The “gut instinct” of hiring decision-makers

It would amaze people to know just how many hiring decisions are made based on a decision-maker's gut instinct. This is especially the case with senior leaders who have been making hiring decisions for 20+ years.

A company might say that they follow their qualification process to a tee, and that might genuinely be true. But the final decision - the offer letter decision - could easily come down to a decision-maker's instinct, or gut feeling, or inner knowing.

Oftentimes, that instinct emerges from factors completely beyond a candidate's control: a decision-maker who's been burned in the past by a bad hire, or unconscious bias from childhood, or an emotion being triggered by the candidate's personality or appearance. But that doesn't mean that we can't anticipate it or plan a strategy around it.

1. When a person struggles to place their trust in their outer environment, they will turn inwardly to seek that trust. That's why I instruct my job seekers to always come across as calm, self-assured, in-control, and trustworthy in every interaction with their hiring decision-makers.

2. We trust people who make us feel safe and secure. We trust people who are consistent. As a job candidate, being nervous isn't the thing that's going to burn you. You can be nervous but still answer questions clearly, be honest/truthful, and come across as a person who wants to be helpful to their future employer.

3. The biggest fears that your hiring decision-maker will have will always be related to pain. "Is this person going to hurt me?" "Is this person going to create problems for me?" That's why gut instinct can be so powerful - it's an internal gauge that points to who will cause pain and who will be safe to work with.

4. The best shortcut I know to understanding what those pain points might be is learning about the decision-makers themselves and the places where they've worked in the past. You can check their profiles to see their career history, and you can use places like Glassdoor to research the many company cultures that they've been part of. What were the big complaints? What did turnaround look like? How was an employee graded for their performance? These clues can give you a bigger picture of how your decision-maker might've been burned in the past.

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