Reducing Hiring Bias During Sales Persons Recruitment

If you are a human resources manager, you can avoid hiring bias by use of sales assessment test which will enable you to predict a potential sales hire potential of being a top performer on the real job. There are other tests which can reduce this risk factor like the implicit bias.

This is a concept which refers to a person’s mind as having the ability to harbor bias as a way of their control or awareness. It refers to the mind as an iceberg and while the conscious mind seems to be the one commanding the activities in the brain, in reality, the vast majority of what is happening in the brain is below the surface. And that is how the bias occurs in various phases such as the halo effect, the horn effect, the stereotype effect, the contrast effect, and the similar to me effect.

During the halo effect, the interviewer lets a fact that is positive to overshadow everything else that the candidate does or says. The horn effect, on the other hand, is when the interviewer lets a fact that is negative to overshadow everything else that the candidate does or says.

When you look at the stereotyping effect, it involves a scenario where you form a conclusion that is snappy about someone basing your conclusion on a characteristic that is very specific such as religion, race, or gender.

When you are interviewing a candidate who is much stronger than the previous one who was weaker, the contract effect might come into effect. This will make you assume that the current candidate is more qualified than they are in an actual sense.

The similar to me effect comes into play when you develop a positive opinion of a candidate due to the fact that, they have a personality or mindset which is similar to yours. Due to the fact that most hiring human resources prefer human judgment during their recruitment, it has made the sales hiring biases to become commonly used during sales people recruitment.  In most cases, hiring can now be equated to choosing a romantic partner more than an employee.

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