How to Avoid "Hiring in Your Own Image"

By Herbert M. Greenberg, Ph.D., Founder and CEO, Caliper

How often when you are looking to hire someone do you come across someone you like very much? In fact they remind you a bit of yourself when you were a bit younger? You’re not exactly sure what it is, but you see a younger version of yourself sitting across the table, and you can’t help but like the person.

Then, after a few months of training, other qualities come to the fore that you didn’t recognize in the interview. And, scratching your head, you can’t even remember the reason you hired that person in the first place.

This is one of the most prevalent management myths. We call it “hiring in your own image.”

It’s only human to want to work with people you like. So there is almost a reflex action involved in the tendency to hire people that are like you. Of course, you’re certainly not likely to hire someone who gets on your nerves. And, naturally, the people we tend to like are the people who are most like us.

The problem is that people like yourself may possess your strengths and virtues. But they are also going to possess your limitations and, yes, even your faults.

If you hire an entire staff of people just like you, you’re bound to create a situation of imbalance.

A staff with one set of abilities — and all the same faults — leaves a lopsided organization, with some important structural weaknesses. It is like a football team with eleven excellent quarterbacks, but no players who are able to block for them or to catch their passes.

The key, then, is to build an organization with balanced talents and attributes. How do you achieve this?

For starters, when you interview a prospective employee, remember the human tendency to hire in one’s own image. Think carefully about those qualities in the individual to which you are reacting positively or negatively and try to be objective about how they really relate to the particular job you need to fill. Also, think about how those qualities blend with the rest of the team.

For example, if you’re a manager who is looking for an assistant, ask yourself whether you like an applicant because he or she demonstrates management qualities like your own or because the individual has the technical skills necessary and responds well to your particular management style. If you end up with an assistant who is too much like you, you will be duplicating your strengths rather than strengthening your limitations.

To counter this tendency, you might also want to ask your managers to independently assemble lists of the attributes necessary for the job. This will add objectivity to your process. And it might also surprise you, as you see how different managers view the same job differently.

It is also a good idea to include those managers in the screening, interviewing, and selection process. This will help round out the procedure by adding varying perspectives. So, in the end, you will end up with a final candidate who meets everyone’s criteria for success, who already has a better sense of who the key players are in your company and how decisions are made, who has a clearer idea of how he or she might fit within your organization. And, as an added benefit, you will pull your managers together into a more cohesive team, feeling that their input is desired and heard.

In the final analysis, the best way to avoid “hiring in your own image” is to be aware of the problem. Then you can take steps to face it head-on yourself, while taking advantage of including key executives in the selection process — realizing that they, too, might have a tendency to like people who are most like them.

About this Blog

This blog is created by NAW and its partner Caliper, an international management consulting firm that offers a wide range of personnel services to wholesale distribution companies.