018. The definitive debate: Should you use your gut in hiring?

Should you trust your gut to make hiring decisions? Think about your answer, then read on for mine:

I was recently on a call with a startup CEO – one of Workflow’s clients – who was lamenting an employee they had to let go, and the messy aftermath of that person’s exit. We were discussing his lessons learned from that mishire, when he asked me a direct question: “What role should my gut play in hiring decisions?” I asked if we could record my answer, and below is the lightly edited transcript.

Jen: So you were just telling me about an employee you had let go – how you had picked up on some flags with this particular employee during their hiring but pushed them aside. Now, you’re regretting it and wondering if there’s a “correct” way to use your intuition going forward.

CEO: Exactly. I know this is important, but I also don’t want to make biased decisions. How much weight am I supposed to give to my gut feelings? In this case, it had seemed like a small, fleeting feeling at the time, but now that I’m dealing with all the fallout – with all the other employees who worked with them, and having to transition all of their projects and tasks – damn, I really do not want to repeat this mistake again. 

Jen: Yep, that’s real. Even though talking about “gut” or “intuition” can feel pretty nebulous, it’s possible to bring this into your toolbox and strengthen it.

There’s an exercise I lead people through in HireEd training [Workflow’s startup recruiting program], let’s play it out together. It’s a question that the group answers by voting thumbs up or down: “Should you trust your gut?” 

CEO: I’m gonna say yes. 👍

Jen: Great. In class, there’s usually a pretty even split of votes, 50/50, which leads to a lively debate where I ask people to rationalize their answer. So – you’re in the “yes” camp, tell me why. 

CEO: If your gut picks up on something, that’s an important signal. And let’s see, hmm… I mean, I’ve worked with a lot of people in my career, I feel like I have a good radar for red flags. So my gut could be telling me something that’s outside of the interview focus, things that aren’t part of the interview rubric. Like when someone’s seems a little too self-important or negotiates a little too hard.

Jen: Yep. Rubrics exist to guide and focus your interviewers on specific defined competencies. But you as the hiring manager have to look at the whole picture, and that means listening to your gut sometimes.  

I once worked with a COO who hired someone, but later ended up regretting it when that person turned out to be a terrible fit – and like you, had to clean up a big mess afterward. She was telling me how during their interview, something felt off – she literally gestured to her stomach – but the candidate had such a confident vibe, she said she distinctly remembered shoving that feeling down and forcing herself to ignore the flags.

CEO: Yeah, I’ve felt that too… If I’m being honest, I think I was rushing to make a decision, so I just shoved it down.

Jen: Not surprising and I can hardly blame you. Running a venture-backed startup is all about speed. But it’s also true that hiring is the MOST important thing to get right after Product-Market Fit, so it takes a lot to maintain that balance.

Not to mention, the host of other factors besides time pressure lead people to force themselves to ignore their gut. There’s pressure from all sides, Investors pushing their friends/network, recruiting agencies with misaligned incentives, even people at your company who get dazzled by a candidate’s pedigree or “just want to get someone in the door now” – all are distractions from listening to your gut. 

But at the end of the day, you’re the one who’s going to be held accountable for the results, so you have to own the decision. And your gut is a powerful tool in your toolbox. 

CEO: Makes sense… So, “yes” was the right answer?

Jen: Hold on. For the sake of the debate, let’s play out the other side – now tell me why you shouldn’t trust your gut in hiring.

CEO: Well, I don’t want to be just pattern-matching to people I’ve worked with before. And I recognize that if I move away from rubrics, biases might be an issue. 

Jen: Exactly, your gut is powerful, but it’s not infallible. Intuition is based on experience, and inherently is subjective and limited. As one alum of HireEd training put it… “I trust my gut… only if I’ve slept well and have eaten lunch.” [Shoutout to Tori Madsen]

CEO: Mmhmm. And I can’t always schedule interviews to be after lunchtime 😛

Jen: Hiring, at its core, is about humans trying to make decisions about other humans on very limited information – usually a resume and a few hours of interviews [see this post]. Building an excellent hiring process allows you to surface/assess the right information, mitigate risk, etc. – but it’s impossible to be 100% thorough or accurate. Interviewer training and structured rubrics helps create structure, consistency, and accountability, but there’s always going to be some gaps, and they usually get filled by biases. 

There’s “affinity bias,” which is the psychological tendency to favor others who share similar characteristics or backgrounds, which leads to a lot of Hiring Managers looking for “mini me”s. 

Studies have also shown that people who are taller or conventionally attractive get paid more and get more callbacks for job interviews, and same with people with more masculine or “white-sounding” names. Biases in the workplace which is a serious problem – not only is it discrimination that reinforces societal inequities, it also hurts the companies from being high-performing organizations.   

CEO: Ok, this is a pretty compelling argument to not trust your gut…  

Jen: That’s not all. Sometimes, what feels like a good gut decision could be something else. For example, I’ve seen too many hiring teams have trouble with the “uber-confident” candidate profile – a smooth talker with a shiny pedigree who sails through the interviews by charming the whole panel… making them throw out the previously agreed upon core competencies and structured interviews. 

These candidates have mastered a good surface interview, but end up not being able to execute on the job. It’s easier for an inexperienced interviewer to get taken in by this profile.

Like, think about an entry-level engineer. They benefit a lot from structured interviewing. It gives them the appropriate container to practice the fundamentals of recruiting, like… Can you ask questions in a non-leading way? Are you taking good notes? Can you articulate the reasoning behind your recommendations? 

But you shouldn’t ask them, “Based on your gut, should we hire X?” because the answer won’t be that useful to you. They don't have enough experience to have honed their gut’s signals yet, or maybe they get a signal but don’t know how to process it.

CEO: I definitely was that new grad engineer at my first startup, throwing out my best guesses. I wish I could have learned all of this sooner! 

Jen: Now that you’re leading hiring, you can build a system that fits the skill levels of your interviewers and allows space for gut instincts to come in. 

So there is a subtle but important distinction whether your gut is positive or negative about a candidate: Generally speaking, if it’s too positive of a gut reaction, you’re likely getting misled by something. But if it’s a negative gut reaction, definitely pay attention to it – but be aware that it could be biased. And getting too attached to making “gut” decisions could be a justification for making capricious, erroneous decisions. 

CEO:  So… should we trust our gut or not?

Jen: It’s ‘yes’ and ‘no,’ actually. Listen to the information your gut is telling you, good or bad, but don’t rush to make a decision on it. Take the gut feeling and go verify you should trust it – investigate further, explore/talk it out more until you come to a clear conclusion. 

CEO: OK, yep. That makes sense. 

Jen: The problem is not listening to your gut and the signals it’s trying to tell you, and that’s often because you don’t feel like you have time. I see folks at startups, in trying to move fast, assume they have to make decisions in a vacuum. But you don’t have to do it alone, in fact, you shouldn’t. 

This is where an excellent Recruiter can be a game-changer for you. Recruiting is a team sport – you, as the hiring manager, bring the technical and function-specific expertise, while a recruiter brings the process expertise. They can be like your “editor” – all you have to do is say, “You know, I have an off feeling about this but I don’t know why” and they can ask you questions like, “What observations did you make? Tell me why you think that? What is the underlying assumption here? Should we ask the candidate more about that?” Personally, I’m a very gut-driven recruiter. I’ve been doing this for a long time, specializing in startup talent so you’d be surprised by how much we can catch together, both good and the bad. 

CEO: Ugh… yeah, all of this makes sense, but I’m stuck on wishing I’d just listened to my gut in the first place.   

Jen: Don’t blame yourself too much with this recent mishire, you probably just needed a partner who can actually talk things out with you – but that’s an easy solution and what my team and I are here to do now 😀 You’re feeling the pain now, but the important thing is to take away the lesson and keep moving forward. The pain will fade, but the lesson learned won’t.

CEO: You’re right, you’re right. I do feel a little better!     

Jen: Well, I appreciate you being open and letting me share this part of our conversation with others, because I KNOW this is a question that many others have struggled with. What they should take away is that hiring is something that we can all be learning to get better at. From here on out, you know what to do – listen to your gut, but ask it to explain itself 😉

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Jennifer Kim is the CEO/Founder of Workflow, an education and consulting company that trains the next generation of startup leaders on all things Recruiting, People Ops, and DEI. Through its flagship program, the HireEd Accelerator, Jen and her team have taught hundreds of startup leaders to make hiring a competitive advantage. Previously, Jen was Head of People at Lever and advised dozens of top startups. She is known for her hot takes on tech industry and culture as @jenistyping.

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Some housekeeping notes 

1. Substack woes – if you haven’t heard yet, Substack is in hot water for its poor responses to community requests for moderation, and many prominent writers are leaving the platform. I’m also considering divesting from Substack as well, and welcome any input. (For now, you’re welcome to subscribe on Linkedin instead.) As for the rationale, here’s a good articulation. And then there’s the fact that the Substack team and I connected back in 2020 when they reached out about their first Head of People role, but when I inquired about their approach to content moderation, they backed down… so I can’t say I’m surprised this is all going down.    

2. I’m hiring! If you’re a mission-driven startup recruiter ready for your next challenge, I’d love to connect!