How Doctors and Interviewers Make Mistakes

.... being objective starts by being inquisitive, not all-knowing.

There was an interesting article in last week's Wall Street Journal – “The Biggest Mistakes Doctors Make.” The article cited a dozen or so reasons why doctors misdiagnose patient symptoms. As I read through the list, most were the same reasons interviewers make hiring mistakes. So whether you’re a doctor or an interviewer, you might find some of the ideas below on how to prevent bad decisions useful. Patients and job-seekers should forcibly intervene, whenever they sense a rush to judgment.

Anchoring: overvaluing initial data and making a quick conclusion before all of the symptoms are heard. It’s similar to making a judgment about a candidate based on first impressions and presentation skills. Delaying any yes/no decision for 30-45 minutes can help. This way information gleaned at the end of the interview has as much value as that learned in the first five. (The full Performance-based Interview process I recommend is described here.)

Bandwagon Effect: going along with the crowd. During the debriefing session there's a tendency for interviewers to agree with the loudest or the most important person in the room. It’s better if everyone shares their evidence before anyone makes a firm decision.

Confirmation Bias: seeking out evidence to confirm an initial decision. This is why first impressions are insidious. Interviewers ask people they instantly like softball questions, assuming they’re competent. In the process they ignore conflicting information. These same interviewers go out of their way to prove people they don’t like are incompetent, minimizing evidence to the contrary.

Diagnosis Momentum: this seems to be the confirmation bias on steroids. Once enough facts emerge to prove the initial decision, information gathering stops and conclusions are drawn. To counter this effect, about half-way through the interview force yourself to seek out evidence that contradicts your initial assessment.

Fundamental Attribution Error: blame the problem on the patient, rather than the circumstances. For hiring, it’s blaming the candidate for not giving the interviewer enough information to make a hiring decision. It’s the interviewer’s responsibility to gather all of the information needed to make a reasoned hiring judgment, not the candidate’s. If you leave it up to the candidate, the interviewer is measuring presentation and sales skills, not the person’s ability to do the work.

Need for Closure: the pressure to make a decision (e.g., cost) forces the doctor to short-circuit the diagnosis before all of the symptoms are known. At one of our hiring manager interview training classes the other day, someone asked me how much time should be spent interviewing a candidate. I said, “As long as it takes to obtain enough facts to make the right decision.”

Outcome Bias: the tendency to make decisions that generally lead to correct outcomes, rather than wrong ones. I equate this to the “no hire” decision, since it’s always safer to say no, rather than yes. This gives weaker interviewers more clout, since they never have enough of the correct information to say yes.

Overconfidence Bias: intuition trumps evidence, even for doctors. Too many interviewers make instant judgments based on communication skills, assertiveness, appearance and affability. If you’ve ever hired a smart person who talks a good game, but doesn’t deliver consistent results, you’ve fallen into the Overconfidence Bias trap.

Sunk Costs: the more time and effort spent on a specific decision, the less likely alternatives will be considered. The point: it’s hard to back up and start over once you’re well down a path. After investing hours interviewing candidates, managers often tire of the process and hire the next best person, just to move on.

Unpacking Principle: making a diagnosis before getting all of the facts from the patient. Last year I asked a group of technical managers if their new hires ever missed important project deadlines, or if any weren’t effective in collaborating with other departments. They all said yes, and it was very common, but they didn’t want to take time away from the 6-7 hours needed to assess technical skills.

Zebra Retreat. for docs it's the rare disease they've never seen before, so they avoid doing anything. For interviewers, this is the oddball candidate who is so far outside of the norm, the apparent best decision is to say no. I think this happens too often with diverse candidates who don’t fit the subjective job description and are excluded due to all of the biases described.

The Narrow-minded Bias: this one wasn’t in the article, but my doctor seems to make this one all of the time, e.g., if symptom A exists then prescribe drug B. For some managers it’s box-checking skills and overvaluing technical expertise. For other managers it’s overvaluing their intuition with minimal information. Neither is as effective as finding someone who has a track record of exceptional performance doing comparable work. Note: for those who are unbiased, this work doesn’t have to be identical, or for as long.

Based on what I’ve seen, we all make these types of misdiagnoses whether dealing with important business issues or minor family events. I think Jim Rohn said something like, “Don’t use minor information to make major decisions.” However you say it, being objective starts by being inquisitive, not all-knowing. __________________________________________

Lou Adler (@LouA) is the CEO of The Adler Group, a consulting firm helping companies implement Performance-based Hiring. His latest book, The Essential Guide for Hiring & Getting Hired (Workbench, 2013), covers the performance-based process described in this article in more depth. For more hiring advice join Lou's LinkedIn group and follow his Wisdom About Work series on Facebook.

Photo: Tyler Olson / shutterstock