Hiring is Often Just a Gut Decision

This past month alone I made hundreds of decisions. The most significant was deciding to move from Chicago to Boulder. Should I sell or rent my apartment? What furniture to keep, sell, give away or simply get rid of? What goes into storage and what comes with me? Oh, wait where will I be living?  Can I take a break from working with clients to pack and move? When would be the best time to do that?  Will both the desk chair and coffee machine fit in the car? Brain explosion!

Now if I actually stopped to think about every one of these decisions, my guess is I would probably still be in Chicago instead of sitting at my desk looking out at the foothills.

Fortunately, I don’t have to because so many decisions we make are based on gut instinct or intuition. When you say you have a gut feeling what you are doing is accessing your experiences to form judgments and take action without seemingly any logical, conscious consideration. These are our mental shortcuts and biases that have developed overtime. (I’ve lived in New York, Missouri, California, Massachusetts and Illinois—I have experiences to draw upon.)

We make gut decisions in our personal and professional lives. And often hiring one candidate vs. another is a gut decision an employer makes based on hiring experiences. 

Ben Lerer, co-founder and C.E.O. of the Thrillist Media Group, which oversees men’s lifestyle and shopping websites says, “When we were just starting out, I was incredibly gut-driven when I was interviewing people. And that was because, as a start-up, we weren’t really able to hire people with good resumés. There was never anyone with good experience we could attract at that point, so you hired the person you felt better about.” Thrillist made a shift in its hiring practices but ultimately has gone back to gut-driven hiring.

Lerer goes on to say, “You sit across the table from someone and usually you know in about 10 or 15 minutes if this person is going to work out. You sit across the table and talk to them. Does it feel right or doesn’t it feel right? And if it feels right, it is right a vast majority of the time, I’m finding.”

For someone who makes gut-based hiring decisions interviews are to make sure they are getting the right information to make a hiring decision.

Familiarity.  The interviewer is thinking through his/her past experiences, searching for appropriate memories and determining if you have sufficient similar experiences by which they can make a sound judgment about hiring.

Feedback.  The interviewer is analyzing feedback they received from past hiring decisions.  When his/her hiring is perceived as good decisions by others then gut-driven hiring becomes stronger. If on the other hand their hires have not worked out well, then they keep probing to ensure they don’t make the same errors in judgment.

Independence. The interviewer is ensuring that he/she is not being influenced by any inappropriate personal interests.

How do you prepare for the gut-driven interview? The same way you would for any interview because the interview will not look or feel any different than any other interview. The interview style will still be behavioral and you still want to show how you fit into the employer’s culture.