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When you’re hiring to fill positions on your team, it’s important to strike a balance between hiring people whom you can be around everyday, and hiring people with whom you’d like to be friends.
After being on hundreds of interview panels, it can be easy to fall for candidates who look like you. Beyond race and gender, I’ve seen interviewers lean towards candidates who shared a similar fashion style and presentation. Interviewers can also be struck by candidates who speak just like them—not necessarily using words related to the job but sharing a manner of speaking with similar cadence, tone, and vocabulary.
Hiring is not about finding your clones. Diversifying your team actually leads to better results.
The next time you’re interviewing candidates for a position on your team, proceed as usual. After you’ve ranked the candidates by your preference, look back at your list and recall which of the candidates dressed and talked most like you. Which of the candidates did you find yourself quietly thinking, “I wish we could just go get coffee and hang—she is so cool.” If candidates got extra marks for being like you, you may have a problem. Hiring the best talent for your organization is not about finding a new friend. If you’re short on friends, look elsewhere. The weight of these hiring decisions is too great for you to make them based on superficial judgments.