Getting Past “The Comfort Of The Familiar” In The Hiring Process

A powerful article in the New York Times last Spring — Guess Who Doesn’t Fit In At Work — makes the important but troubling observation that personal affinities and likes and dislikes, shared by the interviewer and the candidate, often trump qualifications for the work in the making of hiring decisions.

As social beings, we desperately want to connect with others, and naturally look for hooks or common interests that will bind us to others.

But there are real problems with using this comforting tug of the familiar as a screening technique in the hiring process:

The person charged with the responsibility of bringing new people on board ought to be focused more on assessing the probability of their willingness and ability to do the job and to bring the needed skills, than whether they share affinities with the interviewer or with other people already onboard.

Trying to gauge the likelihood of a candidate’s ability to work collegially with associates by probing for social affinities like favorite sports teams and love of fine wine is a pretty clumsy technique.  It’s not likely to reveal how the person will get along with others when they’re focused on a work project, much less what new things they’re likely to bring to the mix.  It reminds me of the not-so-old days when you’d hear an executive proudly say “I can tell everything I need to know about a person by how he behaves on the golf course.”

And while we’re at it, if your workplace culture is so brittle that it can’t accept and thrive on the addition of some new folks who don’t look, think and act exactly the people who already work there, you’ve got some work to do on those issues as well as on the hiring challenge.

We’ve read and heard that a diverse workforce is desirable, but I wonder whether we really know why that’s true.  People with different backgrounds, interests, points of view are likely to bring new perspectives to the situation at hand.  We’re being short-sighted if we don’t view this desirable diversity in its broadest meaning.

In a wonderful quote from What Happens When An Octogenarian & Millennial Discuss Career Advice, the venerable Bill Marriott said “…diversity is about individuals with diverse backgrounds. It’s about respect for the individual and their contribution is a key. It’s not about labeling groups.”

We need all kinds of skills, diversity of thought, approach and point of view to face down today’s business problems, and when we’re looking for people to join us, we have to have the discipline and vision to look past the powerful tug of social affinities and cues that might make us feel good in the interview, but might not help us get the work done.