Effective Candidate Calibration
Calibration meetings are a regular feature of most senior searches, and they follow a loose script of each interviewer sharing their interview findings and impressions with a mix of helpful but often incomplete perspectives. At this stage, the list of interviewed candidates quickly breaks into two—most of the list unanimously gets ruled out quickly, and a consensus typically develops around one leading candidate. In a small number of cases, a strong alternate candidate could emerge.
Awareness of potential biases is particularly important here. The “boss” or the “loudest voices in the room” can often quickly and conclusively sway a discussion, and so could other aspects, such as obsessing about a candidate’s minor negative point while ignoring all the other strong aspects of their candidacy. The list of potential individual and group biases at play could be enormous, which is why consultant and client teams should hold a brief session on biases before the calibration session.
Beyond this, injecting a modicum of discipline and a mindset shift in how these calibration discussions are conducted is important. The creation of a calibration guide reminds interviewers of the range of selection criteria that were detailed in the role specification, rather than focusing on a narrower set of arbitrary data points for selection. This allows for a more comprehensive discussion of trade-offs and candidate comparisons against the criteria originally agreed to by the selection panel. Attendees should prepare their summary calibration and preferred candidates individually before entering the meeting as a reminder to themselves of their own independent views. This could allow for a richer debate on differing views, rather than a common, dominant view quickly emerging during the meeting.
Two issues could arise if this is not done.
- Securing diversity becomes the overwhelming tone, leading client teams to discount other vital pieces of information that can drive success in the role.
- Vital experiences become the altar at which many a diversity objective gets sacrificed as collective risk aversion kicks in.
Accepting that there will invariably be biases that drive us toward certain outcomes and giving the process a chance to correct these through inputs from referencing and psychometrics is a better approach then prematurely preferring a candidate.
Calibrations should ultimately lead to candidate rankings, not eliminations. This is not a spreadsheet exercise. The objective of calibration is to ensure that all important factors are being discussed. It is not to deconstruct individuals into basic factors and add up their individual scores. Humans are a package of all those quantifiable and unquantifiable factors, and calibrations should support informed decision-making and reduce biases, not substitute accountability and leadership judgment over decisions.
We encourage clients to not stick solely to the script of what was said by the candidate in the interview. What were your own intuitions as individual interviewers? What were the nonverbal cues that you picked up? What made you curious? What made you nervous? Our intuitions and analyses are both impacted by biases. Tabling them and discussing them as part of the group help you confirm or reject these aspects with greater confidence, as other interviewers similarly provide their own perspectives.
Effective Referencing
Referencing often misses critical pointers of success such as purpose, identity, confidence, style, diversity, lived experiences, personality traits, cultural factors and derailers.
One of the main challenges with referencing is confirmation bias, which is the tendency to search for, interpret, favor and recall information to confirm prior beliefs about an individual. This risk is especially high when a candidate is the clear front-runner for a role, and the client and consultant team are invested in hiring them.
Confirmation bias can be mitigated by pre-referencing on multiple candidates along the way, and some even before an individual is engaged in the process. Pre-referencing also carries some risk, as it is subject to anchoring bias, which is the tendency to rely too heavily on the first piece of information encountered. Once a candidate is engaged as part of a process, trust now becomes a factor in taking any further references. With a “live” candidate, references should only be taken in consultation with the candidate. It is important for a candidate to know that neither the consultant nor the client would go “behind their back” in taking references that could cause embarrassment or break confidentiality.
For diverse candidates, we recommend an altered referencing approach that covers a diverse pool of referees over a wider span of time. Because they may have experienced more profound identity shifts during their personal and professional lives due to the pressure to fit into their surroundings, understanding their personal and professional journey and evolution, and getting to the core of what makes them tick and what makes them different, are well worth the effort.
Final detailed references should be conducted at the end of the hiring process, when a particular candidate has emerged as the preferred choice. Excellent referencing requires experienced interviewing and trained listening and observation skills to pick up on both verbal and nonverbal cues. It should only be conducted by individuals, ideally more than one, who have the experience, curiosity, time and acute listening skills required to gain both a depth and breadth of understanding about the candidate, while avoiding the natural pitfalls presented by biases.
Referencing Best Practices
Benefits and Limitations of Psychometrics
Compared to referencing, psychometrics is a newer and underutilized option in search. When used effectively, they can provide deeper insights into candidates. However, it’s important not to use psychometrics as a decision-making tool or screening test that labels individuals as having “less desired” or “more desired” traits.
What is important is whether your consultant team has a clear philosophy on what they are trying to achieve through these surveys, whether they are trained in their application and how they hope to tie the insights back to informing the wider candidate evaluation.
There are even greater benefits of candidate psychometric surveys when discussing them in relation to the psychometric profiles of the individuals whom the candidate will interact with if they accept the role. The surveys take less than an hour to complete, and results are stable over extended periods, so they need to be administered only occasionally rather than during each hiring process.
Psychometrics Best Practices
Crafting Inclusive
Terms and Conditions (T&C)
A typical offer combines both financial and nonfinancial criteria. When making a financial offer—base salary, bonuses, long-term incentives, pensions and other allowances—it’s critical to ensure there is no pay gap on account of diversity. A diverse candidate, either because of a relative lack of knowledge about the company or having a different cultural attitude toward negotiation, may be willing to accept a compensation package that puts them at a disadvantage. In many countries, there are growing expectations that organizations disclose and address pay gaps. In countries where these expectations don’t exist, committing to pay parity at every level and eliminating anomalies and disparities can be an attractive differentiator for diverse talent. There is no ethical reason consistent with DEI policies that would justify differentiated pay levels for any role based on an individual’s diversity characteristics.
T&C are not only about finances. Other factors such as job location, opportunities for remote work, vacation time, parental policies, flexible work hours and retirement policies are just some of the criteria candidates have told us matter to them. These factors’ importance varies based on personal circumstances and diversity characteristics of candidates. Organizations should consider both financial and nonfinancial components when constructing job offers. Attempting to apply a one-size-fits-all approach to T&C can negatively impact a candidate’s decision to accept an offer. A “zero flexibility” policy on T&C signals a desire for conformity and is inconsistent with the core principles of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) and the need to welcome diverse talent.
T&Cs not a "one-size-fits-all"
The First 180 Days
You have made a diverse hire! Integration is including the new hire in your team, organization and culture without the pressure to conform and lose one’s individuality. Assimilation is an absorption into these same constructs but with the loss of or denial of one’s own identity. Individuals and organizations should seek integration, not assimilation. It’s impossible to precisely determine the degree to which someone is integrated versus assimilated. It is a continuum, and where an individual will eventually land can vary depending on their own personality, tenure in the organization and topics they feel confident or passionate about. It’s also dependent on the host individuals, team, organization, culture and ways of working, and how they might evolve with the addition of the individual into the mix.
Most major companies have onboarding programs to help individuals settle in. They also increasingly have special programs to aid the inclusion of diverse leaders by plugging them into relevant support communities or networks. Onboarding programs are about the “work,” while DEI programs are about the social aspects of integrating into a company, and the two are often designed and delivered by different teams. What is needed is a combined program of accelerated integration that does not treat the work and social aspects of integration as separate, but as interlinked and mutually reinforcing. Our HBR article “New Leaders Need More Than Onboarding” is a good starting point of what a customized program could look like for a new leader.
Self-authorship is an important component of impact, satisfaction and integration. A program is likely to have elements of self-awareness, the team, wider stakeholder groups, the culture and elements of taking charge purposefully in terms of quick wins, operational impact and strategic alignment. The first 180 days are crucial in this regard and should involve check-ins at days 30 and 90 to ensure that the leader is landing and integrating in line with expectations, issues flagged, open items aligned on, and necessary interventions and support introduced as needed.
The minimum objective is to seek retention, development and performance outcomes from diverse leaders that are consistent with the rest of the organization in every material sense. The aspired objective is to increasingly experience the enhanced value that making a diverse hire enables—it starts once the new individual feels included, enabling positive benefits across the full range of business activities, including the way conversations are held, decisions are made, the organization is led, customers are approached, commercial outcomes are sought, society and stakeholders are engaged, and more.
The natural progression of this integration across multiple diverse leaders is the evolution of new norms, news ways of working and eventually a new culture.
