Hire With Your Head: Using Performance-Based Hiringsm to Build Great Teams, Third Edition

Chapter 5. The Evidence-Based Assessment

	Did you ever have to make up your mind Pick up on one and leave the other behind Did you ever have to finally decide
	--Lovin’ Spoonful[*]

Implement an Evidence-Based Assessment Process to Improve Selection Accuracy

The January 2006 edition of the Harvard Business Review (HBR) is devoted entirely to the decision-making process. It’s a great edition and provides a wealth of information for revamping the hiring decision-making process. Here are just a few key points HBR makes about the causes of bad decision making:

• Most decisions are made with little evidence. Managers tend to have preconceived biases, beliefs, and perceptions. Facts are then collected to support these preconceived ideas and contrary information is avoided, ignored, or dismissed as irrelevant.

• Consensus is good—unless it’s reached too easily. In other words, it’s okay to argue and disagree about a point of view: this way, more information is considered analytically. Subordinates should be encouraged to disagree, not be chastised for it.

• The only time you should make a gut decision is when you don’t have any. Time, that is. “Gut decisions are made in moments of crisis when there is no time to weigh arguments and calculate the probability of every outcome,” HBR points out.

The previous classic decision-making errors translate into the following common hiring mistakes. How many have you observed in your company?

• Too many managers overvalue presentation skills and/or their intuition or ...