When describing Checkster’s online questionnaire to others, we’re often asked how can it be better than a face to face interview? This article will explain how online tools can actually be better than face to face or telephone interactions and should always complement them. Most importantly, we will see how face to face interactions can lead to “stupid” decisions by highlighting research that proves what we suspected all along: in front of an attractive woman, men on average are prone to making more stupid decisions!

Historically, women, attractive or not, do not receive special treatment when it came to the hiring process. In fact, the book Blink discusses how women were discriminated against prior to the 1980s when auditioning for top orchestras.

It was observed that before the 1980s, the auditioning committee watched musicians play in front of judges. With this system, the majority of new hires by top orchestras were men. Yet, once auditions started, requiring musicians to perform behind screens so that those auditioning couldn’t be seen by the judges, orchestras started hiring women. The funny story that crystallized this is when the maestro of the Munich Philharmonic listened to a candidate play the French horn and loudly declared, "We want him!" only to have a woman show up from behind the screen. The maestro nearly had a heart attack.

Clearly understanding how preconceptions can play a big role in our ability to judge, discriminatory laws have been designed to combat this misjudgment. Yet, most of the time people who discriminate against others are completely unaware of their bias. Like the maestro in Munich, he really thought he was able to discern the quality of music, regardless of who was playing it, we see that some expert judgments can be poorly calibrated. Until screens came out and biases were demonstrated, there wasn't a maestro in the world who believed his ability to judge someone's musical talent could be affected by that person's gender.

But what about other biases? Can the attractiveness of an individual impact your judgment? What if Mr. or Ms. Universe came for an interview in your office? Would it lead to the same outcome as that of an average looking person?

An answer to this question can be found in the research paper called “Do pretty women inspire men to discount the future?” The concept of discounting the future comes when you value imminent goods over future goods. The traditional example is often given to kids: If I offered you one lollipop now or two tomorrow, which would you choose? In the adult experiment, one is offered a certain amount of money tomorrow versus a significantly larger amount a week or more later. We can easily see the analogy with recruiting on the ability to assess the quality of a new hire for the long term and make a truly rational decision.

In one experiment, groups of men and women were shown pictures of cars and people coming from the “hot or not” website. They were asked after the exposure to make some financial decisions to measure the discounting factor.

The result: the only significant discounting was done by the men after having seen pictures of “attractive” women. None of the men or women were influenced by the photos of the cars, nor were the women by “attractive” men.

There is still some debate about the origin of this discrepancy, but it is likely that the activation of the nucleus accumbens, a part of the brain that is involved in valuation of rewards by the pictures of so-called pretty women, could be the cause of the lack of rational decision by the men. But the Neurological Foundation is behind the scope of this paper and this proven fact.

So what is the conclusion from this behavior for the recruiting profession?

Online tools that create by default “screens” to assess people can have benefits to help our rational brain focus only on the parameters that are important for job performance. It is therefore advisable to use them on top of traditional interviews.

It would also help to have a diverse mix of male and female interviewers!

Yves Lermusi (aka Lermusiaux) is CEO & founder of Checkster. Checkster is a new Career and Talent Checkup tool.