DEFINE AND DISCUSS

Personnel Review “With recruitment I always feel I need to listen to my gut”: the role of intuition in employee selection Andrew Miles Eugene Sadler-Smith

Article information: To cite this document: Andrew Miles Eugene Sadler-Smith , (2014)," “With recruitment I always feel I need to listen to my gut”: the role of intuition in employee selection ", Personnel Review, Vol. 43 Iss 4 pp. 606 - 627 Permanent link to this document: http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/PR-04-2013-0065

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“With recruitment I always feel I need to listen to my gut”: the role of intuition in employee selection

Andrew Miles Liaise Loddon Limited, Basingstoke, UK, and

Eugene Sadler-Smith Surrey Business School, University of Surrey, Guildford, UK

Abstract

Purpose – This qualitative study of managers’ use of intuition in the selection process aimed to understand if and how managers use intuition in employee hiring decisions and suggest ways in which the use of intuition might be improved. The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach – Semi-structured, in-depth interviews were conducted with managers from a range of backgrounds, and with varying experience of recruitment and selection. Findings – Findings revealed that reasons for the use of intuition included personal preferences, resource constraints and recognition of the limitations of more structured approaches. Intuition was used an indicator for performance, personality and person-environment fit. Intuition tended to be used with requisite caution; participants were aware of its limits, the potential for bias and the difficulties in justifying its use; several participants used their intuitions in concert with more structured, non-intuition based approaches. Research limitations/implications – The small-scale investigative study has limited generalisability. The paper concludes with five specific recommendations on how to improve managers’ understanding and use of intuition in employee selection. Originality/value – Despite increased interest in intuition in management there is a paucity of qualitative studies of intuition-in-use in management in general and in personnel in particular. This research helps to fill this gap.

Keywords Qualitative, Decision making, Intuition, Hiring, Employee selection, Gut feel

Paper type Research paper

Introduction In spite of the widely held view amongst IO psychologists that “analysis outperforms intuition in the prediction of human behaviour” (Highhouse, 2008a, p. 336) interviewer intuition remains AN “elephant in the room” of employee selection. Managers may frequently place more faith in their ability to “read people” (Myers, 2002, p. 189), and cleave to selection choices based on an “overall”, “impressionistic”, or “holistic” but essentially intuitive judgement rather than using objective evidence garnered by using the tools and techniques of employee selection. How can we make sense of such seemingly arational behaviours and choices? In this paper we report a small-scale qualitative study which addressed the need for more empirical research on why and how managers used intuitions in their employee hiring decisions (Slaughter and Kausel, 2014).

Dries (2013) encapsulated the paradox of intuition in selection thus: organisational decision makers on the one hand overestimate the validity of intuition whilst simultaneously underestimating the validity of paper and pencil tests. Highhouse (2008a) made the point more forcefully: one of the greatest achievements of IO psychology has been the development of selection decision aids, but one of its greatest

The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at www.emeraldinsight.com/0048-3486.htm

Received 24 April 2013 Revised 21 March 2014 Accepted 6 April 2014

Personnel Review Vol. 43 No. 4, 2014 pp. 606-627 r Emerald Group Publishing Limited 0048-3486 DOI 10.1108/PR-04-2013-0065

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failures has been an inability to convince employers to use them. Highhouse (2008a) also laid some of the blame at the door of popular books which “extol the virtues of intuitive decision making” (p. 334) such as Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking (Gladwell, 2005) and Gut Feelings: The Intelligence of the Unconscious (Gigerenzer, 2007). The nub issue for Highhouse (2008a, p. 336) was the “considerable irreducible unpredictability” of employee assessment that imposes a “glass ceiling” on the effectiveness of the process as a result of the fact that there are determinants of performance that are not known or are unknowable at the time of hiring. Although there is a plethora of knowledge regarding applicants’ reactions to employee selection procedures (Diab et al., 2011) there is a dearth of understanding about why managers find intuition so appealing and how they use it in employee selection decisions. Slaughter and Kausel (2014) in a state-of-the-art review of employee selection decision research argued that descriptive information about how intuition-based hiring decisions are made and why managers “cling” to intuition is lacking and that qualitative research in the form of interviews in this regard “can be especially helpful” (p. 75). These various shortcomings and suggestions motivated and supported the need for our research.

This paper contributes to a growing body of scholarship on the nature and significance of intuition in business and management (Burke and Miller, 1999; Dane and Pratt, 2007; Hayes et al., 2004; Miller and Ireland, 2005; Parikh et al., 1994; Sadler-Smith and Shefy, 2004; Salas et al., 2010), as well as debates surrounding the salience of intuition in HR in general and selection in particular (Allinson and Hayes, 2000; Colarelli and Thompson, 2008; Diab et al., 2011; Eisenkraft, 2013; Fisher, 2008; Highhouse, 2008a, b; Jones and Saundry, 2012; Lodato et al., 2011; Klimoski and Jones, 2008; Monks et al., 2012; Myers, 2002; Nickson et al., 2008; Skinner, 2004; Spence and Petrick, 2006) and the shortcomings in the practices of employee selection in some sectors (Lockyer and Scholarios, 2007). In spite of these various efforts there are surprisingly few studies devoted to researching the role of intuition in employee selection practice. Moreover its salience is likely to be amplified in the non-HR specialist settings which prevail in many organisations hence we felt it was important to address this issue in the research.

Theoretical background It is long-established that human decision makers are far-removed from the rational actors which scientific management assumes (Kahneman and Klein, 2009; Simon, 1987). Rather, our decisions and choices are governed by two, sometimes complementary sometimes competing, modes of cognition one of which is “cold”, objective, rational, reflective and analytical (generally referred to as “System 2” processing), the other which is “hot”, subjective, affective, reflexive and intuitive (“System 1”) (St Evans, 2008; Haidt, 2001; Lieberman, 2007; Stanovich and West, 2000). Both systems are integral to effective problem solving and decision making in personal and occupational settings. Recent theoretical developments provide a solid foundation for more theory-driven research in personnel selection (see: Lievens et al., 2002).

Within this broad dual-processing theoretical architecture, intuitions themselves may be conceived of as involuntary “affectively charged judgments that arise through rapid non-conscious and holistic associations” (Dane and Pratt, 2007, p .40). They are an outcome of System 1 processing and a manifestation of expertise (Klein, 2003) captured succinctly as “analyses frozen into habit and the capacity for rapid response through recognition” (Simon, 1987, p. 63). Simon’s axiom reminds us that the capability

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to intuit is built-up over several (e.g. ten or more) years’ practice, reflection and feedback (see: Ericsson et al., 2007). In professional domains, such as management, intuiting is uniquely suited to situations characterised by complexity, uncertainty and time pressure (Burke and Miller, 1999; Klein, 2003). Under such conditions, including those pertaining to selection, experienced managers tend to be guided by holistic judgements based on “gut feelings”. So much so that there is a commonly held, deeply ingrained and highly resistant-to-change belief that choosing the right employee is often best-treated as a matter of experience and intuition (Highhouse, 2008a). For example, Burke and Miller (1999) in their study of senior managers in the USA reported that 40 per cent of participants used intuition to make personnel or people-related decisions including interviewing and hiring. This finding corroborated earlier research findings by Parikh et al. (1994).

More recently scholars have argued that intuition is non-unitary, i.e. there are several different types of intuition, namely: expert intuition, creative intuition, moral intuition and, especially relevant to our study, social intuition (Dane and Pratt, 2009; Gore and Sadler-Smith, 2011). In so far as social intuitions are concerned, strong empirical evidence for the processes underlying holistic, impressionistic intuitive judgements may be found in so-called “thin slice” research. Ambady and colleagues observed that ratings by untrained observers based on evaluative thin slices (video clips between two- and ten-seconds in length) can predict important outcomes with high levels of accuracy including students’ rating of teachers (Ambady and Rosenthal, 1993), effectiveness of sales managers (Ambady et al., 2006), surgical malpractice (Ambady et al., 2002b), and physical therapists’ performance in terms of patient outcomes (Ambady et al., 2002a). Thin slices are more valuable for assessing interpersonal rather than non-interpersonal task-related skills and provide powerful predictions of performance, explaining approximately 15 per cent of overall variation based on aggregated data (Eisenkraft, 2013).

Whether we like it or not first-order, face-to-face social judgements (Highhouse, 2008a) such as whether or not a job candidate is likely to make a suitable subordinate, co-worker, team member or boss, are always likely to elicit context-specific instinctive and intuitive assessment of traits, motives, and intentions (Colarelli and Thompson, 2008; Klimoski and Jones, 2008) through the processes of social intuition. The associations involved are divergent and broad, based on the holistic integration of numerous sources of information from multiple channels (Gore and Sadler-Smith, 2011). From the perspective of the interviewer social intuitions are involuntary and difficult-to-control whilst from the perspective of the interviewee, even though it may be possible to consciously and effortfully manipulate the content of the verbal channel of communication, for most people (skilled liars excepted, see: Porter et al., 2008) states such as anxiety are communicated implicitly and effortlessly to interviewers through tone, pitch, and gesture (DePaulo, 1992).

Myers (2002) alerted us to the perils of interviewer and interviewee intuition in such situations. The source of the “interview illusion” (Myers, 2002, p. 191), which can result in a gap between the interviewer’s impression of a candidate and reality, are manifold. For example, an unstructured, intuition-based interview may focus more on a candidate’s declared intentions and future behaviour but these are likely to be a less useful predictor than their past performance (Myers, 2002). Similarly, most interviewers are likely only to get feedback on candidates their intuitively based hires several months or years (or even not at all) after the decision was taken and hence learn very belatedly whether the decision was a “hit” or a “miss”, furthermore they do not

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normally get any feedback on the potentially successful hires they intuitively failed to appoint (Fisher, 2008). Ultimately over-confidence in, and delayed and incomplete feedback on the correctness of intuitions, allied to hindsight bias resulting from overemphasising “intuitive hits”, may lead managers not only to assume that events were more predictable than they were in reality but also to an inflated self-perception of and unreasonable confidence in their intuitive hiring ability (Ames et al., 2010; Fisher, 2008; Myers, 2002). Such attribution errors may lead managers to ascribe successful hiring decisions to their own intuitive expertise while placing the blame for failures on other factors, such as the process itself or where they were overridden, the poor judgement of colleagues. The consequences for selection and assessment practice in organisations as well as professional policies of bodies such as CIPD are significant. However, whilst this paper is not implied advocacy for intuition or an explicit critique of the rational model, it is noteworthy that intuition is largely ignored by professional codes of conduct.

Ames et al. (2010) framed the issue of whether or not interviewers should trust their intuitions as essentially a metacognitive question and observed that the accuracy of first impression judgements tends to be modest, whereas first impression confidence tends to be relatively high (thus supporting the somewhat sardonic precept that intuitions are “sometimes wrong but never in doubt” Sadler-Smith, 2008, p. 28), and “for the vast majority of impressions, accuracy and confidence tend to be unrelated to one another” (Ames et al. 2010, p. 273). The conflation of accuracy and confidence may be a result of the substance of a message and its forcefulness being interpreted as proxy for its validity (e.g. “If I got a quick and clear answer, it must be true”) (Ames et al., 2010, p. 274), i.e. “confidence is a fallible cue to accuracy” (Ames et al., 2010, p. 275). This effect is amplified by the automaticity and potency of affect (“gut instinct”) in intuitive judgements.

In sum: since adaptive psychological mechanisms such as social intuitions are often automatically and “stubbornly” (Highhouse, 2008a, p. 333) relied on alongside or in preference to other more objective methods of employee selection (such as personality assessments tools which are “evolutionarily novel”, Colarelli and Thompson, 2008, p. 347), it is vital that intuitions are deployed as effectively as possible in order to militate against their down-sides and maximise any likely benefits which may accrue from their use (Hogarth, 2010; Myers, 2002; Sadler-Smith, 2010). Answers to the core question of our study (i.e. if, how, and why the intuitive perspective remains so appealing to management practitioners) are important not only for human resource research but also for the improvement of managers’ selection practices and the design of HR policies (even if it turns out only to be to provide exhortations to avoid intuition at all costs).

Method Sample and procedure A convenience sampling strategy was used in order to obtain participants for this exploratory study. Our intention was to interview both HR specialists and managers from as wide a variety of organisations as was practicable. The sampling strategy was chosen to meet this need. We advertised via social media for participants with experience of employee selection who would be willing to be interviewed. The use of personal social networks resulted in access being granted to large organisations, while the use of different social networking sites resulted in the respondents coming from a wide range of backgrounds in terms of role, organisational size, and experience.

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There were 13 participants (ten of whom were from a managerial rather than an HR background) representing organisations ranging from small (under 15 employees) to large (over 100,000) employers. Five of the participants were self-employed or working in smaller companies (digital design, project management, corporate healthcare consultancy) and eight participants were employed by multi-nationals (healthcare, technology, media sectors). Participants ranged from HR executive to senior management level. Participants were labelled A-M for the purposes of the analysis.

Data were collected using semi-structured, in-depth interviews. During the interviews participants were encouraged to talk about selection decisions made in previous jobs as well as in their current role (the interview protocol is contained in the Appendix). Interviews lasted approximately 45 minutes on average. Interviews were recorded digitally and transcribed verbatim. Prior to their interview, based on a variant of the Critical Incident Technique (Flanagan, 1954), each respondent was asked to prepare by recalling two specific hiring decisions they had made, one with a positive outcome, and one with a negative outcome. In the interviews, which were interviewee-led, interviewees were asked to talk about these decisions.

In practice the discussion of the incidents often led into more general dialogue around selection in general, hence participants tended to talk about a wider range of incidents. All of the interviewees made mention of intuition, and hence afforded opportunity for follow-up and probing.

Data analysis Following the interpretive approach of Butterfield et al. (1996) we aimed to “obtain a better understanding of how managers actually think and feel about these situations [y] we were at least as interested in learning the managers’ perceptions as we were in learning of the reality”, we allowed “responses to be relatively unconstrained” and for “rich meanings and interpretations” to be conveyed from managers to researchers (pp. 1485-1486). We do not lay any claim to a grounded approach. A three-phase process of unitising, categorising, and classifying comprised the content analysis. In the first phase (unitising) individual “thought units” (TUs), i.e. “a complete thought or idea” relevant to the selection process were identified in the interview transcripts (Butterfield et al., 1996, p. 1483). Clear references to intuition or synonyms for intuition, and what could reasonably be thought to be references to intuition, were selected; for example “with recruitment, I always feel I need to listen to my gut instinct” (Participant H). The resulting TUs were transferred onto index cards, with notes made on each as to which interview the TU had come from, and if the respondent was referring to a positive or negative selection experience. The process generated initially over 700 TUs. These were filtered in the first part of the categorising phase.

While ideas for themes and categories formed inevitably during data collection and analysis, the aim was to “let the data speak for themselves” (Butterfield et al., 1996, p. 1483). Themes were allowed to emerge by matching similar cards together, based on internal convergence and external divergence. The first filter that was applied was to look through the TU cards for anything that appeared to refer to intuition, including “instinct”, “gut feel”, etc. The second filter was based on re-reading the cards to look for possible emergent themes with the aim of removing TUs that were simply describing the selection process and focus attention on those that were concerned with the research question. The filtered 328 TUs were then sorted into similar first-order

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categories using the internal convergence/external divergence method referred to above and each category given a label “in an attempt to capture the shared message of the thought units within it” (Butterfield et al., 1996, p. 1484).

Once all the cards had been sorted into categories they were re-read and re- checked against the labels; at this point some categories were re-labelled and some cards reassigned. In order to check the reliability of this process an independent researcher was given a list of the final categories and a random sample of 70 cards (20 per cent of the total) and asked to sort the cards into the listed categories. In total, 50 out of the 70 cards (71 per cent) were sorted correctly, giving a Cohen’s k for inter-rater agreement of 0.70 (Randolph’s free-marginal multi-rater k) calculated using an online k calculator (Randolph, 2008) and indicating “substantial” inter-rater agreement. In the classification stage, the categories were grouped into six second-order themes. This was a subjective process based on the immersive approach to the data described above (Marshall and Rossman, 2006; Rossman and Rallis, 1998). An overview of the data structure is shown in Table I.

Theme Category (first-order code) Sample statement

Perceived problems with selection

Specific occasions when selection failed

“He did a really good [interview and] test [y] then we popped him into his team and he [y] was like a completely different guy” (E)

General unreliability of selection process

“There’s a huge unpredictability in any recruitment” (F)

Use of rational methods

Use of tests/set tasks ( positive opinion)

“[A task is a] really good way of testing and making sure the person we hire is the right one” (H)

Use of competency questions/ structured interview ( positive opinion)

“I look at the things that are critical to me in terms of competency and ability in those areas and take questions from a bank of questions” (A)

Use of assessment centres ( positive opinion)

“[An] assessment centre [y] done in the right way [y] is about as easy a selection process as you can do” (A)

Use of psychometric tests ( positive opinion)

“There’s lots of caveats around psychometric tests. But [y] used in the right way, they’re very useful” (A)

When and why a rational process is inadequate

“Nothing’s perfect, and a test is not perfect” (D)

Perceptions of intuition

Intuition as hard to explain “This gut feeling, it’s very, very hard to quantify” (B)

Intuition as a physical feeling “It’s like a physical kind of [y] it’s like a little tripwire in my head” (B)

Pace of intuitive judgments “You form an opinion of somebody pretty quick” (F)

Intuition as experience “As you get a bit older you just get a bit more comfortable following your gut” (B)

Intuition as a predictor of personality

“Generally how they came across [y] what kind of person they would be like to work with” (H)

(continued)

Table I. Overview of data

structure

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Findings In what follows we discuss the themes, illustrate them with relevant “power quotes” and offer additional “proof quotes” in Table I (Pratt, 2009, p. 860).

Problems in selection Two categories emerged within the “Problems with Selection” theme: “failures of the selection process” and “difficulty and unpredictability of selection processes”. Participants described specific failures in selection, where despite their belief that

Theme Category (first-order code) Sample statement

Intuition as a predictor of performance

“A colleague [y] had a massive gut instinct about someone else [y] and she was hired, and she is brilliant” (I)

Intuition as a predictor of “fit” (specifically, not personality in general)

“Once I saw her up against the others, I had quite a strong feeling that she had a good organisational fit” (K)

Intuition as bias “Maybe I felt like I was being judgemental – a judgement that was fed by stereotypes” (D)

Intuition as an impression of physical appearance

“Everything about him was soft. He looked soft, he had soft hair, he had a soft face, soft body, soft clothes” (D)

Other definitions of intuition “I thought there was something funny, I thought the answer was all right but, there was something odd there” (B)

Effectiveness of intuition

When and why an unstructured/intuitive approach is inadequate

“An unstructured interview lacks the transparency of a structured competency-based interview” (A)

Negative statements about intuition

“It’s not reliable because it’s just your gut feel and as you might get it horribly, horribly wrong” (C)

Positive statements about intuition

“I do think that gut reaction [y] speaks a lot because it’s the only thing you can rely on in the face of all that information” (E)

Justifying the use of intuition

Participants unwilling/unable to rely on intuition

“I couldn’t articulate [the gut feeling], so [y] I just couldn’t make it stick because all the other evidence was contrary” (E)

The influence of others’ intuitive judgements (or lack of )

“[Intuition] is more of a valid response if it’s shared” (C)

Positive interplay of intuitive and rational judgement

“No matter how hard you try to be as systematic, as pragmatic, whatever you want to call it, that [gut] feeling is there” (M)

Role of rational and intuitive judgement; additional outcomes and reasons

Ensuring fairness/objectivity in the process

“Everyone follows exactly the same process so it’s completely objective” (A)

Ensuring fairness/value in feedback

“You really need to give robust feedback and the best way of ensuring that you can do that is to have a good process that stands up to scrutiny” (A)Table I.

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the process was robust and promised to be effective, the candidate simply failed to perform when in the job. For some participants this came as a surprise:

It was a very good interview [y] his CV was really good [y] he ticked the boxes in terms of potential experience [y] he came through really well [y] he did a writing test [but failed in the job] [y] Honestly, I have absolutely no idea [why the selection process failed] [y] I sit there and I do think about it often. I just don’t quite know (Participant E).

Others appeared to view the process as inherently more risky, and seemed less surprised by its failure:

Maybe he didn’t have the grit and maybe we didn’t pick up on that in the interview [y] it’s sometimes quite difficult (Participant M).

Of the selection process in general, participants acknowledged its imperfections in two main areas: the “unpredictability” of human behaviour and the “inadequacies” in the process:

There is a real unpredictability factor about people, and I don’t think any process is ever going to totally unpick it (Participant B).

Surely [recruitment and selection] cannot be this difficult right? (Participant G).

Selection is not an exact science to start with [y] it’s difficult (Participant M).

Comments reflected a view that selection is to an extent “probabilistic”, and that there are likely to be factors which may determine future performance that are not knowable easily at the time of a candidate’s appointment.

Use of rational methods As far as rational methods themselves were concerned, set tasks such as in-tray exercises or presentations were felt to be useful and seen as an objective way of assessing both “hard” and “soft” skills and which could be combined with other methods:

You can almost imagine what they are going to be like in front of a customer (Participant D).

We can ask all the competency-based questions in the world, but until you give them something to do, you often don’t know which way they’re going to go (Participant H).

Participants were aware that combining selection methods can be used to overcome the limitations of a specific method:

There’s [sic] lots of caveats around psychometric tests. But I think in their best iteration, used in the right way, they’re very useful [y]We’ll put [candidates] through [a psychometric test] and use that as the basis to structure a second round interview [y] honing in on some of the key competencies [y]. You can sit down and say to the candidate “You’ve been through the interviews, you did the [psychometric test], you’ve had the feedback from that and this is fundamentally why you’re not suitable for this role” (Participant A).

However, a number of criticisms of rational selection methods were made by some participants (making up about a third of the TUs in this theme). Criticisms were either directed at the methods themselves, or at the practical difficulty of using them in particular recruitment situations or business contexts. For example, rational methods were sometimes criticised for being too restrictive, too complicated, too limited, or beyond the resources of the respondent’s organisation. Comments suggested that the

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rational methods available to respondents may be irrelevant to the specific recruitment problem they faced, or did not suit the respondent’s particular preferred approach:

If you’ve got a field colleague who has to [y] make � number of money towards a target, then that’s a completely different set of skills that you’re looking for, and so the one-size-fits- all questionnaire doesn’t necessarily fit (Participant E).

I don’t think we’re a big enough company to do [psychometric tests] [y] [If] you’re getting 500 people to apply for 50 jobs a year then you can probably run them (Participant F).

Convincing non-HR managers of the utility of rational selection methods may lie in ensuring that such techniques are tailored to the specific hiring context in the firm, and that an understanding of the manager’s personal preferences and capabilities as well as resource constraints are taken into account. What became clear during the course of the interviews was that in some situations (e.g. time- or other resource- constrained) intuition may be the only viable approach for managers.

Use of intuition A number of participants described intuition as being “hard to explain”, understand or quantify, which may account for attribution errors – managers struggle to explain a phenomenon which does not appear to be associated with the effortful or conscious processing of information, i.e. intuiting (the process rather than the outcome) is non-conscious and therefore difficult to “locate”:

I don’t know [how I recognise intuition], because if I knew, it would make life a lot easier (Participant J).

How would you explain instinct, that’s really hard? (Participant C).

This “gut feeling”, it’s very, very hard to quantify (Participant B).

Intuition (the outcome of the process of intuiting) is acknowledged as “affectively charged” (Dane and Pratt, 2007, p. 40) and one participant (G) used metaphor profusely in describing intuition:

[A] twinge [y] gut reaction is really a good way of putting it. But it’s like a physical kind of [y] it’s like a little tripwire in my head [y] it’s a bit like a flick switch in my head [y] it’s just so feather-light [y] (Participant G).

Participant G’s account fits with the notion of intuition as embodied/somatic which, when combined with the non-conscious aspects of intuiting, further sets it apart from conscious, rational, affect-free processing. Participants also reported intuitions as emerging rapidly:

You form an opinion of somebody pretty quick (Participant F).

Intuition was seen as a manifestation of experience. Simon (1987, p. 63) described intuitions as “analyses frozen into habit and the capacity for rapid response through recognition”, later encapsulated in the notion of “intuition-as-expertise” (Sadler-Smith and Shefy, 2004) and “intuitive expertise” (Kahneman and Klein, 2009). Participants described intuition as both rooted in, and derived from, experience and as something that they became more comfortable with the more experience they had. Managers’ self-confidence in their levels of intuitive efficacy must however be viewed sceptically given that subjective confidence in intuition is unlikely to be a valid indicator of either intuitive expertise or the accuracy of an intuition-based prediction given the

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well-documented potential for biases and errors in intuitive judgment (Ames et al., 2010; Kahneman and Klein, 2009):

[Intuition is] I suppose, from your learned experiences with other people (Participant C).

That [gut feeling] comes with experience because you use your experience to think, hmm, I’ve seen your type before (Participant M).

As you get a bit older you just get a bit more [y] comfortable [y] following your gut (Participant G).

Intuitive expertise takes time and the right environment to develop properly, hence managers should be suspicious of intuitions that are not based on relevant learning and valid experience (Hogarth, 2010).

Participants accorded considerable importance to intuition as a “predictor of personality”. Moreover personality was considered an important contributor to employees’ performance:

A sense you’ve got of the person and their character, and what they can bring to the team in addition to their skill set [y] If she was going to have to be put in front of important [business partners], how charming would she be, and how sensitive would she be to the people that she was talking to? (Participant H).

Participants reported themselves as feeling capable of detecting accurately and predicting the consequences of both positive and negative personality traits and they valued intuition as an informal assessment of job-related personality traits:

My gut instincts in the fact that she is incredibly ambitious are right [y] You’re trying to think personality fit [y] I mean that is totally gut instinct [y] how can you measure that? (A positive impression later confirmed by positive experience when the candidate was hired) (Participant I).

My concern with him was that he was soft (A negative impression later confirmed by negative experience when the candidate was hired) (Participant D).

With respect to personality this resonates with Schmid Mast et al.’s (2011) findings, however while managers may with some justification generally feel confident in their intuitions in this respect, it is important to bear in mind that intuitions are more fallible in judging a target’s honesty (Schmid Mast et al., 2011).

“Intuition as a predictor of performance” was accorded considerable significance by a number of participants:

I just got this feeling that he was going to really, really struggle (A negative impression later confirmed by negative experience when the candidate was hired) (Participant B).

A colleague [y] had a massive gut instinct about someone else [y] a really good feeling about her, and she was hired, and she is brilliant (A positive impression later confirmed by positive experience when the candidate was hired) (Participant I).

And also regarding performance in particular contexts, for example assessing how candidates might perform under pressure:

You have a gut feeling for people and how they react under pressure (Participant E).

When they’re under pressure, how are they going to behave, how are they going to hold themselves? (Participant G).

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Intuition was also reported as being useful in predicting performance where a candidate’s ability to make an immediate positive first impression was regarded as a key part of the role, for example for sales staff:

A salesperson should electrify you [y] so if you haven’t got that in a conversation, they’re not a salesperson, don’t waste your time (Participant D).

If somebody’s going to be a sales person [y] if they can’t get that first impression bang on when you meet them then that’s how they’re going to present themselves to every client (Participant F).

For these types of situations, participants felt that their own subjective first impression was a valid means to assess a candidate’s ability. Intuition was also seen as a way of assessing an individual’s potential to contribute to a team’s performance in those situations where their unique contribution might not be easily identifiable or measurable. For example, in describing the difficulty of hiring software designers and developers:

The best you can do is to get a feel for their interests and the websites they would use online to find out the information they would need [y] I have quite a good feel for recognising a good designer or developer that isn’t very good [yet], but has a lot of potential [y] as well as spotting someone who already is [good] (Participant J).

Participant J described how looking at a website that a candidate had worked on previously could give some idea of their ability, but as the site would have been built by several different people, the candidate’s own input might be difficult to assess, hence one way of assessing a developer’s talent and potential was to use a subjective impression based on J’s experience in digital media and design. The term “fit” also was used by a number of participants in referring to a candidate’s potential for assimilation into the organisation’s culture; intuition was seen as a valid way to judge organisational fit:

I’ve had gut instincts that someone is a really good fit (Participant I).

I had quite a strong feeling that she had a good organisational fit (Participant K).

There is a gut feeling about [y] how a candidate would fit with people outside of their immediate team (Participant L).

A number of participants used intuition as a quick-and-easy method for assessing fit which otherwise might have to be assessed by arriving at by matching an objective measurement of organisational culture against the candidate’s profile. This is a potentially complex assessment exercise which may be beyond the resources and capabilities of many non-HR specialist managers and organisations with small or non-existent HR functions.

A number or participants expressed concerns that their intuitions might be based on stereotypes and hence recognised the potential to succumb to biased judgements:

If you’re in the same trade for a long time [y] I’ve seen my bosses do it in the past, they become quite blinkered [y] I won’t pick somebody over there because I can’t see him because of my blinkers, but you might need somebody over there [y] I think we’re all guilty of occasionally falling in the trap [y] I expect “animal A” and I get “animal B”, and I don’t really want “animal B” [y] but maybe “B” has got a lot of qualities that “A” hasn’t got (Participant M).

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Participants also reported making intuitive judgements based on candidates’ body language or physical appearance, and also were able to report cases of such judgements being subsequently confirmed by experience:

When you’re interviewing, what they say verbally is such a small proportion around how they manage what they’re telling you [y] I think non-verbal’s a lot [y] when you ask them difficult questions do they wriggle? (Participant G).

I’ve got to be honest, that there’s a part of [my impression was] that she looked the part (A positive impression later confirmed by positive experience when the candidate was hired) (Participant K).

Everything about him was soft. He looked soft, he had soft hair, he had a soft face, soft body, soft clothes (A negative impression later confirmed by negative experience when the candidate was hired) (Participant D).

Interviewers respond positively to aspects of physical appearance towards which they are favourably disposed (e.g. attractiveness). A corollary is that it may be possible for a candidate to actively manage the way he or she comes across in the interview through self-presentation tactics.

Effectiveness of intuition Participants’ statements about the inadequacy of intuitive or unstructured methods highlighted several issues, for example lack of confidence in a process that lacked a rational component and the difficulty of justifying intuition:

Managers might make a personal connection with somebody and not with somebody else, but that’s not really judging their competency for the role (Participant A).

Should a candidate ever challenge, why didn’t I get the job [y] the kind of open-ended CV style interview [y] gives you too much opportunity to get yourself into a hole as a hiring manager (Participant A).

Managers might reject intuition simply because it is not rational (with the danger that its potential may also be overlooked or ignored). On the down-side several participants considered intuition to be inaccurate, unreliable, and inconsistent also they recognised that intuitive judgements might be seen as unfair:

Obviously gut instinct goes wrong sometimes (Participant I).

It’s not reliable because it’s just your gut feel (Participant C).

Gut instinct on one day can be different to another day (Participant I).

I mean, of course I’m going to be questioned on [my instinct] (Participant H).

I don’t think I rely on [intuition] as much because [it’s not] fair to candidates (Participant G).

Such attitudes may themselves be biased and founded in a set of negative assumptions about intuition rather than an appreciation of situations in which intuition is likely to be more or less effective. Participants also expressed confidence in intuition (e.g. in situations of information overload), and described it as a valid part of the selection process, based on positive past experiences:

With recruitment I always find I need to listen to my gut instincts (Participant H).

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I do think that gut reaction and your own personal experience speaks a lot because it’s the only thing you can rely on in the face of all that information (Participant E).

These positive statements appear may be based on generalisations and participants’ reflections on their own positive experiences where their intuition appeared to have served them well (their intuitive “hits”) but overlooking those occasions where it let them down (intuitive “misses”). There is the clear danger of attribution errors and hindsight biases in intuitively derived judgements, and this is a likely concern for HR practice and policy. Again, an informed understanding of the strengths and limitations of intuition is likely to lead to more informed judgements about how and when it could be used.

Justifying the use of intuition Participants’ views on the usefulness of intuition for selection decisions were somewhat mixed. For example, Participant A felt that intuition should be kept out of the process altogether, and even those participants who expressed favourable opinions about intuition also tended to express some uncertainties and caveats about its usefulness on its own. Reassuringly, participants overall either felt unwilling or unable to rely on intuition alone, feeling that intuitions needed to be tested either by seeking confirmation, for example by eliciting the intuitions of colleagues, or by subjecting their feelings to analytical scrutiny.

Participants held these views for various reasons. Some viewed intuition as less valid than other sources of data, or as an unfair means of taking hiring decisions. Intuitive judgement sometimes presented only a part of the overall rating of the candidate, and was not considered at the time to have sufficient weight to overrule other factors (even if the issue later turned out to be a major issue in one candidate’s subsequent performance). This lack of “weight” was associated with the inability of intuitions to counter other sources evidence, or from a consideration of other contextual factors such as the power and status of the intuitor:

Why did I overrule it [intuition]? Why did I not listen to it? Because I didn’t value it as much as the other things I was hearing (D’s intuitive doubts were later confirmed to have been well founded by the candidate’s performance once hired) (Participant D).

If ever I get a gut feel, I just try to knock that gut feel out somehow by asking questions that are going to disprove [it] (Participant C).

At the time I [y] didn’t have the ability or in fact the role where I could have [said] this isn’t right, I can’t tell you why but it just isn’t, he doesn’t feel right, whereas now I could have that quite easily (Participant E).

Although intuition is recognised as having a part to play, there was a tendency to downplay its importance or to give candidates opportunity to counter the impressions made by intuition:

I thought this isn’t going to work out within [y] the first couple of minutes [y] but then I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt (Participant I).

Also difficulties in articulating intuition, and the absence of any demonstrable process (intuiting is non-conscious), made it difficult for managers to argue for its validity:

I do remember thinking; I’m not sure about you. You know when there’s something that doesn’t [y] but I couldn’t argue with the skills, with the display, with the [y] nothing [y] I couldn’t articulate it so [y] I just couldn’t make it stick because all the other evidence was contrary (Participant E).

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Related to the articulation and shared interpretation of intuitions, some participants felt they would have more confidence in their own intuitions if they knew they were shared by a colleague. But there were also suggestions that managers should avoid mentioning their own intuitions to avoid prejudicing colleagues’ intuitive judgements, moreover it is difficult to convince a colleague of the value of your intuition if they do not share it:

[Intuition] is more of a valid response if it is shared (Participant C).

The gut feel [wasn’t discussed because] my boss was going to do that for herself [y] she didn’t need mine (Participant K).

I tried to raise an objection based on the gut feel[y] and [the colleague] didn’t get it at all (Participant E).

This has implications for the improving the interpretation of intuitions. It may be improved by free-and-frank discussion of the subject and by managers incorporating feedback from others to build their intuitive judgement skills (see: Sadler-Smith and Shefy, 2004).

Comments surrounding the interplay of intuitive and rational judgements were represented by the largest number of TUs. It was widely acknowledged by participants that rationality and intuition had a part to play in the selection process (i.e. combination of both should yield a better outcome than solely relying on one or other):

The gut feeling you get is perfectly relevant [y] but it’s not the only thing you consider (Participant D).

No matter how hard you try to be as systematic, as pragmatic, whatever you want to call it, that [gut] feeling is there (Participant M).

Participant M further summed up the realities of selection for many managers confronted by the need to hire employees:

It’s a matter of just simply not trying to shut your eyes to anything (Participant M).

There were also indications that managers might value their face-to-face intuitions over more objective assessments in the assessment of team roles:

I would take more from her, and her experience, or her answers, than I would from the [team profiling assessment], the profile would get less of a rating (Participant K).

The most frequent response from participants was that intuitions should be scrutinised using and supplemented by rational approaches. Moreover, intuitions have to be expressed in a way that is interpretable by others and also justifiable to stakeholders:

Well, can we investigate what the [intuition] is? I appreciate it’s not going to be [y] it’s because of A, B and C, but I want to try and understand that better [y] what I’m saying is, can we get anything else out on the table to understand what it is you’re worried about [y] There’s just something that was not quite right about you. Right, what does that mean? (Participant L).

Participant B adopted a rule-of-thumb for capturing intuition in the selection process within the context of a highly systematic recruitment process based on a series of tests and interviews (i.e. competency-based interview questions which are scored

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numerically and entered into a spread sheet). In this instance candidates must achieve a minimum score to be offered a job:

We’ve found the weighted spread-sheet alone didn’t enable us to objectively deal with any doubts, that gut feel thing, about if in doubt, throw him out, so we introduced the second score to, objectively handle the gut feel [y] The gut feel turned into the “suitability score” (Participant B).

If managers are more aware of intuition, and are more able to correctly identify it and to understand its potential usefulness, they are more likely to be confident in relying on it where appropriate. An understanding of the nature of intuition should also enable managers to combine intuitive and rational judgement more effectively, and to explain its use more clearly and confidently to others. Ultimately, the ideal outcome would be an environment where invalid intuition-like processes are correctly identified and excluded, while potentially useful intuitions are openly admitted to, recognised, collectively interpreted and valued.

Ensuring fairness Finally, participants expressed the need for an objective process that could stand up to scrutiny if challenged and provide clear and constructive feedback for candidates via a rational approach per se or the “rationalisation” of intuitions:

We were doing that [y] so that everyone was treated equally (Participant J).

You really need to give robust feedback, and the best way of doing that is to have a good process that stands up to scrutiny (Participant A).

We’ve never interviewed someone and said we have a bad feeling about it, we’ve always said [y] their interpersonal [score was] two out of five (Participant B).

However, one participant preferred to avoid admitting openly in her/his organisation to having made an intuitive decision and was prepared to offer an alternative interpretation for the outcome to candidates:

[When] you instinctively feel that they’re not very good, I think you just say that comparatively there was someone else who has a bit more experience (Participant H).

In this instance a post hoc rationalisation was used to “cloak” an intuitive assessment of a candidate’s suitability, this response resonates with models of human judgement and decision making which argue that intuitive sensemaking may often precede rational sensemaking (Haidt, 2001; Sonenshein, 2007).

Discussion and implications Our findings underscored the importance of context and supported the view that the hiring behaviours of decision makers are often a function of the organisational and business environment in which selection decisions are taken. For example, rational assessment methods were generally well regarded and used by participants. Criticisms of such approaches emanated from the recognition that they were either incapable of assessing certain specific qualities or were not well-suited to particular hiring contexts. Moreover the use of methods such as personality tests and assessment centres sometimes exceeded the resources of the organisation. This was especially so in the case of smaller firms. This constraint may help explain managers’ stubborn reliance on intuition, but is worrisome given the significance accorded to personality in employee

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selection (Moy and Lam, 2004) A negative consequence is that managers may reject objective assessment methods that have high up-front costs, opting instead for a more “intuitive approach” (the up-front costs of which are minimal), without fully appreciating the potential longer-term costs and consequences of not using objective methods (see: Fisher, 2008; Highhouse, 2008a). In terms of the “up-side” of contextual knowledge, and from the perspective of “intuition-as-expertise”, our findings support the view of intuition-based hiring as based on managers’ intuitive appreciation of context as a result of experiences and learning (prior analyses “frozen into habit” and conferring the capacity for “rapid response through recognition”) (Simon, 1987; Klein, 2003; Klimoski and Jones, 2008; Sadler-Smith and Shefy, 2004; Salas et al., 2010) and their confidence, whether warranted or not, in their ability to “spot talent”.

In so far as intuition itself was concerned, participants recognised that intuitions occurred involuntarily in the selection process and espoused a variety of positive and negative attitudes towards them. Echoing the point made earlier, perceptions of intuition’s effectiveness varied according to context. It was seen as being useful or effective in situations where there was an absence of hard data and when the hard data itself was felt to be inadequate, and as an approximate indicator of a general “overall impression” of a candidate. It was less useful or effective when quantification or competence-based assessment was required, when used in a wholly unstructured way, and when it reinforced stereotyping of candidates. Moreover, our data supported the view that there are individual differences in the significance accorded to “faith in intuition” (see: Epstein et al., 1996). This finding resonates with Lodato et al. (2011) who observed that managers who preferred intuition-based hiring are likely to be “experiential” (i.e. feelings based) thinkers.

Learning is a root problem (and solution) in the use of intuition in selection decisions. Without an appreciation of the value of non-intuition based hiring as well as the “pros” and “cons” of intuition-based hiring managers are more likely to be seduced by subjective confidence (“feelings of rightness”) and duped by their own hindsight biases (e.g. remembering their intuitive hits, whilst “burying” their misses). In the absence of meaningful feedback (e.g. weak data on the performance of those whom they appoint on the basis of a gut feeling, as well as on those who they chose not to appoint) managers are unlikely to develop good hiring-based intuition. In terms of the practical implications developing good intuitive judgement depends on the nature of the learning environment. For example, Hogarth (2010) described “kind” learning environments as those where the information processed leads to valid inferences (feedback is neither missing nor distorted). In “wicked” learning environments on the other hand “samples of experience are not representative and feedback might be missing or distorted” and “mistaken beliefs can lead to dysfunctional actions in the form of self-fulfilling prophecies” (p. 343).

A further problem stems from an overreliance on individual interviewers’ intuitive judgements, especially given the fact that participants themselves felt they would have more confidence in their own intuitions if they were shared by or could be shared with a colleague. Effective interpretation of intuition is an important corollary of this finding. Furthermore, and as noted earlier, so-called “thin slices” can provide powerful predictions of performance based on aggregated data, hence to maximise the value of intuitions and simultaneously guard against individual inconsistencies and idiosyncratic biases it may be better, where possible, to collect and combine the intuitive judgements of multiple interviewers and “pool” impressions even if it is of only one or two other interviewers.

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An important and consistent finding was participants’ perspective that intuitive and rational approaches are best used to complement each other. For example, in situations where objective methods are proven to work well on a stand-alone basis (e.g. in the assessment of cognitive abilities), intuitions are not required and should not be accorded any role whatsoever in the process, for example “she had an intelligent look in her eyes” is not a valid assessment of intelligence (Kahneman, 2011, p. 233). By the same token, if a pool of candidates is identified as equally competent through objective means, an intuition-based approach in a face-to-face interview may be one way, and sometimes the only way, of distinguishing between equally well-qualified and capable candidates especially when a choice has to be made and additional data are not readily available. As noted, one participant reported a bespoke system he had developed to capture subjective intuitions in an attempt to render any holistic impressions which arose during the interview amenable to scoring. More generally the adoption of a structured and systematic approach militates against the problems of focusing on performance-irrelevant factors, applying different standards to different applicants and basing evaluations on inconsistent criteria (Eisenkraft, 2013; Highhouse, 2008a, b). One should not lose sight of the fact that intuitions are judgements (Dane and Pratt, 2007), therefore intuition-based hiring is one means by which “hypotheses” about candidates may generated (e.g. “I thought there was something funny [y] something odd there”), a corollary of this is that immediate feedback on the validity of the judgement may not be available until sometime after the hire has been made, this further underscores the need for knowledge of results as basis for developing “educated intuitions”.

Organisational decision makers usually want to hire a suitable person in as timely and efficient manner as possible (Klimoski and Jones, 2008) and intuition is always likely to be an important element of the hiring process so long as human judges are involved. In so far as whether intuition-based hiring is “good” or “bad” we concur with Ames et al. (2010) that the evidence does not support a blanket “yes” or “no”. Miller and Ireland (2005) considered intuition to be a “troublesome decision tool” (p. 29), Hogarth (2010) argued decision makers should only consider trusting their intuitions when past experience is “both representative of the situation relevant to the decision and supported by much valid feedback” (p. 343). Sadler-Smith and Shefy (2004), in the light of the potential pitfalls of intuition, offered managers practical guidelines for developing better “intuitive awareness” (p. 88). The general caveats that these various authors draw attention to are underlined and amplified in light of our findings and the fact that intuitions occur involuntarily in the complex, dynamic, and uncertain social setting which characterises hiring process, therefore it is imperative that “gut feelings” are acknowledged and managed effectively.

In taking this agenda forward there are further pertinent theoretical issues which our research brings into sharp relief. Highhouse (2008a) referred on the one hand to the “irreducible unpredictability” of the employee assessment and selection process and on the other to the mistaken belief that it is possible to achieve near perfect precision in predicting a hire’s performance in the job role. How are we to make sense of this conundrum? Kahneman and Klein (2009) in debating the powers and the perils of intuitive judgement drew attention to the attributes of the decision environment itself and the role it plays in the development of intuitive skill. They used the term “validity” to refer to the causal and statistical structure of the relevant decision environment. For example there are likely to be available early cues that a burning building will collapse (much of Klein’s early research was on intuition in fire-fighting), however similarly

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valid and publically available cues about how a particular stock will perform is highly unlikely to be available (if it were many would use it). Therefore to learn to recognise the likely relationships between objectively identifiable predictive environmental cues and subsequent events and final outcomes in the first (high validity) case is more plausible than in the second (low validity) case. Therefore reliable intuitive expertise is much more likely to develop when the decision maker operates in a high validity environment in which he or she can learn the causal rules that govern the relationship between cues, events, and outcomes (Kahneman and Klein, 2009).

An inference that may be drawn from Highhouse’s (2008a) argument is that the relationships between the objectively available cues and outcomes do not render employee selection a high validity environment in so far as intuitive expertise is concerned. This issue of the validity of the selection environment is an unresolved question and therefore presents an important debate for employee selection researchers. Relatedly, as noted above, a number of researchers have mooted the existence of a “social intuition” (Dane and Pratt, 2009; Gore and Sadler-Smith, 2011) drawing on various theoretical resources including emerging insights from social cognitive neuroscience (Lieberman, 2007). The validity of social intuition in employee selection is unknown currently. Hence, a further issue for employee selection and intuition researchers to explore is the role played by the proposed construct of social intuition in the employee selection process and its efficacy in determining the outcomes of employee selection decisions. For example, does “good” social intuition enable some managers but not others to recognise cues that are predictive of employee performance? If such intuitive expertise exists can it be articulated and interpreted, and integrated subsequently into an organisation’s employee selection procedures?

In addition to these implications for research the following practical recommendations are offered to practitioners and policy makers: first, managers should understand and accept that selection is probabilistic, and that perfect prediction is impossible. The selection process is an assessment of the benefits and risks of hiring a particular candidate, and errors will be made however rigorous the process, and however experienced the recruiter. Furthermore, choosing the right candidate is not the sole function of selection, and managers will have other agendas, including furthering wider business interests; second, managers should systematically choose rational selection aids that are capable of assessing relevant performance-related qualities in candidates. The choice of methods should take into account specific hiring contexts and the views and preferences of hiring managers. A “one size fits all” approach is unlikely to be effective; third, organisations and managers should better understand the nature and role of intuition as a distinct form of information processing with its own strengths and limitations. More emphasis should be placed on intuition in management education, and managers should be more open to discussion and understanding of intuition. To support this, organisations should endeavour to create environments in which good intuitive judgement can be developed and learned via coaching and feedback; fourth, managers should aim to develop and deploy a “cognitively versatile” style of decision making for employee hiring in which intuition and analysis are used in contextually appropriate and mutually reinforcing ways, for example by seeking more data when interviewer’s intuition says “yes” but the hard data says “no”, or by interrogating the data more scrupulously when it says “yes” but the interviewer’s intuition says “no”. This approach could be formalised within the organisation’s policies.

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Conclusion By way of conclusion we offer a brief summary in terms of our research questions, namely if, why, and how management practitioners make intuition-based hiring decisions. As far as whether or not managers use intuition in hiring decisions, the answer appears unequivocal. All participants discussed the use of intuition in employee selection (described variously as “intuition”, “instinct”, “gut feel”, etc.) and it was relied on to varying degrees according to the individual and the context. Intuition was perceived as being hard to explain, based in experience and manifested as a physical feeling which emerged rapidly and involuntarily. Some participants were more convinced of its benefits than others however we did not seek to embark on any quantitative analysis of individual differences in this regard as a basis for generalisations (though this could be an area for further investigation). The reasons for the use of intuition included personal preferences, resource constraints and recognition of the limitations of more structured approaches. Intuition was used an indicator for performance, personality and person-environment fit. Intuition tended to be used with requisite caution. Participants were aware of its limits, the potential for bias and the difficulties in justifying its use. Several participants used their intuitions in concert with more structured, non-intuition-based approaches.

The topic of practitioner beliefs about selection method and processes is “gargantuan” but it is an area into which “research has made little or no inroads” and represents a “severe shortcoming” (Anderson, 2005, p. 19) of the field. In terms of the contribution of our research, to the best of our knowledge, there are no qualitative studies that have investigated the use of intuition in employee hiring decisions moreover there are relatively few qualitative studies of intuition in management per se. This small-scale investigative piece of research contributes both to the general intuition literature as well as making a modest incursion in research into intuition-based hiring decisions. This perceived gap is an important one to fill given the high importance that is attached to intuition-based hiring in practice and the consequences and costs of getting such decisions wrong. The research also provides a contribution to on-going more general debates about practitioner attitudes and beliefs about selection methods and processes. Our findings provide justification for researchers, practitioners and professional bodies to attend explicitly to intuition – an elephant in the room of employee selection. They provide a basis for further investigations of a phenomenon which is a fundamental aspect of human nature, somewhat neglected in human resources research but widely recognised and used in human resource practice.

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Further reading

Damasio, A.R. (1994), Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain, G. P. Putnam & Sons, New York, NY.

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Appendix. Interview protocol 1. Current job title and organisation. 2. Experience of recruitment – how long, how many, etc. 3. Do you tend to have regular close contact with people you have hired? 4. Asked to think of two hiring situations, one positive, one negative, have you been able to do so? 5. Can you tell me about one of them – start with whichever you prefer? 6. How was the decision made? 7. What influenced the decision? 8. What assessment methods were used? Why? What objective information was available/sought? 9. Ask re mix of intuition/rational analysis and how this proceeded.

10. Did I/RA refer to different aspects – “I felt they would fit in, but thought they didn’t have the required skills”?

11. What later confirmed/contradicted that decision? 12. Can you tell me about the other?

Corresponding author Professor Eugene Sadler-Smith can be contacted at: [email protected]

To purchase reprints of this article please e-mail: [email protected] Or visit our web site for further details: www.emeraldinsight.com/reprints

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