Today we’re discussing a finding by Daniel Kahneman. Kahneman inspired my exploration of how I evaluate talent, so I’m pleased to discuss his work in greater detail.
-Ben
Should I hire for vibes?🧘
I’ve been hiring lately, and one thing the hiring committee has discussed is a candidate’s vibe. Specifically, should we hire for it?
Regular readers may think my stance is anti-vibes. But that’s not my take! I think vibes are important. In this post, I’ll discuss why.
What are vibes?
Simply put, someone’s vibe (at least in the modern sense) is their emotional state and presence as others interpret it. It’s probably not culturally correct, but I think of vibes as the intuitive sense you have about a person’s general state (short and long term) at any given time.Â
In a hiring context, a candidate's vibe is what your intuition tells you about them.
Using the vibes the right way
If vibes are partially based on intuition, then their signal can be deeply flawed. This isn’t news - industrial psychology has known this for years.
But intuition does have value. The issue is when we use it to make judgments. You generally want someone’s vibes to be the second thing you look for. In other words, you want to screen for desired traits and skills and then apply your intuition.Â
Nobel prize-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman learned this early in his career. Here’s an excerpt from his appearance on Adam Grant’s Taken for Granted podcast. The whole thing is worth a read.
Daniel Kahneman:
I've been deeply influenced by something that I did very early in my career. I mean, I was 22 years old. I set up an interviewing system for the Israeli army. Um, for it was to determine suitability for combat units. The interview system that I designed broke up the problem so that you had six traits that you were interviewing about, you're asking factual questions about each trait at the time. And you were scoring each trait once you had completed the questions about that trait.
Adam Grant:
Jumping in here, because this is such a cool example, but it needs a little explaining. Danny created a system for interviewers to rate job candidates on specific traits-- like work ethic, analytical ability, or integrity. But interviewers did not take it well.
Daniel Kahneman:
They really hated that system when I introduced it. And they told me, I mean, I vividly remember one of them saying, 'you're turning us into robots,'
Adam Grant:
Danny decided to test which approach worked best. Was it their intuition or their ratings from the data? The answer… was both. Their ratings plus their intuition. But not their intuition at the beginning… their intuition at the end, after they did the ratings.
Daniel Kahneman:
That is you rate those six traits, and then close your eyes and just have an intuition. it turned out that that intuition, that, that intuition at the end was the best single predictor. It was just as good as the average of the six traits and it added information. You know, I was surprised. You know, I just was doing that as a favor to them, letting them have intuitions, but the discovery was very clear and we ended up with a system in which the average of the sixth traits and the final intuition had equal weight.
Adam Grant:
It sounds like what you recommend then concretely is for a manager to make a list of the skills and values that they're trying to select on. To do ratings that are anchored on those dimensions. So, you know, I might judge somebody who's coding skills, if they're a programmer or their ability to sell, if they're a sales person. And then I might also be interested in whether they, you know, they're aligned on our organizational values. And then once I've done that, I want to form an overall impression of the candidate because I may have picked up on other pieces of information that didn't fit the model that I had.
Daniel Kahneman:
I think that's about right.
Adam Grant:
It's such a powerful step that I think should bring the best of both worlds from algorithms and human judgment. There's something that's a little puzzling to me about it though, which is, Why are managers and people in general so enamored with intuition?
Daniel Kahneman:
I think it's because people don't have an alternative. It's because when they try to reason their way to a conclusion, they end up confusing themselves. And so the intuition wins by default. It makes you feel good. It's easy to do. And it's something that you can do quickly. Whereas careful thinking in a, in a situation of judgment where there is no clearly good answer, careful thinking it's painful, it's difficult.
Vibes are important
We all want to work with people we enjoy being around, and that’s OK. But the problem comes when that’s all that matters. But evaluating the person on their merits first, we ensure that they have the skills and traits we need. Once that is established, focusing on their vibe can improve the odds that we make a strong hire.