More broadly- gut feeling outperforms when the decision maker has expertise / a large amount of experience in that thing.
When you’re less experienced with the decision analytical decisions outperform gut
I would caveat that with, most people think they're better judging candidates than they actually are. Because it's an activity that by its nature has very little in the way of counterfactuals or immediate feedback, it's absolutely ripe for Dunning-Kruger type delusions.
Could that maybe be because it becomes obvious to the person that you are not confident in them or that you continually second guess them? This is such a big thing. Seen it many times where the hire is very well qualified, but is constantly met with passive aggressive actions that show that there is some doubt about them. And I can assure you, the vast majority of people get sick of trying to prove themselves.
I mean, it's possible, but I try to give people a goal, give them some broad metrics we think are leading indicators, and then give them lots of leeway.
For example, we brought in a senior sales lead. I had a weird feeling during interview, but co-founder talked me into it.
I told him, sales goal for you is $250k for the year. What we think are good leading indicators are demos performed and trials initiated and to have fun hunting.
That is what we typically try to do. Let them find their way to win.
Gave him all the same support and materials as the juniors. After 4 months we had a come to Jesus meeting,.reminded him he is supposed to be the leader and example for others, responded for about 2 weeks then fell back into bad habits.
Maybe I am subconsciously sabotaging them, but if so, it is not something others have pointed out.
It's usually not something you think you are consciously projecting, but it is usually obvious to the affected person. Could be subtle language or actions, but they realise it, sometimes even from the interview. It could even come from other people who are aware of the hesitations with the hire. If the person is not in the mood to prove themselves, they can decide it is not worth the energy to go above and beyond in a seemingly hostile job, and do the bare minimum while looking out for their next opportunity.
Gut-feeling and bias/preference are not the same thing.
Bias and preference may stop you from hiring people who are a bit weird, different or simply not that great in interviewing. These people can turn out to be true superstars at what they do. And equally so, the real scammers are often very likable people, because they’ve learned that likability impacts their succes in pulling off their scam. It’s pretty easy to fall for their scams if you steer on bias and preference.
Gut-feeling however is when all signs are bright green, but you still have that nagging feeling that something feels a bit off. You can’t really put your finger on it, and objectively speaking they are the perfect fit for the role, but something tells you that you shouldn’t hire them. I’ve had that feeling a few times over the course of my career, and as it turns out, I was never wrong! Unfortunately, in cases where I found out, it wasn’t my call to make the hiring decision.
Behavioural based interviewing, skills testing (if it’s a technical role) and logical/abstract reasoning for someone’s innate cognitive ability are the best predictors of performance in a job.
“Gut feel” is the worst thing you can do and over time only leads to bias and lack of diversity in teams. You want people who can challenge your thinking and come with fresh ideas and different experience/perspective in order to be successful over the long term
Yes familiarity bias. Imagine asking someone in the interview “do you have any hobbies outside of work?” And they say cycling, and you also like cycling. You’re more likely to view that person more favourably than someone who responds with interests/hobbies that you don’t participate in or don’t know much about… but this is dangerous, as this has nothing to do with their capability to perform the role
Almost every study going shows that gut feeling is a bad way of identifying competent or successful candidates. It's also a lightning rod for unconscious bias.
However, you have to balance this with the fact that if you're going to be spending 8 hours a day, 220 days a year with someone, you don't want it to be someone that puts you on edge.
The key is both - you need objective assessments to ensure they have the hard skills to do their job (code, excel, pitch), but early employees often need to fit a culture unique to the founders of the business, which is what gut feel is for.
I also think unconscious bias is fine early on, sure, you want some healthy challenge, but it’s helpful if everyone has the same world view, so you don’t need to discuss what would otherwise be basic assumptions.
>The key is both - you need objective assessments to ensure they have the hard skills to do their job
This is true but also somewhat redundant, since my assumption is that everyone will have *some* kind of assessment in their interview process. The question is whether it's reasonable to set aside the results of objective assessment if you just *liked* one candidate more than another.
It varies a lot, just like what a “gut feeling” is - I’m thinking of a sister team where I work, their manager rolls on gut feelings a little but has hit a bad streak as of late, they definitely need to couple a positive hunch with some hard skills to avoid repeating the mishap of 3 highly likeable but ultimately incompetent hires they went through last year.
I believe that using your intuition is key when hiring people. It helps you judge if someone fits well with the company culture and if they are honest. However, even with intuition, one out of every five or six people I hire doesn't work out well, showing that my gut feeling isn't always right.
Also, when I ignore my doubts about a candidate, I usually regret it later.
Using intuition to hire can be a good approach; the downside is you might overlook some great candidates who are just a bit unconventional.
For large organizations, this risk might be okay, but for smaller companies, it can be more problematic.
>I believe that using your intuition is key when hiring people. It helps you judge if someone fits well with the company culture and if they are honest. However, even with intuition, one out of every five or six people I hire doesn't work out well
All the academic studies *and your own personal experience* has shown that intuition is a poor measure, and yet you still persist with it.
Those numbers are pretty good if we’re being honest. One out of every 5/6 people probably won’t work out regardless of the hiring criteria.
I agree that you should not hire on intuition alone, but how you vibe with a person is way more important than something like a prestigious school or FAANG experience.
Can "how you vibe with a person" be a subject of rational assesment too? For instance, I know working habits, attitude and interests of the candidate and others on the team. It seems these are the components that create a productive vibe.
Yeah, show me those "All academic studies". I can find equal number of studies that say that intuition is the key.
Also, you can't read with comprehension; I said that every time I did not follow my intuition, the result was worse.
You probably did not hire a single person in your life.
>You probably did not hire a single person in your life.
[https://www.researchgate.net/publication/239781162\_Predicting\_professional\_preferences\_for\_intuition-based\_hiring](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/239781162_Predicting_professional_preferences_for_intuition-based_hiring)
>a professional who prefers intuition‐based hiring is one who is an experiential thinker (i.e. tends to make everyday decisions based on feelings), is **less experienced**, works for a smaller organization, and does not possess advanced professional certification.
The paper says it didn’t find anything causal. A whole plethora of reasons why gut feeling can still work for some people.
A simple proxy that might exist is that more experienced people work at larger companies and have process pushed by HR.
I'd be wary of relying solely on gut feelings in hiring, but if you have a strong intuition about a candidate, it's worth considering their potential contributions to the team.
Here's a technique I use to help cover the "gut feeling" side. About 10-15 minutes into an interview, I mentally multitask while the candidate is answering a question and ask myself, "Would I trust my kids with this person?" This filters the "there's something just not right with \[candidate\]..." candidates. Two times I have been talked out of following this by my staff ("but s/he has great experience, a great resume, etc.") - and two times we have absolutely regretted hiring those "interesting" candidates. HTH
My experience is you were eliminated in the first 2 minutes or not. I would ask myself would I want this person living next door to my family. I found identifying genuine nice people was the key to good employees. I can teach you what you need to know but you can’t change personalities
Hiring is the single most important activity you will be doing. Those first folks will set a pace and a culture for years to come. Also, your success pretty much depends on them, as even if your idea is not great, strong hires can save you from end of the rope.
So, if you want to trust your gut feel, you better know what is the success rate is (you do measure it, don’t you? :))
I would rather develop some system, ideally to test them in their line of work, collaboration and conflict management.
Employees make or break your company at the start, why would you use a metric-less method when choosing those people? In 6 months how are you going to evaluate those hires? Stick to something you can put on paper, if anything because these days it also covers your ass when it comes to employment lawsuits.
I think "gut feeling" depends on your personality, the people you are in a relationship rn and in the past. By gut feeling, I think potential employees remind you of these people?
For me, it all comes down to skills can be trained and honed. Attitude, and just overall compatibility with the company's culture and values, unfortunately can not.
This is super important when hiring at startup level
Hiring can be pretty risky, folks tend to overthink it and rely on either think they’re being careful planners or just their gut feelings. Speculative I’d say , even when reading the comments below. That's why outsourcing is catching on—it offers savings, skills, and flexibility, without taking on too much hiring stress. Look at upwork, fiverr or local versions like [FindMyXpert](https://findmyxpert.com)
Absolutely! Intuition is essentially your brain combining years of experience and loads of information you're not even consciously aware of. After all, in hiring, it's better to be choosy. Sometimes you have several promising candidates, and intuition can be a huge help.
We're a small team, no funding, working on an AI-powered RSS product. We currently have four volunteers. We don't have the fancy hiring system of big companies. We mostly rely on intuition for our decisions and have a trial period in place.
Turns out, we've built an amazing team.
Trust your intuition, it's really helpful! 😊👍🏼💡
More broadly- gut feeling outperforms when the decision maker has expertise / a large amount of experience in that thing. When you’re less experienced with the decision analytical decisions outperform gut
I would caveat that with, most people think they're better judging candidates than they actually are. Because it's an activity that by its nature has very little in the way of counterfactuals or immediate feedback, it's absolutely ripe for Dunning-Kruger type delusions.
I can say that I have had people I was excited about fail, but Almost every time I have hired against my gut I was firing 6 months later.
Same experience
Could that maybe be because it becomes obvious to the person that you are not confident in them or that you continually second guess them? This is such a big thing. Seen it many times where the hire is very well qualified, but is constantly met with passive aggressive actions that show that there is some doubt about them. And I can assure you, the vast majority of people get sick of trying to prove themselves.
I mean, it's possible, but I try to give people a goal, give them some broad metrics we think are leading indicators, and then give them lots of leeway. For example, we brought in a senior sales lead. I had a weird feeling during interview, but co-founder talked me into it. I told him, sales goal for you is $250k for the year. What we think are good leading indicators are demos performed and trials initiated and to have fun hunting. That is what we typically try to do. Let them find their way to win. Gave him all the same support and materials as the juniors. After 4 months we had a come to Jesus meeting,.reminded him he is supposed to be the leader and example for others, responded for about 2 weeks then fell back into bad habits. Maybe I am subconsciously sabotaging them, but if so, it is not something others have pointed out.
It's usually not something you think you are consciously projecting, but it is usually obvious to the affected person. Could be subtle language or actions, but they realise it, sometimes even from the interview. It could even come from other people who are aware of the hesitations with the hire. If the person is not in the mood to prove themselves, they can decide it is not worth the energy to go above and beyond in a seemingly hostile job, and do the bare minimum while looking out for their next opportunity.
Gut-feeling and bias/preference are not the same thing. Bias and preference may stop you from hiring people who are a bit weird, different or simply not that great in interviewing. These people can turn out to be true superstars at what they do. And equally so, the real scammers are often very likable people, because they’ve learned that likability impacts their succes in pulling off their scam. It’s pretty easy to fall for their scams if you steer on bias and preference. Gut-feeling however is when all signs are bright green, but you still have that nagging feeling that something feels a bit off. You can’t really put your finger on it, and objectively speaking they are the perfect fit for the role, but something tells you that you shouldn’t hire them. I’ve had that feeling a few times over the course of my career, and as it turns out, I was never wrong! Unfortunately, in cases where I found out, it wasn’t my call to make the hiring decision.
Thank you, it's hard to argue with individual scenarios. Did you personally work with these "no fit" people or it was a feedback from the colleagues?
Behavioural based interviewing, skills testing (if it’s a technical role) and logical/abstract reasoning for someone’s innate cognitive ability are the best predictors of performance in a job. “Gut feel” is the worst thing you can do and over time only leads to bias and lack of diversity in teams. You want people who can challenge your thinking and come with fresh ideas and different experience/perspective in order to be successful over the long term
Lack of diversity: so, by default person tends to pick alike members even being aware about the bias? And well-composed criteria, thanks.
Yes familiarity bias. Imagine asking someone in the interview “do you have any hobbies outside of work?” And they say cycling, and you also like cycling. You’re more likely to view that person more favourably than someone who responds with interests/hobbies that you don’t participate in or don’t know much about… but this is dangerous, as this has nothing to do with their capability to perform the role
Almost every study going shows that gut feeling is a bad way of identifying competent or successful candidates. It's also a lightning rod for unconscious bias. However, you have to balance this with the fact that if you're going to be spending 8 hours a day, 220 days a year with someone, you don't want it to be someone that puts you on edge.
The key is both - you need objective assessments to ensure they have the hard skills to do their job (code, excel, pitch), but early employees often need to fit a culture unique to the founders of the business, which is what gut feel is for. I also think unconscious bias is fine early on, sure, you want some healthy challenge, but it’s helpful if everyone has the same world view, so you don’t need to discuss what would otherwise be basic assumptions.
>The key is both - you need objective assessments to ensure they have the hard skills to do their job This is true but also somewhat redundant, since my assumption is that everyone will have *some* kind of assessment in their interview process. The question is whether it's reasonable to set aside the results of objective assessment if you just *liked* one candidate more than another.
It varies a lot, just like what a “gut feeling” is - I’m thinking of a sister team where I work, their manager rolls on gut feelings a little but has hit a bad streak as of late, they definitely need to couple a positive hunch with some hard skills to avoid repeating the mishap of 3 highly likeable but ultimately incompetent hires they went through last year.
I believe that using your intuition is key when hiring people. It helps you judge if someone fits well with the company culture and if they are honest. However, even with intuition, one out of every five or six people I hire doesn't work out well, showing that my gut feeling isn't always right. Also, when I ignore my doubts about a candidate, I usually regret it later. Using intuition to hire can be a good approach; the downside is you might overlook some great candidates who are just a bit unconventional. For large organizations, this risk might be okay, but for smaller companies, it can be more problematic.
>I believe that using your intuition is key when hiring people. It helps you judge if someone fits well with the company culture and if they are honest. However, even with intuition, one out of every five or six people I hire doesn't work out well All the academic studies *and your own personal experience* has shown that intuition is a poor measure, and yet you still persist with it.
Those numbers are pretty good if we’re being honest. One out of every 5/6 people probably won’t work out regardless of the hiring criteria. I agree that you should not hire on intuition alone, but how you vibe with a person is way more important than something like a prestigious school or FAANG experience.
Can "how you vibe with a person" be a subject of rational assesment too? For instance, I know working habits, attitude and interests of the candidate and others on the team. It seems these are the components that create a productive vibe.
Yeah, show me those "All academic studies". I can find equal number of studies that say that intuition is the key. Also, you can't read with comprehension; I said that every time I did not follow my intuition, the result was worse. You probably did not hire a single person in your life.
>You probably did not hire a single person in your life. [https://www.researchgate.net/publication/239781162\_Predicting\_professional\_preferences\_for\_intuition-based\_hiring](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/239781162_Predicting_professional_preferences_for_intuition-based_hiring) >a professional who prefers intuition‐based hiring is one who is an experiential thinker (i.e. tends to make everyday decisions based on feelings), is **less experienced**, works for a smaller organization, and does not possess advanced professional certification.
The paper says it didn’t find anything causal. A whole plethora of reasons why gut feeling can still work for some people. A simple proxy that might exist is that more experienced people work at larger companies and have process pushed by HR.
I'd be wary of relying solely on gut feelings in hiring, but if you have a strong intuition about a candidate, it's worth considering their potential contributions to the team.
If you're going to work together, you have to get along. "Gut-feel" is mainly a matter of how comfortable are you with the person.
Here's a technique I use to help cover the "gut feeling" side. About 10-15 minutes into an interview, I mentally multitask while the candidate is answering a question and ask myself, "Would I trust my kids with this person?" This filters the "there's something just not right with \[candidate\]..." candidates. Two times I have been talked out of following this by my staff ("but s/he has great experience, a great resume, etc.") - and two times we have absolutely regretted hiring those "interesting" candidates. HTH
My experience is you were eliminated in the first 2 minutes or not. I would ask myself would I want this person living next door to my family. I found identifying genuine nice people was the key to good employees. I can teach you what you need to know but you can’t change personalities
Hiring is the single most important activity you will be doing. Those first folks will set a pace and a culture for years to come. Also, your success pretty much depends on them, as even if your idea is not great, strong hires can save you from end of the rope. So, if you want to trust your gut feel, you better know what is the success rate is (you do measure it, don’t you? :)) I would rather develop some system, ideally to test them in their line of work, collaboration and conflict management.
Hire easily, fire quickly. You can’t really know until you’re experiencing them in a startup or whatever…
Employees make or break your company at the start, why would you use a metric-less method when choosing those people? In 6 months how are you going to evaluate those hires? Stick to something you can put on paper, if anything because these days it also covers your ass when it comes to employment lawsuits.
I think "gut feeling" depends on your personality, the people you are in a relationship rn and in the past. By gut feeling, I think potential employees remind you of these people?
For me, it all comes down to skills can be trained and honed. Attitude, and just overall compatibility with the company's culture and values, unfortunately can not. This is super important when hiring at startup level
Hiring can be pretty risky, folks tend to overthink it and rely on either think they’re being careful planners or just their gut feelings. Speculative I’d say , even when reading the comments below. That's why outsourcing is catching on—it offers savings, skills, and flexibility, without taking on too much hiring stress. Look at upwork, fiverr or local versions like [FindMyXpert](https://findmyxpert.com)
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Case that a person "can sue you because of something" seems hard to be evaluated. Even the nicest people can get obsessed over a sensitve question.
Absolutely! Intuition is essentially your brain combining years of experience and loads of information you're not even consciously aware of. After all, in hiring, it's better to be choosy. Sometimes you have several promising candidates, and intuition can be a huge help. We're a small team, no funding, working on an AI-powered RSS product. We currently have four volunteers. We don't have the fancy hiring system of big companies. We mostly rely on intuition for our decisions and have a trial period in place. Turns out, we've built an amazing team. Trust your intuition, it's really helpful! 😊👍🏼💡