Is intuition useful for recruitment?

Yes……..and no

When is intuition helpful?

Intuition, or the ability to understand something instinctively without the need for conscious thinking, can be a valuable tool in recruitment. If you can trust your “gut feeling” in selecting candidates you will save time. But if you’ve made a few recruitment blunders, maybe your intuition isn’t reliable in this space. So, what can go wrong and how do we avoid the blunders?

Intuition is more reliable when backed by expertise. Expert recruiters quickly assess the skills, knowledge, competencies and experience needed to succeed in a role and identify the best applicants. Experts also know that it would be foolish to rely just on gut feeling. The more information you have about a candidate, the better your hiring decision will be. Careful interviewing, reference checking, skills testing and psychometric assessments all improve recruitment success rates.

When can intuitive decisions cause problems?

Without expertise, your “gut feeling” may actually be based on how comfortable you feel with the person in an interview, how good they are at selling themselves, whether you have common interests, and even preferences that you’re not aware of (unconscious bias). Recruiting can be challenging for small business owners. Vacancies often need to be filled quickly and it can be tempting to take shortcuts when you really hit it off with a candidate. That’s when things can go wrong and a few months later you have to deal with someone who’s not working out.

Summary

In summary, intuition (based on expert knowledge) can be helpful to efficiently short-list candidates when recruiting. When it comes to making a hiring decision, there’s no substitute for a thorough and careful selection process.

If you’d like to improve your success rate in recruiting, please contact us to find out how we can help.