Professional crush: perfect recruitment or cognitive bias?

That’s it, the candidate interview is over and you feel like you’ve found your rare pearl, your five-legged sheep, your dream candidate! You are convinced, this is the person you want to recruit. It will fit perfectly into your organization in the food sector. These professional “favorites” have not escaped our eye as a recruiter, but should we trust them completely?

First of all, try to decipher where this feeling comes from: it’s a safe bet that it is only the profile that caused this “crush”, technically ticks all the boxes. But above all, his personality plays a major role.

Then you have to ask yourself the right questions:

• I project myself with this candidate, but what about my team?
• Are the qualities that I detected in the person during the recruitment transferable and relevant to the position offered and the world of the food industry?
• Am I idealizing a candidate because their personality reminds me of someone I respect? Is this candidate a cut-and-paste of the employee I’m looking to replace?
• By going back to the initial job description, does he/she cover the requirements? Or am I ready to turn a blind eye to certain points?
• If yes, which ones ? In his speech, did the candidate convince me in both form and substance?
• Have any convincing examples related to the food industry supported his statements?

The best reaction is not to make any hot promises to the candidate, to take the time to reflect and to involve other interlocutors. It is important to involve those who will work with this potential recruit, without influencing them beforehand. Their opinion may raise new questions and points of nuance that your “coup de coeur” did not allow you to detect. Stay open to these feedbacks.

Among other things, certain tactics allow you to confirm or refute your feelings:

• Meeting the person a second time also gives the opportunity to see if the crush is confirmed and if it is mutual!
• Checking references, especially at the heart of such a specialized sector, is also an excellent way to better understand how the person acts on a daily basis. And thus to highlight its strengths and areas for improvement.
• Personality inventories and intellectual aptitude tests shed a different light and avenues for discussion with your candidate.
• Do not hesitate either to continue the recruitment process and to meet other profiles to compare and clearly determine the strengths that you absolutely want to observe in your future talent, and the points of progress on which you can or cannot compromise.
• Finally, a scenario can clearly illustrate the behaviors that the person would have in a real situation, but also determine their axes of demotivation, their technical skills – in a very factual way

Clearly, having a “crush” can be a sign of successful recruitment. But it is with vigilance that it is necessary to appreciate it and especially not to neglect the phase of integration which will be essential in the success of this new recruit and your company.