Test Your Gut

By Mark Busine

Recently, I was again immersed in hiring for a key internal position. Because I’m operating in a relatively new market, I have been very conscious of not allowing my own biases and perceptions overly influence my judgment about candidates. But this process reminded me that gut feel (or abdominal intuition as I like to call it) should not be ignored. I learned over the years—usually after a bad hiring decision—that my intuition can often alert me to risks that are very real.

This isn’t a new issue. A 2001 HBR article “When to Trust Your Gut”, investigated the role and value of intuition in decision-making and how experiences enable us to develop patterns that help understanding and judgment in all types of situations. More recently, Malcom Gladwell traveled into the human subconscious to explore how we make snap decisions, in his best selling book, Blink.

While both writers draw on significant examples to demonstrate the power of intuition they also recognize the negative impact biases developed over time can have in decision-making. Gladwell in particular notes the negative impact that these can have when making judgments about people.

In the end though, we cannot ignore our gut. As Gladwell points out, the subconscious interplay and categorization of our experiences, knowledge, competence and personal style enable us to make rapid and often sound judgments. At the same time, the biases that are sometimes formed also need to be tested and challenged with processes such as behavioral interviewing, simulations and testing. They ensure that decisions are made on sound and legally defensible grounds.

Too often gut feel is dismissed. While I would never advocate a selection process based on gut feel, next time you’re thinking to yourself ‘something just doesn’t feel right’ or ‘something tells me they could do it’, back yourself and be prepared to test your gut.

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Mark Busine is the Managing Director of Southeast Asia for Development Dimensions International (DDI).

Comments

[Bryan Baldwin]

The problem is not all guts are created equal. We know most people aren't very good at judging their own ability and performance. This results in many hiring supervisors THINKING that something is wrong when in reality it's a goose chase or worse based on a illegal bias. But I like the way you phrase it--test your gut, not trust your gut. In addition to the assessments you mention, I never tire of telling hiring supervisors to conduct extensive reference checks.