Alternative-Fact April: When Should Employers Hire People Just Like Themselves?

This approach to hiring has advantages, but employers need to be careful.

businessman lawyer helping handshake shaking handsWelcome back to Alternative-Fact April. This month, I want to look at some of the stereotypes in the job hiring process that might not make sense today. Some of them exist because of tradition. Others are around because the hiring managers experienced it themselves and things turned out well. And a few exist only because an angry curmudgeon wanted to give his bitter opinion disguised as the “honest truth.”

Today, let’s look at an employer’s tendency to hire people just like themselves. This generally means that the candidate shares some common experiences or has established an immediate rapport with the employer. They could have gone to the same school, grown up in the same area, agree on certain issues, or have similar hobbies and interests, to name a few.

Hiring like-minded people appears to be an unconscious, implicit bias. Only a few will openly admit that they prefer to hire someone just like them. But I get the feeling that many employers do not realize that they are doing it.

I should point out that there are good reasons to hire like-minded people. Ideas get implemented faster because there is less likelihood of conflict between co-workers. And like-minded people are more likely to get along, thus making their work seem less like… work.

But for job seekers, connecting with someone who has similar backgrounds could result in that elusive back-door interview or job offer. Especially where the applicant does not fit the traditional mold and would otherwise be rejected by Roborecruiter 3.0. He or she can be sympathetic and is more likely to give you a chance or convince their superiors to do so.

Because of this, job seekers are taught to find a way to establish rapport with an interviewer. I can’t tell you the number of times I had to fake interest on things and subjects I knew little to nothing about. Some of the stranger ones included sports, stamp collecting, something called MMORPGs, and more sports.

Employers have been advised to be careful when they are considering hiring people that remind them of themselves or think the same way they do. Many have criticized this practice as the equivalent of hiring friends. According to a study, if a candidate has established a good rapport with a hiring manager, they would be more likely to overlook the candidate’s deficiencies.

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Also, hiring our clones will result in less diversity in the workforce. I’ll let others discuss the negative impact this has on racial and socio-economic diversity and the potential legal consequences. I am more concerned about thought diversity. Working with people who think the same way we do can create a bobblehead environment where new and opposing ideas are suppressed. This could result in overconfidence and poor decision-making due to failing to consider all perspectives. And if the mistake is big enough, the so-called collegial group will engage in finger pointing instead of accepting responsibility.

I’m not suggesting that employers associate with people who share none of their interests and will disagree with everything they say. That’s sounds more like a marriage. Employers and employees should be allowed to express disagreements if they do so in the best interest of their work. But they have to see eye to eye on the important things and respect seniority. For example, the late conservative Justice Antonin Scalia was known to hire a liberal clerk on occasion, stating that his clerks do not have to share his judicial philosophy but cannot be hostile to it. So the liberal clerk’s job was to find Scalia’s mistakes in his opinions. But at the end of the day, it was Scalia who approved the final draft.

What about common achievements or backgrounds between the employer and the applicant? I think it is overrated. It might be a nice topic of discussion during lunch or at the holiday party where the elder talks about the “good old days.” But eventually it gets old, and we have to get back to work. So if this is supposed to create some kind of bond between co-workers, it will be a weak and temporary one.

Strong bonds are created when people work and accomplish things together. According to a New York Times op-ed by Lauren Rivera, a professor of management, a cohesive work force is created where co-workers share experiences on the job, especially when they work together on a high-stakes project. She believes that the more time we spend with our co-workers, the more similar to them we become. We see this in other contexts, such as when soldiers from different backgrounds fight alongside each other. They learn to count on each other to stay alive and achieve their objective.

In the final analysis, despite the criticisms, employers will probably continue to hire people who are just like themselves. So if employers still favor hiring people this way, they should focus less on the applicant’s hard credentials. Instead, they should check to see if the same personal qualities that made them successful are present in the applicant.

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Shannon Achimalbe was a former solo practitioner for five years before deciding to sell out and get back on the corporate ladder. Shannon can be reached by email at sachimalbe@excite.com and via Twitter: @ShanonAchimalbe.