Evidence-Based Recruiting: How to Build a Company of Star Performers Through Systematic and Repeatable Hiring Practices

CHAPTER 11

Using a Flawed Instrument to Make (Im)Perfect Predictions

THE ROOT CAUSE OF UNDESIRED HIRING BIASES

I’m assuming that most executives who have made it this far in my book have also read Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking, Fast and Slow and Nassim Taleb’s The Black Swan. Kahneman and Taleb are profoundly insightful in unpacking cognitive biases and other problems that arise when we use an imperfect instrument—our brains—to try to make perfect predictions. Any book on recruiting would be incomplete without addressing these biases, so I will highlight a few of them. However, I believe that most of my readers are already familiar with this part of the hiring story, and I am comfortable dedicating less space to this topic than it deserves. ...