quality of the future service he is to provide to his business. His

overappraisal of these prospective contributions will frequently cause disaster.

 

Excesses of self-regard often cause bad hiring decisions because employers

grossly overappraise the worth of their own conclusions that rely on impressions

in face-to-face contact. The correct antidote to this sort of folly is to

underweigh face- to-face impressions and overweigh the applicant’s past record.

 

I once chose exactly this course of action while I served as chairman of an

academic search committee. I convinced fellow committee members to stop all

further interviews and simply appoint a person whose achievement record was much

better than that of any other applicant. And when it was suggested to me that I

wasn’t giving “academic due process,” I replied that I was the one being true to

academic values because I was using academic research showing poor predictive

value of impressions from face-to-face interviews.

 

Because man is likely to be overinfluenced by face-to-face impressions that by

definition involve his active participation, a job candidate who is a marvelous

“presenter” often causes great danger under modern executive-search practice. In

my opinion, Hewlett-Packard faced just such a danger when it interviewed the

articulate, dynamic Carly Fiorina in its search for a new CEO. And I believe (1)

that Hewlett-Packard made a bad decision when it chose Ms. Fiorina and (2) that

this bad decision would not have been made if Hewlett-Packard had taken the

methodological precautions it would have taken if it knew more psychology.