It Ain’t Baseball, But…

With three strikes, you could be out

Have you ever had an interview that only lasts for three questions? No? Actually, you probably have.

As one recruiter put it, interviewers tend to make up their minds about candidates fairly early on in the interview. He says, “If you can nail the first 3 questions… they (the interviewers) spend the rest of the time justifying their decision about you.”

The rest is just ‘fluff’?

It’s called the halo effect and it has many applications. Wikipedia describes it as, “a cognitive bias in which an observer's overall impression of a person, company, brand, or product influences the observer's feelings and thoughts about that entity's character or properties.” They go on to add that it “is a specific type of confirmation bias, wherein positive feelings in one area cause ambiguous or neutral traits to be viewed positively.”

Of course the bad news is that it can work in reverse. Some call it the horns effect – referring to the devil’s horns. If you blow the first few questions, you’re facing an up hill battle to carry the day.

Recruiters and HR professionals have found that the halo effect is especially prevalent in job interviewing. Sorta makes your role in the process a lot easier, doesn’t it? Not quite.

First of all, you don’t necessarily know what those first few questions will be. So, what it really means is that you have to do an especially good job of preparation. If you’ve done your homework, you’ll be alright and the last 45 minutes of the interview will be a breeze.

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