Regular readers of this blog are familiar with my interest in the “nudge”. A nudge is the subtle use of behavioral research to impact how we behave. The sign of a good nudge is that, well, there’s no obvious sign of it at all. Much of the nudge thinking emanates from a UK government entity (now private) officially called the “Behavioural Insights Team” but more colloquially referred to as the “Nudge Unit”.
A nudge is often associated with influencing “choice architecture”, or how choices are presented to us. Example: some females perform better at math tests if they are asked about their gender at the END of the test rather than at the beginning since research has shown that asking women about their gender at the beginning of the test can, for some test-takers, trigger anxieties about gender and math causing them to perform below their true capability. By re-architecting the choice, a negative nudge is removed and the test becomes a better representation of mathematical ability.
Below is another nudge example. The symbol on the wall in the picture is of a shrine, but there is no shrine nearby or behind the wall. Why is it there?
If you guessed “so people won’t urinate on the wall out of respect”, you are right. That’s an example of a nudge. Oftentimes, a nudge like this works much better than a sign that says “no urinating here”, as you can see from the picture below I took in India a few years ago. Note the guy urinating to the left of the painted sign.
Both of the pictures above were used by the smart people at Freakonomics, who have done a number of creative podcasts and posts on the subject of nudges.
So it was with great interest that I ran across this article discussing the use of behavioral insights in the hiring process. This is an area ripe for consideration since the odds associated with most companies’ hiring success is in the range of a coin-flip. In this article, the interviewee – Kate Glazebrook from the Behavioral Insights Team – is concerned with finding and reducing systemic bias that negatively impacts minority hiring in a police force, but there is a lot that can be applied to our non-police roles that extends beyond removing minority bias. Money quote:
Most of us know that recruitment decision-making is rife with behavioral biases, but most organizations haven’t embedded any of that knowledge of best practice into what they do.
Two ideas that struck me:
1. Reading the CV “backwards” (e.g. starting at the bottom and working your way up from there, instead of the more common top-to-bottom). This helps eliminate certain biases that aren’t really germane to the hiring decision. In fact, Glazebrook says that outside of early-round screening their research showed that the CV was of little use in making the right hire.
2. The wisdom of the crowd. Glazebrook: “What is the optimal crowd to mitigate the risk against getting rid of your best candidate? We ran some interesting experiments on this and basically settled on three. Most organizations can afford to have three people hire their best people, right? If we live in a knowledge economy, it’s crucially important.
I think most of us are uncomfortable with “taking a test” as part of a job application process, probably because we lack confidence in the test to get it right. But I suspect this is changing in some important ways:
• Our jobs are increasingly “human” as algorithms replace the drudgery of certain tasks. This makes the emotional intelligence and soft-skill capabilities more important. Many assessments are good at figuring out how we “tick”. I have written about one of these – the StrengthsFinder survey – in the past here and here.
• The ability to work in team environments is increasing the importance of “cultural fit” of a candidate, or the likelihood that the he or she will thrive in their team role. Again, surveys are getting better at telling us who we are, what we’re inclined to like or dislike, and if we’ll strengthen or weaken the team. Note that smart companies aren’t looking for someone who will be identical to the team members, but for someone who will bring a combination of “same” and “different” that will make the team better. I have written before about a mistake I once made of hiring someone “like me” here.
Interested in more reading on nudges? Go here and here and here.
Good luck!
Also published on Medium.
I am a business leader in the tech industry and write about leadership, innovation, and personal effectiveness. 