We took a look at interview feedback from two angles. First, we looked at the written assessments that interviewers provided about candidate performance in over 10,000 interviewers.
Second, we surveyed 1,100 candidates about the feedback they’ve received about their own interview performance from hiring teams in the last three years.
In both cases, we wanted to see what patterns emerged.
We’ve been publishing significant research about performance feedback at work for several years. We’ve seen that different demographic groups get different kinds of feedback. We’ve also seen that, regardless of demographic, top performers get the lowest quality feedback, and this has an impact on employee retention.
We wanted to see whether these same patterns showed up in interview feedback too. As we discovered, some of the bias patterns start long before the candidate is hired.
Candidates who are rejected receive 39% more written feedback than those who are hired, suggesting that interviewers feel pressure to justify a “no,” but not a “yes.” That’s backwards. If anything, your “yes” decisions are even more important to get right than your “no” decisions! Once someone is part of your team, you need to be able to count on them to do great work.
Also, almost 30% of interview assessments include commentary on a candidate’s personality traits. In fact, candidates who are ultimately hired receive even more feedback about their personalities than candidates who are rejected. These personality descriptions are heavily gendered. Men are described as “confident,” “level-headed,” and “charismatic.” By contrast, women are called “pleasant,” “nice,” and “bubbly,” up to 25 times more often than male candidates.
Vibe hiring is intuitive, based on your rough impressions of a candidate rather than their concrete and demonstrated skills.
Men and women are assessed differently for performing in similar ways. This leads to differential hiring rates, promotion rates, and pay. There is inequity all over this data.
I don’t believe that training or goodwill alone creates effective interview skills. Rather, I think a tight process with consistent rubrics has to be defined by HR. This starts with getting clear on the skills at the job description level. The skills in the job description should be systematically assessed in the interview process, and these same skills should be assessed at performance review time. In a great system, training mainly focuses on teaching people the rubrics, and software helps ensure alignment with these rubrics.
Kieran Snyder is Co-founder and Chief Scientist Emeritus of Textio
Kieran Snyder, Co-founder and Chief Scientist Emeritus of Textio.
