Confirmation bias

- Have you ever heard of confirmation bias before? Well, maybe you have, or maybe you haven't, but I guarantee you've probably used it unknowingly when you needed to make a decision about a candidate and in likely didn't help you. So let's go over what confirmation bias is and talk about a couple of examples so you can minimize this bias when you're recruiting or hiring in the future. Confirmation bias comes in when a recruiter or hiring manager analyzes or processes information in a way that confirms their own beliefs or assumptions about a person. This bias also involves a tendency to ignore, explain a way or even forget information that conflicts with those personal beliefs or assumptions. Confirmation bias can prevent us from considering other relevant or positive information. When making key decisions about a candidate in a recruiting an interview process. Here's an example, let's imagine you a recruiter and just receive a candidates resume. You notice the resume has a certain address or a school listed on it, and you immediately recall a negative experience you had related to one of those factors. Your confirmation bias will override any other relevant information that may identify this candidate as qualified for the role. You may even go as far as to ask targeted questions about the candidate's neighborhood or school to help support or confirm your bias. Now why is this a risk? Well, just because you had a bad experience with one person or perhaps at a particular place, doesn't mean that all people from that neighborhood or school are the same. In this case, you already dismissed the candidate before given him or her a chance in the process. Now admittedly we all have confirmation bias, but here are some steps we can take to minimize it. Conduct a self check to see if you're allowing personal experiences positive or negative to impact your decision about the candidate. Ask the same questions to each candidate who has applied for the same position. This not only helps us ensure a fair evaluation process for all candidates, but it will also help remove any tendency to ask targeted questions that may confirm your own bias about a particular candidate. And it's always a good idea to have a peer or manager help in the interview process. Gain in a different perspective can help reduce any confirmation bias that may impact the interview process. Now that you know what confirmation bias is and have some examples of how it may impact your recruiting in an interview making, keep it in mind this week. When you see a familiar name or place on a resume, check yourself to see if it's a trigger for your confirmation bias to kick in. Are you keeping an open mind or are you confirming what you already believe or assume. Then do the work that minimize bias in your own decision making process to increase the diversity of your talent pool.