Why You Can’t Always Trust Your Gut When It Comes To Hiring

Life is filled with important decisions. Often we make those decisions based on our gut instinct. We decide to go with our intuition, listen to our inner voice, follow our instincts, and simply trust our gut. Most of the time, trusting our gut works out, but sometimes it’s not the best way to make a decision.

Trusting your gut is a very real thing, but it can often lead you astray – like when it comes to hiring. Hiring is an expensive and time consuming process. Whoever you choose to hire will be a part of your team for the foreseeable future. Firing them might be hard to do later on. When it comes to making a hiring decision it’s best if you can avoid following your instincts. Stick to the facts and figures and trust the hiring process.

If your inner voice is telling you that you “just know” this is the person for the job, you need to take a big step back and take a look at the bigger picture. There are so many variables in the hiring process to consider beyond just your gut instinct. Will the person fit with the team and company culture? Are they qualified? Can they do the job? Do they have the personality for success? Are they an asset to your business? And the list goes on.

You can’t always trust your gut when it comes to hiring. You need to look at things objectively. To do this, you can:

• Have multiple team members agree on the hiring decision
• Use data, facts, figures, and lists to make decisions
• Assess the candidate’s ability to do the job
• Look at previous work samples
• Trust the tried and true hiring process that has worked for years

According to BusinessInsider.com, gut hires lead to about a 50% hiring failure rate. That’s pretty poor and it means that trusting your gut will result in more work for you in the future. Plus, it will cost your company lots of money. No one wants that.

Now there are always exceptions to the rule. Sometimes trusting your gut in the hiring process can pay off. One example of this is if your gut is screaming “DO NOT HIRE THIS PERSON!” When you get a warning like this, it’s important to listen carefully. A second example is if you are faced with the tough decision of choosing between two equally qualified job candidates. In this case you can’t go wrong and trusting your gut on the final decision won’t have any major impacts.

At the end of the day, we are all humans and our gut instincts do come into play. The smart option is to always use rational decision making when you hire. Try to avoid trusting your gut when it comes to hiring and life will be a lot easier.