders label this process the most difficult part of recruitment, which kes having a meticulous and carefully designed decision-making process r shortlisting applicants only more important. While bias pervades st about every aspect of the business world, it dominates none more so an this stage of hiring. We will discuss just a few of the biases that ise in this stage below.

Halo effect

Halo effect describes our tendency to be influenced by positive impressions of a person. While this doesn’t seem to be particularly harmful at first glance, it is actually rather detrimental – positive impressions can be superficial and don’t necessarily need to express a person’s capabilities. For instance, a person’s physical appearance tends to play a major role in the halo effect: people that are considered attractive tend to be rated higher in other, unrelated traits as well [8].

Salience bias

Salience bias is an inclination that we have to prioritize information that stands out in some way or another [9]. The issue here is that this information is often not actually relevant and would not be involved in an objective judgement of the situation or problem at hand. In a recruitment setting, this means that talent acquisition staff are more likely to focus on, and remember, the job candidates that stand out rather than just the candidates that are most suited to the role.

Peak-End Rule

This cognitive bias impacts how we remember past events. We tend to remember the most emotionally intensive parts of an experience, positive or negative, along with the end of the experience more so than any other part of it [10]. This means that we are more likely to remember candidates who triggered some kind of emotional reaction or who ended their resumes, cover letters, or even interviews, on an interesting note. The more easily we remember a candidate, the more they stand out when we’re make our hiring decisions.  

Von Restorff Effect

The Von Restorff effect, also known as the Isolation effect, is closely related to the salience bias. It refers to the fact that when we are faced with a number of similar objects or people, the object or person that differs from the rest is the one most likely to be remembered [11]. For example, in a hiring situation where candidates are applying to a specialized role that requires people with a very specific background and skillset, most candidates will appear to be more or less the same on paper. This bias predicts that the candidate that we are most likely to remember when making our hiring decision is the candidate that was the most different, and not necessarily the most qualified.

Ingroup bias

This is our propensity to favour our own group, its members, and their characteristics [12]. The definition of group here is broad and can involve members of the same social class, ethnicity, race, or gender identity. As a result, this bias lies at the very centre of the inequalities present in our society.

Confirmation bias

Confirmation bias is the tendency to recall and favour information that confirms our preexisting beliefs or hypotheses. We do this by disproportionately, and even outright erroneously, assigning more weight to evidence that agrees with those beliefs over evidence that disproves it [13]. As a consequence, candidates that we take a liking to early on may be shortlisted into later stages of the hiring process or even hired outright in spite of evidence that they might not be the best candidate for the role, simply because we formed a preexisting belief about them in the earlier stages of the recruitment process.

Mood congruent memory bias

The mood congruent memory bias describes the close relationship between our mental states and the way that we perceive and recall information; in that we usually remember events more easily when they share our current mood [14]. In other words, during periods that we are in a positive mental space we tend to remember positive experiences while negative moods, on the other hand, incline us to remember negative experiences. As a consequence, when we start shortlisting candidates we are usually more likely to recall positive experiences with those candidates when we are in a positive mental state, but neglect those experiences when we are not. Conversely, we might remember negative aspects of our experiences with a candidate when we are in a negative state of mind.

Interview and Hiring

The hiring process is the very final stage of the recruitment procedure. Since this is where the hiring decision is made, it is also the most important and therefore the most susceptible to bias in the decision-making process.

Hyperbolic discounting

Hyperbolic discounting is a statement about our tendency to choose smaller rewards that are incurred sooner rather than larger awards that are incurred later [15]. This behavioural quirk can affect how a business works in a number of ways. In terms of recruitment, it can lead us to make hiring decisions on weaker candidates that are available to start sooner over stronger candidates that are available later; and even to hire candidates with more experience but less potential over those that are relatively inexperienced but have a greater potential.

Choice-supportive bias

The choice-supportive bias is a rationalization that we tend to make to defend our decisions or perceive our choices as being better than they are for the simple reason that we made them [16]. When making a choice between the final round of applicants, this bias can lead us to unnecessarily overscore candidates that we had taken a preference to early on during the application process even when these candidates aren’t the best performers during later rounds.

Semmelweis Reflex

The Semmelweis reflex refers to our almost reflex-like inclination to reject new evidence that contradicts our established beliefs and norms [17]. This can lead us to be slow to new ideas or innovations that don’t conform to the way that we do things presently. When businesses and hiring staff become dogmatic and inflexible in this way, they tend to lose out on talent that could grow the business in new and original directions.

Survivorship Bias

Survivorship bias, or survival bias, is a logical error that arises when we assume that success is the whole story. In other words, this bias occurs when we make our decision on only those that survived some shortlisting process and ignore those that did not [18]. While shortlisting processes aide our ability to make effective decisions, care needs to be taken to ensure that the shortlisting process is accurate and driven by enough of the right data so that we can eliminate the survivorship bias from our hiring decisions.

Conclusion

We have reviewed a number of cognitive biases in this article that dominate recruitment but there are still several dozens more. So, if we want to make effective decisions that will mould our business into the best possible workplace it can be, we need to take every step that we can to eliminating the often-harmful shortcuts that arise in our decision-making processes. This is a daunting task that requires a level of expertise, objectivity, and data-driven procedures that we typically don’t have the resources for. Enter MeVitae’s candidate shortlisting technology. We’ve spent thousands of hours and analysed millions of data entries to build AI-powered algorithms that deeply probe resumes, job applications, and your workplace culture itself to make shortlisting decisions that are objective and devoid of bias. Our shortlisting technology is engineered with precision in mind so that at the end of the day, your recruiters will only have to choose between the very best candidates for a role.

If you are interested in this service please contact us for more information.

Author: Riham Satti (Co-Founder and CEO)