Step #3—Maximize Hiring Styles

Leverage Perception to Counter Hiring Blindness and Support Accurate Employee Selection

In the late 1990s, cognitive scientists Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons created a video that later became an Internet sensation. As the video begins, an off-screen narrator asks the viewer to count how many times players wearing white T-shirts pass a basketball to one another. Making this simple job of counting more challenging, the three white T-shirted players dribble and pass the ball while maneuvering around three black-shirted players who are also dribbling and passing. After 30 seconds, the narrator asks, “How many passes did you count?” I tallied 15 passes—the correct answer. What I quickly learned, however, was that counting the passes wasn’t the real point of the exercise. Instead, I discovered I had missed something when the narrator asked, “But did you see the gorilla?”

I thought this had to be a joke. But as I watched again, sure enough, there was a gorilla. Ten seconds into the action, a gorilla-costumed figure walked between the players, faced the camera, thumped its chest, and continued walking out of sight.¹ In their book, The Invisible Gorilla, the scientists report that half the viewers of the video missed seeing the faux primate. In some cases, viewers couldn’t see the gorilla while looking directly at it. Such a perceptual phenomena is called “inattentional blindness,” and occurs when we unintentionally ignore an object that was unexpected.²

Overlooking a gorilla in a video may not be overly concerning. However, if you’re landing a plane and can’t see that you’re about to crash, that’s a problem. That’s exactly what happened at NASA’s Ames Research Center. During extensive simulator training, seasoned commercial airline pilots “flew” simulated landings in varying weather conditions. After multiple sessions, a plane on the ground, called a “runway incursion,” was added to the simulation. As pilots broke through a layer of clouds and prepared to land, some never saw the large plane in front of them entering the runway. One pilot, after being shown a video of his “fatal” attempt at landing, said, “If I didn’t see [the tape], I wouldn’t believe it. I honestly didn’t see anything on that runway.”³

These perceptual blind spots aren’t limited to eyesight. People experience inattentional deafness as well. As an example, Chabris and Simons recount a social experiment by Washington Post columnist Gene Weingarten and virtuoso violinist Joshua Bell. With Stradivarius in hand, Bell performed for 43 minutes outside a Washington, D.C., subway station at rush hour. Out of more than a thousand passersby, Bell’s virtuosity was only noticed by seven people. In 2008, Weingarten went on to win the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing for his cover story about the event. Bell netted just $52.17—the amount of cash thrown by those seven passersby into his open violin case. Why didn’t more people notice the gifted Bell? The scientists’ hypothesis: “[W]hen people are focusing attention (visual or auditory) on one task—getting to work—they are unlikely to notice something unexpected—a brilliant violinist along the way.”⁴

If seasoned pilots can’t see a giant airplane, and a thousand people can’t hear heavenly music, and millions of viewers don’t notice when a basketball drill is interrupted by a gorilla, just how much have we been missing when conducting something as ordinary and humdrum as a job interview?

The Invisible Gorillas of Interviewing

Many people have been disappointed when the candidates they interviewed ended up being poor hires. How did that happen? The interviewers say things like the following:

• “He interviewed so well. I thought he’d be able to do the job.”

• “She seemed like a great fit, but in the end she never really fit in.”

• “I’m still not sure how such an accomplished person could perform so badly.”

• “He seemed like such a nice guy, but after we hired him he was a jerk. How’d I miss that?”

That last quote came from Simon, the vice president of a technology company in the eastern United States. His comment was about a recent hire, and this was not a unique experience. In fact, his “batting average,” as he put it, was not good, and was the source of negative feedback on his last two performance reviews. “I’m one for three,” said Simon dejectedly. “For every one person I get right, there are two who end up quitting or are fired within the first few months. I’ve got to figure out what I’m doing wrong or I’ll be the one looking for a job.”

I showed Simon the video from Chabris and Simons. He too didn’t see the gorilla the first time around. Like many people, he was shocked he could miss something so obvious. As we discussed how the video related to hiring, I asked Simon, “Looking back at those failed hires, what were their ‘gorillas’? In other words, during the interviews, what were the important unexpected details you missed?”

To say that Simon experienced an epiphany is an understatement. For the next ten minutes, he went down his mental list of failed hires, name by name, identifying misses that resulted from his “hiring blindness,” a form of inattentional blindness. “Once people were onboard, the issues that showed up were just as blatant as those in the gorilla video,” said Simon. “In the interviews, though, I was so focused on what I was expecting that I missed clear indications of future problems.” As an example, Simon told me about a recent failed hire: “The candidate interviewed with a real ‘edge’ to him, and I thought that was a good thing. When I’ve hired other people with that kind of personality, it turned out well. I expected that would happen in this case, too. I, however, overlooked his sarcasm, which during the interview he used several times. It was right in front of me and I didn’t notice.”

Missing what later becomes obvious is common. Looking and listening does not mean that we take in all the pertinent information. Simon wondered how he could do better next time. That prompted an important discussion about dating.

Dating and the Invisible Gorilla

Anyone who’s ever dated has experienced invisible gorillas. The gorillas in dating are bad personality traits and behaviors, appearing weeks or months into a relationship. Why does it take so long for these gorillas to show up? During the early weeks, people are on their best behavior. As they get comfortable, they lower their guard and let out different aspects of who they are.

Dating and interviewing, as I mentioned in Chapter 3, have lots in common. During interviews, job candidates are on their best behavior as they tell, sell, and swell:

• They tell interviewers what they believe the interviewers want to hear.

• They sell the best parts of their work history and abilities.

• They swell the egos of decision makers through praise.

Does this mean that everyone being interviewed engages in deceit? Absolutely not. It is natural that people disclose only those aspects that will land them the job. The problem is that this very human behavior interferes with good fit. That’s a key reason why so many hires fail: In essence, the person hired is not the same one interviewed.

The primary difference between dating and interviewing is that interviewers usually don’t have years to get to know someone before “proposing.” Which is why Simon, like everyone who conducts interviews, needs to understand his own personal hiring style.

Hiring Styles

Your personality, expertise, and experiences shape your approach to leadership and how you select talent. How you select talent is called your “hiring style.” Hiring styles come in four types (Figure 5.1):

FIGURE 5.1 The Four Hiring Styles

• The Tackler: Tacklers are defined by speed and decisiveness. They want to be in control and reach goals quickly. When conducting an interview, they get to the point and appreciate people who do the same. Tacklers tend to hire those candidates who, they believe, can condense timelines and hit targets fast.

• The Teller: Tellers are characterized by their talkativeness. They focus on using their communication skills to motivate. In interviews, they spend appreciable time speaking, often selling the candidate on the company and its opportunities. Tellers frequently hire candidates who they believe will be inspired to act upon what the Teller has said.

• The Tailor: Tailors prize collaboration. They’re the ones who point out that there’s no “I” in “team.” During interviews, they take time for rapport-building, conversation, and the open exchange of thoughts and feelings. Tailors are likely to hire candidates capable of cultivating strong working relationships.

• The Tester: Testers are methodical. They make decisions through data and other tangible forms of proof. While interviewing candidates, they gather pertinent details and value facts over stories. Testers tend to hire candidates who share logical evidence that demonstrates they are the right fit for the job.

The good news is that none of these styles is bad. The bad news, however, is that if we’re too reliant on our dominant style, it can keep us excessively focused on one part of reality. It can create distortion.

When I shared the four hiring style descriptions with Simon, he agreed how easy it is to look past what’s right in front of you: “I’m a born Tackler. I like things done yesterday. It’s no wonder I’ve been missing things.” Knowing that I always ask for examples, he went on to say, “Take that edgy guy who ended up being a jerk. I was so focused on what I was trying to get done in my department that I zeroed in on his succinct answers. That’s why I never noticed his blatant aggressive sarcasm. It was only after he began interacting with other employees that I realized my mistake.”

Simon then had a greater epiphany: “Wait, that’s how I’m going to get better at interviewing, isn’t it? I not only need to be aware of the limitations of my hiring style, but I need to include other colleagues who are dominant in one of the other three styles.”

Leveraging Hiring Styles

A team composed of people with diverse hiring styles gives you a more expansive and realistic perspective than if your team were composed of people with one or two styles. To assemble a diverse team, begin by identifying three people with hiring styles different than your own. Before conducting an interview, coordinate your team’s efforts. To best leverage each hiring style, your team should have a discussion that answers the following questions:

• “What are my style’s blind spots? What other styles can better see what I’m not seeing?”

• “What past hiring mistakes have we made repeatedly? How will the hiring team use its combined styles to avoid those mistakes?”

• “What do we need to know about a candidate? How can we uncover that information? Which styles are best suited for spotting those details?”

To leverage each style during an interview, team members should pay special attention to details that tap into their innate perceptions. For example:

• The Tackler watches for evidence of the candidate’s drive.

• The Tailor notices how the candidate collaborates.

• The Tester looks for details that prove the candidate can do the job, if hired.

• The Teller shares a few things about the job and company, gauging the candidate’s reaction to that information.

This team approach reduces effort and increases hiring speed. Instead of separate interviews that consume most of the day, a brief screening interview by phone is followed by one hands-on interview with the hiring team. (You’ll read more about these interviews in Chapter 6.) With all four styles in the room, interviewers rarely miss anything that’s important or unexpected.

Expertise Is the Key

After implementing a hiring team that leveraged all four hiring styles, Simon experienced much better results. Instead of two out of every three people quitting or being fired within a few months, new-hire success rose to 90 percent. Tenures of these improved hires were two years or longer. Simon’s subsequent performance review praised his progress. He was even chosen to lead internal sessions to share a case study about his hiring team.

These results are neither surprising nor atypical. While working with thousands of leaders across the globe, I’ve watched them leverage hiring styles to take in more information and make fast and accurate hires. Why does this happen? The “invisible gorilla” researchers, Chabris and Simons, found that there is one way to accurately predict how likely someone is to see the unexpected—through expertise:

Expertise helps you notice unexpected events, but only when the event happens in the context of your expertise. Put experts in a situation where they have no special skill, and they are ordinary novices, taxing their attention just to keep up the primary task.⁵

By implementing an approach that leverages all four hiring styles, companies maximize the expertise that comes with each style. Interviewers see the unexpected and hear what’s important, thereby improving accuracy and increasing hiring speed.