Let’s Talk About Hiring Cycles

Terminating an employee can be a sensitive topic to discuss, so in this article, we will focus on hiring cycles. Although this topic is more exciting than the previous ones, hiring an employee can produce just as much anxiety in your practice.

In the past, when I have spoken with dentists and asked them about their hiring processes, I tend to hear some variation of I know what I am looking for when I see it. I want to start by saying you are probably right.

In the book Blink by Malcom Gladwell, he explores the idea of thin-slicing or the ability of experts to make excellent decisions with little information. In many ways, Gladwell validates the idea of trusting your gut. When it comes to making a hiring decision, it is essential to trust your instincts, especially if you have been in practice for a considerable amount of time. Make sure to listen to that little voice in the back of your head, but only after you have put safeguards into the process to ensure that you are not falling into the traps that can lead instinct astray.

How does instinct go wrong?

In a hiring situation, one of the most common traps that people fall into is the halo/horn effect. These effects are a series of unconscious judgments you make based upon perceived facts that have little to do with the actual information the candidate is presenting. The candidate will essentially appear to be better or worse based on external factors that you may not realize are affecting your judgment.

Examples include:

• You have a series of five interviews scheduled in a day. You have one great candidate, followed by three mediocre ones, and then a mediocre candidate. Most hiring managers will rate the mediocre candidate higher due to the three relatively poor candidates preceding them, which could muddy the decision on which candidate to hire.
• The effect of physical attractiveness. We tend to unconsciously rank attractive people as more competent and more intelligent than their less attractive counterparts. This has the most significant effect for heterosexuals rating members of the opposite sex. Essentially, the pretty people get a halo.
• Finally, outside influences such as hunger, lack of sleep, or high stress levels can significantly affect a candidate’s perception.

So, what do you do?

The first thing you can do is to control the environment and schedule of interviewing; block out a specific time in your schedule to interview individuals. Simply avoiding scheduling interviews around complex cases or difficult patients when you are mentally taxed will go a long way toward making better hiring decisions. One idea would be to schedule all your in-person interviews on Friday when most practices are closed.