A Job You Love

Yesterday night I was watching a show on BBC called “the Restaurant” and I have been watching it since the beginning.

It is a show where 9 couples go through tests to see if they are able to set up their own restaurant. And on their way, they are evaluated by 3 professionals of the restaurant industry.

And as a recruiter I failed.

I spotted a couple, JayJay and James, and from the outset, I found them arrogant, even cocky, and one of the guy could not cook. So to me they did not even deserve to be here.

But weeks after weeks, they went through everything, they showed adaptation and marketing acumen, and the guy who was supposed not to cook learnt on the job. Towards the end of the show, they appeared less and less arrogant.

So what? As a recruiter I would have eliminated Jay Jay and James straight away without spotting the potential of the pair.

And Why that? Because they were arrogant and too much confident for my taste.

It is what we call in the recruitment industry, to be biased, I had a negative bias about these guys and all my thinking was completely distorted. I could not see any good things in their  personality or their capability.

As a recruiter you need always to address these distortions of reality that make you like or hate a candidate without any specific or even rational reasons. You need to get rid of it otherwise you gonna recruit the wrong person or miss a person with a potential (a positive bias is called Halo Effect and and the reverse is the Devil effect, when a single weak point influences all the perception of the person).

The solution? Be aware of this danger and ask yourself, why you don’t like this candidate.

And you as a candidate, don’t forget that sometimes recruiters can rule you out…just because they don’t like you. With no reasons apart from that you look something they don’t like (may be you are a Manu fan or you like the wrong things!).

But I must say that gut feeling can be right as well…as long as you are aware of it.

So now Jay Jay and James are in the final 3, and they showed an enormous sense of adaptation and a real touch for business. They showed that I was wrong from the outset and that any recruiter can fail because of a negative bias. They seemed too confident for me, and I did not like it!

Good luck to Jay Jay and James, may I be wrong once again.