“You went to Harvard, hold the world record for the 100-meter dash, and invented the cotton gin?! You, sir, have yourself a job!”

TIPS & TRICKS

Talking to Strangers – How to Make Better Hiring Decisions

---

In Malcolm Gladwell’s book Talking to Strangers, he chronicles a humbling truth about human beings:

We think we are good at sizing people up during short interactions, but the data says we aren’t.

In fact, we’re awful at it.

This shouldn’t be a surprise to Christians. After all, our own scriptures warn us that the heart is difficult to understand (Jer. 17:9). In the Parable of the Wheat and Tares, we’re taught that the righteous and the wicked often look the same on the outside for a while, and it’s not clear who is who until it’s time to see the fruit (Matt. 13:24-43).

Judging the heart of a person is a tricky proposition, even in less spiritual, more practical circumstances like a job interview, a courtroom, or an interrogation.
Even police officers, judges, and diplomats struggle to correctly sense when people are lying or misrepresenting themselves, and often, we mistakenly peg a good person for a bad one if they happen to be a little quirky.

Why does this matter to us? Because, generally speaking, every time we hire someone, we are essentially judging a stranger. We want to know if they will be honest, trustworthy, hardworking, and creative. A good hire can be a tremendous boost to a small business. A bad hire can be devastating – and expensive.

So, how can we ensure that we are judging people correctly as they sit in the interview chair? How can we improve our odds of making sound hiring decisions?

Quantify the Process

We tend to focus on the wrong things when evaluating a stranger. We might trust someone of the same ethnicity as ourselves more than others, even unconsciously, or we might be more likely to hire a physically attractive person. Those things tend to be subconscious biases that don’t help the business, and as Christian leaders, we ought to be on guard against that sort of thing anyway. “Man looks on the outer appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart” (1 Sam. 16:7).

On the other hand, we want to see that a job candidate has a winning personality because he or she will be interacting with clients or will have an effect on office morale – and those things are legitimate. The problem is, as one commentator once put it, you aren’t speaking to the real person when you interview someone for a job. You are speaking to their “representative.” You’re speaking to the version of themselves that wants to land a good gig, and often, that winning personality degrades quickly, as it was never a genuine depiction of how that person is.

In order to avoid some of these pitfalls, it is important to quantify the process. As Gladwell demonstrates in his book, meeting a stranger face to face can often be detrimental to our decisions about them (looking at the outer appearance). When we focus on the facts and the data, we tend to make better, more informed, less biased decisions. So, make a list of qualities, expertise, and values that you need to see in the ideal candidate, and rate candidates according to their resume, C.V., and references before you get them in the room. An in-person impression should be given less weight than someone’s past performance, references, and skills.

Trust but Verify

One of the reasons we often make bad calls about strangers is something called the Truth Default Theory (TDT), which says that we generally assume others to be telling the truth, and we will explain away red flags unless there are so many red flags that we can no longer just brush them aside. The problem is those one or two red flags that we can explain away often would have saved us from making a bad decision had we investigated those red flags seriously.

We cannot afford to be cynical and trust no one. After all, business operates at “the speed of trust.” But what we can do, especially in a hiring situation, is make a protocol for investigating a few key aspects of a candidate’s application. We tend to just accept that a candidate really did go to school where their resume says, for example. But if someone lies about going to college or a particularly prestigious university, that could be an indicator of larger deception. So, pick one or two verifiable claims on the resume and make a couple of phone calls.

A Different Process

At the end of the day, the best way to avoid making bad calls about strangers is to not let them be strangers at all. That doesn’t mean that three interviews will make them less of a stranger than two interviews – but if you can have an opportunity to actually work with the candidate in a limited trial capacity, that can be of tremendous value. Don’t be in a rush to hire; gather input from others, and when possible, hire based on referrals and headhunting.

If you have not looked into specific methodology in hiring practices, learn about Core Behavioral Competencies and David McClelland’s work for some guidance on what attributes really are most important in a high-achieving worker. And at the end of the day, never assume that your gut feeling about someone you’ve just met is a reliable indicator of their character.
It isn’t.

Quick Hits

---

• Hillsong founder Brian Houston suggests his X account may have been hacked after an embarrassing tweet. The Sent To Win team isn’t buying it.
• In response to mounting pressure, some major U.S. companies are quietly backing away from association with ESG and DEI.
• In response to the release of Open AI’s text-to-video application, Tyler Perry has paused his $800 million studio expansion project in Atlanta.
• The Christian prayer app “Hallow” now occupies the #1 spot in Apple’s app store.