Two Mistakes That Matter

We previously wrote about minimizing false positives a few months back. Now it’s time to take a look at how you can think comprehensively about reducing your false negatives. As a reminder, the definition we previously used:

Analytically, we have three categories of mistakes here:

1. You saw a good candidate and incorrectly decided not to hire them;

2. A good candidate chose not to apply; or

3. A good candidate dropped out or rejected the offer.

These groupings are helpful to think about some first-order approximations of what types of hiring process mistakes might be the root cause.

Rejecting Someone Good

How could this possibly happen? As we go through each of these scenarios, remember that we’re describing a scenario where a talented and strong culture fit could still fail out of your interview process.

1. The person performed poorly on your problem-solving interview for idiosyncratic reasons, despite having a strong track-record of being strong analytically.

2. (Related) A talented introvert simply underperforms in interpersonal situations involving high levels of real-time stress (interviews). As a result, some of your interview team were not “impressed” with the candidate’s “performance.” Reminder: a good interview is a data collection exercise, not a performance.

3. One (or more) of your interviewers makes incorrect assumptions about the candidate or their story. This should probably be an entire article of its own. Many new interviewers will over-index on a superficial word—or story—that the candidate said, or a single story, and then draw an (unsupported) negative inference about the candidate. It’s vital for the interviewer to disambiguate these scenarios with great follow-up questions. An easy example would be a candidate who was late on a key project and your interviewer rejected them because organizational skills are crucial for the role. Just one problem: the root cause of their being late on the project was because the CEO asked them to take on a special project and they have a hard time saying no to authority figures. This type of false negative happens because interviewers are under-skilled in their follow-up questions and overconfident in their data interpretation abilities.

4. Bias. One or more of your interviewers simply dislikes the candidate for idiosyncratic or personal reasons that are separate from your company culture. In other words, the candidate would not only achieve the Results Expected, they’d also score highly on your company’s Competencies, but this interviewer still didn’t like them for some reason. Personal preferences trumped quality data collection and analysis.

5. Noise. Sometimes an interviewer simply isn’t accurate. It’s not that they have a consistent bias against this candidate type—they just made an inaccurate decision due to a myriad of reasons.

6. Bad process. Most common would be having too many people needing to say yes (to the point where even a good candidate will get a “no” from at least 1 out of 10 interviewers). Similar idea for multiple problem-solving interviews. Or perhaps you have a stubborn founder who insists on needing to have the final say on every candidate. This could lead to a false negative if the candidate underperforms in that particular interview.

Good Candidate Doesn’t Apply

The best candidates are busy working and are not on job boards. If you’re not actively reaching out to them via your networks, you might never get in front of them. Here are a couple other possibilities:

1. Your job description is generic, or otherwise uninspiring. It didn’t accurately convey what the job is really about and so the right type of person opted out from applying.

2. You used unnecessary qualifications (“minimum 3 years of product management experience”) and so Erica decided she shouldn’t bother applying. The problem is that she’s been absolutely crushing her last 2 years of being a PM and would have been a great fit at your company.

Good Candidate Bails—Or Rejects Your Offer

This is painful, especially deeper into the process. Here are some possible root causes to look at that go beyond obvious macro ones like insufficient compensation, location, etc.

1. You lag or are otherwise disorganized. Great candidates expect companies to run a competent process. Don’t leave them wondering about what the next steps are or make them wait an unreasonable amount of time. This applies to the entire timeline as well as in between steps. Clear, consistent communication is key here.

2. Overly burdensome process. That 10-hour take-home assignment you put early in the process as a stopgap filter against the deluge of applicants you were getting? A high performer doing well in their current role might not be as willing to jump through that hoop as a desperate job seeker.

3. Bad interviewer rapport. The main way a candidate will form an emotional connection with your company is through the people they interview with. If the rapport is low, an otherwise talented candidate may decide this company isn’t for them.

4. Lack of rigor — or otherwise too much selling. High performers hate feeling like the process is low-rigor (full of softball questions with no depth), because that means they’re likely to end up on a team of mediocre performers. That is their nightmare scenario. Dig deep, and don’t over-sell them when you should instead be vetting them.

5. Not enough (personalized) selling. When you do sell, make sure you’re doing it in a personalized way. If you’re just blasting the same generic sales pitch to candidates you may miss the few emotional notes you could have hit if you had paid attention to their implicit motivators throughout the interview process.

Use this list to start assessing your own process and see if there are any areas where you may be letting otherwise talented candidates fall through the cracks.