Interviewing and the Problem of Confirmation Bias

Determining how well a potential new employee will perform on the job may be more difficult than it seems due to something researchers call confirmation bias, or “the tendency to search for, interpret, or prioritize information in a way that confirms one’s beliefs or hypotheses.”
Interviewers form an initial impression of a candidate in the first few seconds of an interview, then spend the rest of the interview consciously or subconsciously looking for confirmation of their initial assessment. If that first impression is a good one, the interviewer might spend the rest of the interview looking for reasons to like the candidate more, while if the initial impression is negative, the interviewer might look for reasons to reject the candidate. An interviewer’s “gut feeling” is actually a poor indicator of how well an employee will perform in the workplace. Structured interviews, including cognitive tests, problem-solving exercises, and assessments of conscientiousness, are much better at predicting how well a candidate will do after joining the team. These interviews are more difficult to develop, but worth it in the long run.