Bias in the Hiring Decision and the Living Job Assessment™
In an article published in February 2024, the writer identifies 12 forms of bias that impact the hiring process. First impression error, Groupthink (a.k.a. conformity bias), Halo/horns, Similarity, Gender, Cluster illusion, Stereotyping, Confirmation, Anchoring, Ambiguity, Beauty, and Intuition bias. Something is missing from the list. The idea comes right out of the psycho-therapeutic playbook. It is called Habitually Learned Limitations. As the name suggests, experience teaches us patterns, ideas, expectations, beliefs, and biases that we use to make sense of the world and inform our decisions. This story is about a bias that hides in plain sight.
In a project from 2023 using our Living Job Assessment™, the position being recruited had significant and severely limiting constrictions placed on the freedom, independence, and power the person filling the open position will exercise to acquire the resources the outcomes of the position demand. Without realizing what was done when the original job description was created, the hiring manager had ensured the new person would lack the resources needed to succeed.
The impact is clear. What talented, up-and-coming, well-trained, educated, and capable individual will want a position where they face restrictions on what they can do to make a difference, prove their worth, earn more money, gain promotions, and satisfy their own and the company’s needs for results. Thus, the potential pool of candidates is culled long before any of the 12 biases mentioned earlier have a chance to impact the hiring decision.
I call this type of bias “Control via Resource Deprivation” bias. Not as glamorous as other names, the bias creates a resource “desert” – there are resources, they are just not available or under the control of the position being filled.
