Overcoming the Confirmation Bias

How to Hire Great Sales Leaders

“Confirmation bias makes us notice only what

supports what we already think, and brush off what is not

supportive. Surely it is due to confirmation bias

that agnostics are agnostic, and the pious pious.”

from Gershon Hepner

I recently commented on an article by Jessica Donahue titled "The Myth of the 'Most Qualified Candidate' - There's no such thing." I agreed with her conclusion for two reasons of my own:

1. The "most qualified" in absolute terms is the one that is still out there and has not yet applied. If this is your premise, you will never hire anyone because those that have applied can never possibly be the best.

2. The "most qualified" among those that have applied is often the one-eyed among the blind, the best of a limited selection. Most of those hires are made out of desperation to fill an empty chair, and they are never successful.

Jessica provided another reason in her article:

3. “There is no objective way to definitively know beyond a shadow of a doubt that someone is the most prepared to do the job we are hiring them to do. We may think we’re hiring the person most qualified. Still, the reality is that whom I deem most qualified is very likely different from whom you consider most qualified. We have our natural, implicit biases to thank for that.”

She goes on to refer to the looking-glass merit, the phenomenon when we look for cultural fit, and we hire whichever candidate is most like us as the most qualified.

The looking-glass merit is just one of the many traps we can fall into while interviewing. One that I personally have encountered and have fallen victim to is the confirmation bias: we make a snap judgment within the first minute - or possibly even before meeting the candidate - and then spend the rest of the interview looking for data to support this initial hunch. Why? Because we hate to be wrong. If we were able to free our minds, we would find that it was our initial impression that was wrong.

Daniel James provides some ideas on how to avoid - or maybe just reduce the impact of confirmation bias:

-        “In the interview process, using specific interview questions to gauge specific skills and traits of a candidate will help reduce confirmation bias, since it forces the interviewer to evaluate the candidate on questions that are predetermined and directly related to the position.”

-        Leverage hiring assessments in the talent acquisition process. “Through the use of hiring assessments, candidates can be evaluated unbiasedly and have the chance to demonstrate their ability to perform the duties of a position…, and show that they possess the work skills and personality traits necessary to succeed... The use of assessments also enables organizations to collect qualitative data from a candidate’s performance that they can then use to support a decision to hire or not.”

Those recommendations align well with the approach we take at Vendux to find the "perfect match.” In collaboration with the client, we establish a list of 8-12 role-relevant criteria. Since we are placing sales leaders, those include details like the industry vertical, length of the sales cycle, deal size, target personas, the type of sale, the nature of the product, the target markets, etc. Those criteria are also ranked by relevance. What past experience is most important for the success of the executive?

The “perfect match” is the executive that meets all, that checks all the boxes.

Contact us to discuss out how we can find the “perfect match” for your sales leadership position.

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Jessica Donahue - The Myth of the ‘Most Qualified Candidate’

Photo by Anne Gosewehr