Thread by @edbatista

"We should stop wasting resources trying to de-bias mindsets & start to de-bias our hiring procedures. Work-sample tests, structured interviews & comparative evaluation [allow] us to hire the best talent instead of those who look the part." ~Iris Bohnet hbr.org/2016/04/how-to…

"Perhaps the greatest achievement in I-O psychology is the development of decision aids that reduce error in the prediction of employee performance. Arguably, the greatest failure of I–O psychology has been the inability to convince employers to use them." blogg.hrsverige.nu/wp-content/upl…

"The right side of Figure 1 shows the results of a meta-analysis conducted on the actual effectiveness of these same procedures for predicting performance in sales. Use of any one of the paper-and-pencil tests alone outperforms the unstructured interview." ~Scott Highhouse, 2008

"Two implicit beliefs about employee selection: (1) people believe that it is possible to achieve near-perfect precision in the prediction of employee success, and (2) people believe that there is such a thing as intuitive expertise in the prediction of human behavior." Highhouse

"The business of assessment and selection involves considerable irreducible unpredictability, yet many seem to believe that all failures in prediction are because of mistakes in the assessment process." Scott Highhouse, 2008

"Ambiguity about the likelihood of an outcome encourages more optimism than a low known probability... This may explain why selection procedures that are difficult to evaluate (eg feelings about 'fit') are so attractive." Scott Highhouse, 2008

"The tendency to be seduced by detailed stories causes people to ignore relevant
information and to violate simple rules of logic [in hiring and selection.]" Scott Highhouse, 2008

"People trust that the complex characteristics of [job] applicants can be best assessed by a sensitive, equally complex human being. This does not stand up to scientific scrutiny." Scott Highhouse, 2008

"Hiring is more than just a process of skills sorting; it is also a process of cultural matching between candidates, evaluators & firms. Employers sought candidates who were not only competent but also culturally similar to themselves." Lauren Rivera, 2012 asr.sagepub.com/content/77/6/9…

"The literature on interpersonal dynamics shows that similarity is one of the most powerful drivers of attraction and evaluation in micro-social settings, including job interviews." Lauren Rivera, 2012

"Cultural similarities are more than just sources of liking; they are also fundamental
bases on which we evaluate merit..." 1/

"Early scholars, including Weber (1958) & Veblen (1899), argued that similarities in leisure pursuits, experiences, self-presentation, and other 'lifestyle markers' serve as badges of group membership and bases of inclusion or exclusion from desirable social opportunities..." 2/

"In fact, Weber suggested that lifestyle markers are fundamental bases of status group reproduction and social closure." Lauren Rivera, 2012

"Studies of sex & race similarities between employers & applicants show inconsistent effects, ranging from positive to negative to nil. In light of this, scholars have called for
research analyzing how similarities other than sex & race influence labor market sorting." Rivera '12

"One particularly powerful source of interpersonal attraction and evaluation is shared culture. Although important in many settings, cultural similarities are likely to be especially important in hiring." Lauren Rivera, 2012

"Subjective impressions of similarity are particularly consequential in one-on-one settings where interactions are personalized, enduring, and based on more information than what is visible, such as in job interviews." Lauren Rivera, 2012

"Perhaps surprisingly, similarity was the most common mechanism employers used to assess applicants at the job interview stage. Similarities in extracurricular/leisure pursuits, experiences, and self-presentation styles were most commonly used." Lauren Rivera, 2012

"Evaluators described fit as being one of the 3 most important criteria they used to assess candidates in job interviews; more than half reported it was the most important criterion at the job interview stage, rating fit over analytical thinking and
communication." Rivera 2012

"The notion of fit evaluators in this study used...typically referred to individuals’
play styles--how applicants preferred to conduct themselves outside the office--rather than their work styles." Lauren Rivera, 2012

"Why did evaluators & firms prioritize cultural fit? [E]valuators cited the time-intensive nature of their work. ...[T]hey saw having culturally similar colleagues as making rigorous work weeks more enjoyable, although not necessarily more productive or successful." Rivera, 2012

"Once candidates passed an initial screen, most commonly based on educational prestige, fit was typically given more weight than grades, coursework, or work experience even in first-round interviews." Lauren Rivera, 2012

One employer: "You can be the smartest guy ever, but I don’t care. I need to be comfortable working everyday with you, then getting stuck in an airport with you, and then going for a beer after. You need chemistry. Not only that the person is smart, but that you like him." Rivera

"In the face of high turnover, employers also saw creating a tight-knit workplace of like-minded people as a selling point to keep attracting new applicants." Lauren Rivera, 2012

"Although...elite professional service firms devote significant resources to increasing the demographic diversity of applicant pools, HR managers believed that achieving a baseline of cultural similarity represented a recruitment success." Lauren Rivera, 2012

"In essence, firms sought surface-level (i.e., demographic) diversity in applicant pools but deep-level (i.e., cultural) homogeneity in new hires." Lauren Rivera, 2012

"A 2nd way evaluators assessed fit was by using the self as a proxy. The logic underlying this method of evaluating fit was that an evaluator represented the firm & its personality. If an applicant fit with the evaluator, then the applicant would fit with other employees." Rivera

"Evaluators often assessed fit through ice-breaking chit-chat during the first minutes of interviews." Lauren Rivera, 2012

"Assessors purposefully used their own experiences as models of merit, believing that because they had been at least somewhat successful in their careers, candidates who were experientially similar to them would have a higher likelihood of job success." 1/

"Essentially, they constructed merit in a manner that validated their own strengths and experiences and perceived similar candidates as better applicants." 2/2 Lauren Rivera, 2012

One employer: "You are basically hiring yourself. This is not an objective process." Lauren Rivera, 2012

"Although affective processes are difficult to study outside of laboratory settings, I argue that similarities produced affective benefits observable [in hiring]: similarities could provide evaluators with feelings of excitement that provided advantages in evaluation." Rivera

"Feelings of excitement could color assessments of hard skills. Psychologists have shown that individuals experiencing positive feelings such as excitement overweight other people’s strengths in evaluation and discount their weaknesses." 1/

"Conversely, individuals experiencing negative feelings such as boredom or disappointment exaggerate others’ weaknesses and discount their strengths. Moreover, people use their feelings as measures of quality, assuming that people who make them feel good *are* good." 2/2 Rivera

"One must consider whether attraction produced by cultural similarities [in hiring] is simply a mask for sex or race homophily. There are several reasons to believe this is not the case." Lauren Rivera, 2012

'I am by no means suggesting that sex or racial discrimination or homophily do not
occur. Rather, to understand labor market outcomes, it is necessary to consider not only similarities in sex & race between employers & candidates but also similarities in culture & experience." R.

[In this study] "cultural fit was a formal evaluative criterion mandated by organizations and embraced by individual evaluators. Moreover, evaluators constructed and assessed merit in their own image, believing that culturally similar applicants were better candidates." Rivera

"Evaluators tended to favor extracurricular activities associated with the white upper-middle class and that were acquired through intense, prolonged investment of material and temporal resources not only by job applicants but also *by their parents*." Lauren Rivera, 2012

"Candidates needed enough cultural breadth to establish similarities with any [interviewer], but also enough depth in white, upper-middle-class cultural signals to relate to and excite their overwhelmingly white, upper-middle-class, Ivy League-educated interviewers." Rivera 2012

"The use of cultural similarities in hiring likely poses both benefits and challenges for organizations... Cultural similarities can facilitate trust and communication, but they can also reduce the attention team members pay to executing tasks and decision-making quality." Rivera