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When I was in my first position as a manager my boss gave me excellent advice. “When hiring, go with your gut.” This meant that just because a resume was good, or someone aced the interview, listen to the doubts in your mind. I wrote about this advice last year but since then have done some further reflecting on it. For me, this advice was helpful because it gave me permission to listen to myself when I had hunches about people. These hunches weren’t based in a candidate’s identity but in her behavior—if someone was awkward during all of our interactions and the job is about building rapport with people quickly—my gut would tell me this isn’t the right fit.
I generally still believe that one should listen to her to gut when hiring.
However, I’ve learned that this advice must be applied carefully. Not all of our guts are that honest or self aware. Interpreted incorrectly, and this kind of thinking can be used to justify racist, sexist and agist hiring decisions. If we have even the slightest bias toward people who look like us, going with our gut leaves us with teams of only 30-something white guys, or only white women who went to small liberal arts schools. And in 10 years those teams will be looking to hire a Diversity Officer for their organization because they’ve suddenly realized they've missed the boat.
The key to applying this advice for good is to make sure that you’re using it regarding a candidate’s behavior, not her identity (her race, age, gender, religion, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, etc.).
Since implicit bias is, well, implicit, it may take getting some distance from our hiring decisions to make sure that our guts led us the right way. Assess your guts’ decisions after you’ve on-boarded your new employee. Assess your guts’ decisions after you fill a few different positions on your team. Did you happen to let your gut talk you into not hiring anyone over 45? Or anyone who didn’t go to an Ivy League? Making hiring decisions comes with a lot of power. A power that shouldn’t be taken lightly or without a deep evolving sense of self awareness.