Hiring is one of the most important and messy tasks in an organizations. For non-profits hiring leaders, the margin for error is slim. “Best practices” often suggest making hiring judgements as objective as possible, finding ways to quantify one candidate next to another as we would evaluate a product, placing scores in little boxes. Yet no matter how hard we try to square the circle hiring will always be inescapably human.
As an executive recruiter I have always been cautious of over-reliance on rubrics and scoring schemes to evaluate finalist candidates. I believe we are so much more than the sum of our parts. However, I often lose that argument to the value of efficient and clear decision making).
At the same time, one recent study showed that 7 in 10 companies will be using AI in their hiring process by the end of 2025. The AI revolution in hiring, however, had focused more on improvements to the top of the funnel: scanning resumes for keywords, streamlining the screening process, answering application questions with a chatbot, etc. The goal is to provide recruiters more time to build relationships with their candidates or, as one recent marketing outreach email put it, “freeing your team to focus on strategic hiring goals.” Great. But, the same study shows that 19% of companies are relying on AI to actually interview candidates, removing humans from the most human part of any organization’s most human process. That number is sure to grow and we recruiters need to be ready to argue for our existence.
As we, on the one hand, use our own intellect to square the messy circle of human candidates to more easily compare them while on the other hand invite our new artificial intellects to tell us which candidates are worth our time, we leave no room for our own intuition. Intuition has knowledge that our conscious brain does not, taking in hundreds of small signals that we could never list on a form or contextualize with a bot. These signals should not be ignored when we choose our leaders.
Using intuition in hiring, we have been told, is bad. That’s because in many ways it is. It can lead to homogenous thinking, perpetuate bad cultures, further biases, and entrench social stratification. Hiring an unqualified person you intuitively like over a qualified person you intuitively don’t will always be shoddy practice. The inner voice speaking to us from deep within our gut can be a petulant child, fearful of the unfamiliar and hungry for affirmation. But like a child it needs discipline, guidance, and monitoring so it can grow and mature into something responsible.
A recent book by psychologist Joel Pearson points the way forward to responsible use of our myriad unconscious signals. In “The Intuition Toolkit,” (Simon & Schuster, 2024) Pearson defines intuition as something that is productive, learned, and based on unconscious information. He suggests five tests of how and when to use our intuition in a way that is trustworthy and refined. These guidelines can be used in the interview process, perhaps after your AI tool has sorted and sifted your applicant pool into a small and manageable number of candidates.
Helpfully, these guidelines create the acronym “SMILE,” a human feature that AI can’t yet evaluate.
S – Self-Awareness. Awareness of your own emotional state. Pearson suggests that when your emotions are high, your intuition is off. Before you click into the virtual room or walk into the real one to meet your candidate, check in with yourself. Are you annoyed that someone is wasting your time with this interview? Are you stressed from your last call? Is this morning’s fight with your spouse still heavy on your mind? If you can’t get clear of those emotions, maybe your gut is going to have to sit this one out, or at least be honest with yourself.
M – Mastery. Pearson cautions that we should trust our intuition only in situations where we have attained some mastery. If you have not interviewed much in the past, then the scoring rubrics might be your best support for the time being.
I – Impulses and addiction. It is important to distinguish intuition from impulse. Is there something about the candidate that put you off right away, before you even asked a question? Maybe a funky haircut or a too-bold tie choice? As a way of being honest with yourself and fair to the candidate, jot that down before you even launch into your first questions. Maybe this good and humble person just likes to wear bold ties or maybe it was a sign of something more troubling. Your quick note on your strong first impression may prove to be prophetic or entirely off base, but will be worth revisiting before you finalize a decision.
L – Low Probability. Our intuition can lead us to some unusual conclusions, like putting all your chips on a lucky number or investing heavily in lottery tickets. When it comes to hiring, this rule to me simply means don’t take your intuition too far. Don’t make your intern the CFO just because you have a good feeling about them.
E – Environment. When you are close to home, in a familiar setting, you can use your intuition to know what is out of place, but when we are wandering in strange lands, our intuition is just as lost as we are. If you are being asked to interview candidates, presumably you are familiar with how your organization functions and have some people skills. If not, don’t rely on your intuition (and perhaps politely decline the requests to interview.)
We will never be certain how a human being will grow when replanted in new soil. Further, any process we design to strip out subjectivity will always have our messy human fingerprints on it. Your gut has a say, whether you want it to or not. It is better to embrace it, rather than to squelch it. Nature, as we know, always finds a way. Our intuition is a powerful tool to help us through the morass. It takes in a multitude of data points of which our conscious mind is not always aware and creates a physical sensation we need to tune in to hear.
Perhaps someday AI will be able to discern if the confidence in a candidate’s voice is cocky or just self-assured; or if they were really listening to you or just waiting for their turn to talk; or if they will gel with the team. We are not there yet, and we likely won’t be for a while. Until then, trust the tools you have always had. As hiring leader you know your team and you know not just what you need this person to do, but who you need them to be. The rubrics and the algorithms will not get you all the way there. Trust and refine your intuition to fill the gaps.