In his book Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, author Bob Cialdini explains how the contrast principle can unfairly distort our perceptions of quality and value. By comparing a really good thing to something that is just okay, we tend to judge the latter as far worse than it is. It works the other way, too: when presented with a host of bad options, the best of the bunch – the lesser of all the evils – looks disproportionately attractive.

Cialdini gives us myriad examples: Realtors who show you a couple of dingy properties to make the target property look better, and retail salespeople who suggest a really expensive coat to get you to settle for the cheaper belt. The principle also turned a series of bad management decisions into the Watergate incident, if you can believe that.

It doesn’t stop there, however. The contrast principle is a natural and inextricable part of the traditional face-to-face interview.

Comparing the gregarious extravert with the soft-talking introvert

Janie is bright, exuberant, and chatty. The interview starts strongly. She strides proudly into your office, hand outstretched, smiling warmly. Her clothes are fashionable. Her resume is colourful and well-designed. You like her right away, as does everyone, because she’s a ray of sunshine. She probably plays the harp and makes her own muesli.

The interview goes well. Janie knows what to say, and because she is extraverted, she knows how to deftly circumvent tricky technical questions. There’s a slight concern in the back of your mind that she is not sufficiently experienced, but you figure that her outgoing, can-do attitude will more than make up for that (and you might be right).

Alice is your next appointment. She’s a lot quieter than Janie. She speaks a lot less, too. Her smile is genuine, and she is perfectly well spoken, but Alice is clearly nervous. Her manner is cautious, full of apprehension. 

You notice that her resume is excellent. Ticks all the right boxes. She’s a veteran in the field. But there’s something amiss: She’s just not like Janie. As a result, you’re probably not going to call her back for a second interview.

This is one of the most common ways the contrast principle plays out: If the second candidate does not match the energy of the first, if her presence does not illicit the same rise in dopamine, then we are likely to favour the first candidate. Objectivity quickly goes out the window.

Here are some other examples of how the contrast principle affects hiring

• We are more likely to hire people who look, sound, or think like us. So, resultantly, we might rank a candidate higher than they deserve in comparison to others.
• We spend so long looking for a candidate to fill a role that we lower our standards over time, and give later candidates more leeway than we do earlier ones.
• Multiple candidate rejections may lead hiring managers to relent and accept a less-than-perfect candidate. This is an example of the contrast principle and  the reciprocity rule working together (that is, multiple rejections make the hiring manager more likely to concede and accept a lesser decision, in order to appear more cooperative to those doing the talent hunting).

How to remove the contrast principle from your hiring process

There are many suggestions out there for mitigating or removing the contrast principle, but the truth is this: If humans do your face-to-face interviews, you cannot prevent the potential for contrast bias. Even conducting what’s called a ‘blind resume review’ will not help. Yes, you can assess resumes stripped of identifying characteristics, like race or gender, but you cannot account for the fact that the details themselves are easily doctored and falsified. Don’t forget that 78% of people lie.

The bottom line is this: You need a blind, non-human smart interviewer to do your first-round interviewing for you. It’s the only way to be free of biases, compromise hires, and the intractable likeability factor. We can help with that.

Transcript:

Kyle Lagunas:
You and I both know that adding more headcount will not help the issue [of recruiters being overworked], since it’ll just result in more people doing more tasks.

At one point, we had General Motors in a position where we were having quarterly go-to-market meetings every quarter.

As a leadership team, we met to determine what we wanted to achieve in the next quarter and what it would take to get there.

When I started running the go-to-market functions for my boss, Cyril George, I told him that no one here knew what their KPIs were because it wasn’t clear; it was like everything was on fire all the time.

So we began having these go-to-market meetings, and a significant portion of them focused on the tech and innovation that we were driving to resource the team.

Then someone asked, “What’s the point once we implement all of this?”

I knew the subtext was, “Are we laying people off? Are we getting rid of recruiters?”

I responded, “No, the point is for you not to be working 65 hours a week every week.”

The room fell silent; there was no slow clap, just disbelief and shock.

They thought, “I don’t think that’s real,” but it is.

That’s what tech can do, you know.

Not only can it help for one quarter, but it can also make a difference for years to come.

So, stop thinking of buying tech for new best practices that it can bring, and start thinking of it as a way to extend our capacity sustainably and meaningfully.

It’s critical.

Barb Hyman:
Yeah, I see it the same way, in terms of giving you leverage.

Every time you hire someone for your team, you gain more leverage, allowing you to achieve more.

Technology does the same thing, but on a larger scale.

Listen to the full episode of our podcast featuring Kyle Lagunas here:

In the current world, websites like LinkedIn have become a great platform for people to seek out new job opportunities. Same for organisations.

The Best and The Worst of Social Media

Given the current COVID-19 crisis, almost daily I come across 2 or 3 posts of people seeking to find a job as their company let them go, due to the economic situation.

Such posts are very popular. The power of social media is really unravelled in these times with a clear case multiple strangers coming to rescue to the person who starts the post. This help is extended either in case of connecting for an opportunity or by simply commenting so that more and more see in their personal feeds and the post goes viral.

I am sure many prospective candidates or affected people may have found their job of choice or compulsion with this. Great effort indeed!

But this also brings out the fact that many people (and companies) may be little hasty in making the job decision.

Given that hiring is an expensive process, HR leaders and hiring managers have often struggled with the possibility of the candidate leaving the job in a few months or years from joining.

Problems become more complex with the fact that the current breed of young workers rate company loyalty relatively lower in their ranking of traits of a dream job. A better brand, a better culture or better compensation can sway them to the other side of the door.

Another study found that in some sectors, the average stay in the company is reducing rapidly due to the high attrition.

What are Job Hoppers?

People who move from one job to the other very often are popularly known as ‘Job Hoppers’.

One study says that in 2018, the turnover cost was $680 Billion in the US economy. Here is the link to the study.

As a phenomenon, job-hopping has been an area of significant interest for both industry and academia.

How do you recognise ‘Job Hoppers’?

Now a new study may have found the solution to this problem with the help of Artificial Intelligence techniques.

The study titled ‘Predicting job-hopping likelihood using answers to open-ended interview questions’ scanned through over 45,000+ interview responses to correlate them with personality types using multiple AI techniques to lead to conclusion.

The personality types were identified using the following model –

1. HEXACO Personality – Link here

The correlation models used for assessment of the personality types derived from the interview responses with the propensity of job-hopping are below –

1. Doc2Vec – DM (Gensim)
2. LDA
3. LIWC
4. TF-IDF
5. Word Embeddings

The conclusion of the study is –

1. Candidates with ‘Openness to Experience‘ personality type on HEXACO are most likely to indulge in job-hopping
2. And candidates with ‘Agreeableness‘ trait dominant in their personality type are least likely to indulge in it.

The full study with details of the future work prospects in the area can be found here.

Amitesh Tyagi, Grow Daily, 25/07/2020 

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