In a fast-paced and ruthlessly competitive world, businesses strive for data-driven decisions in every department. So, why are we still faced with recruitment bias? Because this is exactly what a recent international study revealed. Most employers are still relying on “gut feeling” to spot their future top talent.
For the Olinio recruiting specialists, who are committed to helping companies build a robust and successful team, these findings are alarming. Relying on intuition over evidence is not just inefficient. It actively perpetuates the most common hiring mistakes, threatening the quality and diversity of your talent pipeline.
The Alarming Data Behind Subjective Hiring
The study, which gathered responses from over 1,000 HR professionals, business leaders, and high-potential employees, focused on how organisations identify and invest in high-potential (HiPo) staff. The statistics confirm that subjective methods overwhelmingly dominate critical hiring decisions:
- A staggering 91 per cent of HR professionals and 88 per cent of business leaders cite performance ratings and manager recommendations as their main ways of identifying HiPo staff.
- Conversely, only 45 per cent of HR respondents and an even lower 30 per cent of leaders rely on objective, science-backed tools like psychometric assessments.
This gap is significant. Manager recommendations and standard performance reviews, while offering valuable context, are notoriously prone to:
- subjective interpretation
- personal rapport
- simple human error.
By relying on these methods, companies are essentially choosing the “I like this person” approach, rather than basing hiring decisions on verifiable potential and measurable attributes. The research findings are clear: this approach risks rampant inconsistency and significantly reduces the accuracy of talent selection.
Stop Guessing: Why Hiring by “Gut Feeling” Costs Your Business
When you hire someone, it’s easy to rely on your gut feeling. Maybe a candidate reminds you of yourself, has a great handshake, or just seems like they’d “fit in.” But this kind of unstructured hiring is actually a major gamble, and it’s where recruitment bias sneaks in.
Bias isn’t always mean-spirited. It’s often a subconscious tendency to favour people who feel familiar or who interview well under pressure. The problem is, these feelings don’t tell you if someone will actually succeed in the job.
The Real Cost of “Gut Feeling” Hiring
For small and medium-sized businesses, a bad hire is a huge expense. Relying on instinct over evidence creates a vicious and costly cycle:
- You hire someone based on your gut
- The person gets promoted (even if they don’t improve business results) because your system validates the original gut feeling
- This reinforces the idea that your initial feeling was right, making you trust it even more next time.
This cycle means you aren’t finding the best talent; you’re just hiring people who fit an existing mould or remind you of yourself.
Hidden Expenses of Subjective Hiring
Ignoring objective data for a feeling has clear financial downsides:
- Wasted Time and Money: Think about the hours spent interviewing, onboarding, and training someone who turns out to be a poor fit.
- Missed Talent: You end up passing over highly capable people – especially those from diverse backgrounds – who don’t fit the “look” or traditional corporate style you subconsciously prefer.
- Stagnant Business Performance: If you only focus on promotion rates instead of tangible business results (like better sales or efficiency) when evaluating a hire’s success, you’re not actually growing your company.
- Perpetuating the Problem: Your subjective process builds an internal system that keeps rewarding bias, making future hiring mistakes more likely.
Let Olinio Help You with Data-Driven Recruitment
Are your current hiring decisions leaving you vulnerable to inconsistency and costly recruitment bias? It’s time to move beyond the subjective handshake and implement a modern, science-backed talent acquisition strategy.
At Olinio, we specialise in transforming traditional recruitment models into highly accurate, objective processes that identify true potential. We help you eliminate common hiring mistakes and build a future-proof leadership pipeline.
Don’t let gut feeling decide your future.