The ‘halo effect’ is compelling but can be risky for both employers and job seekers

Certain attributes a job candidate appears to possess can outshine others.

Job seekers who are attractive, who went to the right school, or who worked at the right company can enjoy a so-called “halo effect” that outweighs other factors that often are better predictors of how well someone will perform in a role.

While they look good on paper, that’s a problem for employers and many job seekers, executives told B-17.

Shiran Danoch saw firsthand how bias can affect hiring. Early in her career, she thought she’d found the perfect candidate for a role she was trying to fill.

Yet after Danoch’s boss interviewed the woman, he called Danoch into his office.

“He said, ‘Why did you bring her here? She isn’t one of us,'” Danoch told B-17.

It slowly occurred to Danoch that her boss’s problem was with the candidate’s ethnicity despite what Danoch saw as her obvious fit for the role.

There’s a lot of work to do to reduce bias that unfairly hurts — and helps — candidates, said Danoch, an organizational psychologist who’s the CEO and founder of Informed Decisions, an artificial intelligence startup that aims to help organizations reduce bias and improve their interviewing processes.

Danoch estimates that perhaps as many as nine in 10 hires either suffer or benefit from a bias that shapes the interviewer’s perceptions of the candidate’s aptitude for the role.

She said this means people who aren’t a great fit could end up landing the role, and candidates who would do the job better might be sidelined.

Education and experience aren’t sure bets

Danoch said analysis of thousands of interviews on the Informed Decisions interview platform, combined with findings from broader academic research, highlights that “dominant-skill” bias is a prominent risk.

“When you’re interviewing a candidate, there might be one specific skill that paints your overall impression,” she said. Often, Danoch said, that is “effective communication.” That can mean job seekers who are strong communicators can talk their way past their weaknesses.

Another risk is being wowed by grads from top schools or those who worked at high-profile companies. Substantial bodies of research have shown that education and experience aren’t good predictors of how successful someone will be in a job, she said.

Meantime, it’s easy to see why a hiring manager might assume someone who’d worked at one big-name tech firm might be a good fit for another. That’s not always the case, according to Alan Price, the global head of talent acquisition at Deel, a global HR company that helps employers hire abroad.

He told B-17 that in past roles at other companies, there was often a push to focus on Ivy League grads or people who’d worked at certain tech firms. That made it hard for candidates coming from small startups, for example, to get hired, he said.

“You’d work at Facebook. You’d work at Google. You’d go to LinkedIn. There’s a merry-go-round,” Price said.

Yet he said those in sales, for example, who had halo résumés by virtue of having been at top companies, weren’t always the strongest contributors when it came to basic metrics like how much revenue they brought in.

“The top people weren’t only coming from the big, established organizations,” Price said.

Hiring for skills

To improve the quality of its hires, Price said, Deel reformatted its interviewing process to focus on behaviors and less on factors like education and experience. That’s led managers to report being more satisfied with the work they were getting from new hires, he said.

Price said it’s not that experience doesn’t count. Instead, it’s evaluated alongside factors like functional skills for doing the job, behaviors, and motivation. To gain insight into skills, Deel will often have job seekers complete assessments.

That can help root out candidates who might toss around industry buzzwords, though they might lack some abilities.

“Because you’ve worked here and you’ve worked on this problem type, my assumption is, from a halo CV perspective, you’re going to be really good,” he said.

Price said that because some job seekers might stay at an organization for two to three years, hiring managers could take that to mean the candidates are good at what they do.

Yet “that is a big assumption,” he said.

Some employers have announced efforts to look more at abilities rather than pedigree. In some cases, this can mean waiving degree requirements.

However, David Deming, a professor of political economy at Harvard’s Kennedy School, previously told B-17 that even as some employers do away with prerequisites that candidates for some roles have a bachelor’s degree, those doing the hiring might still consider whether a candidate has one.

“Firms are wanting credit for removing a requirement, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re changing their hiring at the end of the day,” he said.

Strong communicators can win out

Danoch, from Informed Decisions, said one reason strong communicators can benefit from a halo effect in interviews relates to those doing the hiring.

“Because a lot of interviewers are inexperienced in interviewing, that’s what grabs them,” she said, referring to a candidate’s communication chops.

While such abilities are often among the soft skills many employers say they value, Danoch said being able to communicate well isn’t likely to be the only attribute needed for a role. Even if communication is important, she said, it shouldn’t be the sole factor for hiring.

Danoch said the halo effect can be problematic if it leads employers to hire candidates who might not be the best fit. Conversely, she said, a “shadow effect” can result in capable job seekers being discounted.

“The candidate is either all good or either all bad,” Danoch said.