Bias by Design - Desiree Goldey and Ashley King

[00:00:04] Hi everybody, we are back. We are excited. We are here in Nashville doing the thing for Wreckfest. If you aren't here, we are going to be sorry to miss you. If you are here or we did see you, because it probably won't air until we get back. We were so glad to meet you. But we are here again and we are excited for this one. I'm pumped a little bit for what Rob talked about today.

[00:00:26] But first, I want to let you know this episode is sponsored by RecOps Collective. And if you don't know them, these are the people who when you decide to buy that shiny tool, they're the people that really dig in, take the time to assess whether that tool makes sense. It's a community of people that trade notes, really understand the talent operations business, which for those of you that don't have talent operations in your team, it's amazing when you have one.

[00:00:55] So they really are the juice, I say, behind real great talent teams. And so if you ever need the help assessing or need any skill set that involves data like we talk about all this time on the show, please reach out to RecOps Collective, my friend Jeremy Lyons and so many of his team. Very, very exciting. And we thank them for sending us to Wreckfest. Well, let's dive in. You have a fancy question for me? I have a very fancy question for you. Do you drink coffee? All the time. Really?

[00:01:25] Well, not like my wife drinks a pot a day. Okay, I drink a pot a day. Do you really? I do. See, it is always weird to find out. Like I expect everyone to drink coffee. But when they say they do, I'm like, you do. You do? Yes, we're all addicts here. You're welcome to the meeting. Wait a minute. I have to go back to you. You drink a pot a day? I drink a whole potty pot. Yep, I sure do. I do my own beans. I grind them right before I do the freshest of fresh. Yeah.

[00:01:55] I'm a real snob. I've really gotten into cold brew recently. How do you do it? Do you use a machine? I don't know. Tammy does it. Oh, see. And I can tell you exactly what she does. Because if you look at America's Test Kitchen, they have a single recipe for this that is the best. It is so simple. It's stupid. I could tell the crew. Tell the crew. Okay, I'm gonna tell the crew. Here we go. You take and you ground like enough coffee for like three pots. And then you put enough water in it for one pot. You let it sit for 24 hours. And then you drain it.

[00:02:23] Yeah, no. And they've tested like 300,000 different recipes and they're like in 30 different machines. And they're like every single time this taste but like it comes out on the taste test better. And there is just something to be said about simplicity with no products. No nothing else. Just the human and their strategies. And it works. It's so funny because I am also but I'm a heavy creamer person. Like I if you taste my coffee, you kind of forget it's coffee. Is there any? Yeah.

[00:02:53] This is some nice milk. That's a pretty tan milk you have there. I'm that way with my tea too. Like I overdo. Like when I lived in London, I was like such a big person of like cream with my tea. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's like a and so when I came back, that's all I can tell her. I can't drink just straight tea. Really? I do love I do love me some creamer and tea. Oh, it is an unsung hero. Like I feel like a lot of people in America actually really don't know about it.

[00:03:23] The very first time I had it, I just had a whole milk with it. And I was like, yo, this is good. Yeah. It's a straight sugar. Oh, oh, mmm. So good. Toss me in. Yeah. So good. Okay, we're not going to talk about our coffee and tea this whole episode. What we are going to dig into, which as everybody knows that we this is part of the podcast that we love to talk about, I think. And we don't get to talk about as much as we'd like to.

[00:03:49] And that's, you know, the diversity, equity, inclusion part of the work that we believe is true and should hold true in recruiting. And this is an episode about bias by design. And I know that's going to sound funny. Well, yeah. So I'm going to let Ash dig in a little bit about what we mean by that. And I want to be very clear. This is an episode that's not going to be for everyone.

[00:04:14] But it is going to be an episode that we want you to listen closely to the words that we say. Right. Because this is a tricky one. Yeah. Right. And so, Ashley, please go ahead and explain topics. Yeah. So and I'm glad that you kind of tied in the DEI piece of it, because I think whenever people hear the word bias, they automatically think, oh, we're talking about DEI today. And actually, no, we're going to take 50,000 steps back and just talk about it from a cognitive and behavioral level. What actually is a bias?

[00:04:44] So to start us off and to kind of lean into what Des was saying, once we explain what a bias is, how it works, things like that, we'll also be talking about things like influence. And the thing that borders that is manipulation. And so sometimes whenever you talk about biases and you learn about them, you're also learning about the coping strategies and things that run alongside them. And sometimes that can merge and blur and kind of confuse. So what we want to do is kind of untangle a lot of that and then also make sure that to all of our audience, we're super duper clear. We are teaching you this as educational purposes.

[00:05:14] We're not necessarily saying this is what you could, should, would do. This is much more of knowing what's happening in the people's heads as far as cognitive psychology and studies and research goes and what you're dealing with on the other side of a human being. Yeah. Yeah. And I definitely want to say that again. And I know that I'm harping on this a little bit, but I don't want people to take this episode because I've gotten comments about some of our episodes. Like, you know. Have they really? Oh, yeah. What'd they tell us stop talking about? Yeah.

[00:05:43] Like, well, stop telling me what to do. My processes doesn't work. Don't tell me what to do. I'm not telling you what to do on the show. I'm trying to educate you or we are trying to educate you about what's actually happening out there in the world that you live in in your little box. I really try to make sure you understand everything that surrounds you. I'm not giving you true advice about how to run your operation. You live in it. We don't know your operation. Right. We would never be giving you advice. We are not your doctor. We are not your doctor.

[00:06:11] So I don't want a million comments about how this is cray cray. We might take a million comments, though. So, well, I will take that. Yeah. But not. Bad stuff is good stuff, supposedly, too. So we'll take it. That publicity is so good for me. That one. Yeah. Yeah. But I do want people to know that there is like this disclaimer on this one. Yeah. A little bit. Yeah. A little bit. Yeah. But. Yeah. So anyway. So here's what we're going to start with. Hey. Hey. What's a bias? So many people think that they know what this is.

[00:06:41] If I. OK. I'm going to toss it up to you just to see. Just to see. I have no idea. Really? Are you saying that for the show? I'm not going to give you the definition. What do you think it is? I'm not going to give you the definition of a bias. OK. Because you wait. First of all, I just want. All of our listeners already know this. I'm here for the sarcasm. Not for the education. Oh. I want the true definition of what a bias is. Well, we need to put up Webster dictionary.

[00:07:08] But I can tell you what it is as far as from a cognitive psychology level. Yes. There you go. Because that is where it stems from. A lot of people think a bias is just I feel this way about a certain group or whatever. Actually, a lot of times what they're talking about is prejudice. They're not actually talking about bias. A bias is actually a cognitive shortcut. In your brain, you have a whole bunch of things firing going bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing all the time. Every thought you make.

[00:07:32] Every time you take in any of your senses, your five senses that you have or your sixth if you're, you know, Bruce Willis and what's his name. But the five senses that you have that is intaking everything, it is having what's called synapsis in your brain and it's connecting it and giving it all the context of what you have around you. Right. And so what a bias is, is it is a cognitive shortcut. What does this mean? So whenever we think of things like the sky is turning dark, that means it might rain.

[00:08:02] Right. Right. So the cognitive shortcut is sky is dark. I don't have to think through 30 different options as to why the sky is dark. Did a boat come in with fog? Did like none of these are deductive reasonings that I need. I can automatically synapse to thus it's going to rain. Right. So that is technically a cognitive shortcut. That is, quote unquote, a bias.

[00:08:25] Now, where bias really comes into play whenever you're hearing it in all these hot words is what they're saying is whenever you see this certain type of person, whenever you see this gender, this this sexual orientation or this color or ethnicity and you have this, quote unquote, bias, you have snapped to this judgment that you have kind of synonymized with it. So I am blonde.

[00:08:52] A lot of people think blondes are dumb. So sometimes whenever I open my mouth, I prove them right. But sometimes when I open my mouth, I prove them very wrong. And they say things to me like I didn't expect any of and I don't know why because I was just sitting here. But it turns out a lot of the views that people take in of you in your bodysuit are giving everybody cues. And those cues are often based on societal context. Again, blondes are dumb.

[00:09:22] I don't think blondes have always been known as dumb. That's just how they're known right now in this era. Well, yeah, yeah, yeah. So but that's just an example. And biases, for the most part, is actually how we run our whole entire brain system. It's how I know if whenever I'm in a room, if it's safe or if it's not. How I know if I should, you know, go from here to here. It lets me. I mean, biases are how your brain runs. So for people to attack the term, we have bias, bias, bias.

[00:09:52] You have a mental shortcut. You're right. Your mental shortcut is tied to a prejudice. That's where bias comes in really bad with people. That's where we see hiring managers where we say, well, you have a bias against hiring females. Maybe you think they're less than whatever it may be. That they're calling out the synapsis shortcut and what you've synonymized them with. Does that kind of make sense? Yeah, totally makes sense. I also knew what it was. I mean, I know. I'm just making sure I explained it all right. God. Oh, my gosh.

[00:10:20] No, I think it's very valid that you explained it, though, in that way. And I was, like, curious where you were going to go because sometimes, you know. Sometimes we go. And sometimes you're a little brainy. I know it. And so I wanted to see if you could do the layman's term. Thank you for that. I chose the dumb blonde. Was that okay? It was great. Thank you for that. You know, when this whole DEI, George Floyd era had.

[00:10:47] We kept using the word bias as such a negative thing that was happening all the time. And I think we got sucked into using it as a negative connotation. So people don't even know most of the time. It's just a way the brain works. It is. It has nothing to do with the negative part of what we usually talk about when we associate it with bias and hiring, right? Correct. And I think the struggle has been, and I say this on almost every show I've ever been on,

[00:11:16] is that everyone has this. Right? You can't get away from it. It's not like a thing that we just determine, you know, that we're just not going to have. It happens in every instance of every moment probably in our life. And so let's bring it back to hiring a little bit because bias by design is a legitimate like thought process of how you could do this. Right? I struggle with it a little bit.

[00:11:40] And so, but I want you to go a little deeper to me about what if you design the system with bias at the forefront almost of your thinking or your process. So flip switch. Yeah. Bias is always at the forefront. True. You can't get actually outside of your own self ever. Even in the moments where you're like, I'm making a 100% altruistic based on someone else

[00:12:08] decision, you're saying it's the best decision. And so it's something that whenever people talk about how do we eliminate bias? How do we minimize it, mitigate it? Like all these different terminologies, that's actually not what you want to mitigate. It's not the cognitive shortcut creation that brings us to XYZ. It's what you have synonymized and created within that shortcut. Right. So that's one thing that I would say is there are a lot of people that are like, how do you? There is no getting away from it.

[00:12:37] There's never going to be a time that you don't have a bias. That's how your brain works. Biases are created because we as humans, cognitive resources, remember the Pac-Man and the brain. We only have so many lives until we're done for the day. Have you ever had a day where you've gone home and you're whomever has been like, what do you want for dinner? And you're like, I can't even think about that. I can't make that decision. That means you've depleted all of your cognitive resources. You are just fatigued in the brain. Can someone tell my wife that that happens to her way too much? It does. And that's the other thing. Everybody has their own custom amount.

[00:13:06] And it just depends on your threshold of how far can you sustain into using all these cognitive resources. And so for me, again, getting away from the term of bias as a cognitive, sorry, negative connotation, I think would be really beneficial because that's not actually what it is. And people don't want to say what it actually is, which I'm going to say it again for the third time on the show. It is actually prejudice. So that is whenever you have taken a connotation of a group or of a community or whatever it is and painted the whole community with that negative light.

[00:13:35] So again, I met a blonde. She wasn't very smart. Thus, all blondes are dumb. So that is prejudice. And so what that means is now if my bias, if that's my prejudice, that's the road my bias takes. So your prejudice really shape the roadmap of your brain. And so if you're ever like, how do we change the roadmap of our brain? Just so everybody knows. The cognitive answer, it's called an availability heuristic. But the real answer is how you intake information.

[00:14:03] What information you're taking in, how much of it, what different communities, who. Your information shapes everything about you. Same thing within recruitment as well. Everything that you get about the candidate, the job, it shapes exactly how you're going to roll out with everything else. Well, this is the seat. Stop. I'm going to stop you right there. Stop me everywhere. That is. No, no, no. That's a really good point. Because the taking in the whole parts of a candidate to me, we can talk about bias free.

[00:14:30] I just had this long joking conversation with somebody who wanted to put bias free on their AI software. Oh, LOL. I'm like, please, would you stop with the bias free stuff? And talk to one lawyer. It doesn't make sense. It doesn't make sense. Why are you even putting it on there? Did you ask? Hey, what's a bias? Right. How are you free of it? Can you let me know? Well, I asked them, like, how are you free of bias? Well, we don't. We just give evidence. We don't think of it. By the way, this is not the company I work for. But we don't do it.

[00:15:00] We don't. We provide, you know, kind of evidence in the science behind it. We don't give really, truly any information about the candidate except with the AI determined from the resume. No name, no blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, that doesn't mean anything. You did nothing. It does not mean bias free. It doesn't even mean. Because whoever built the AI built it with bias. Hello, there was a human who programmed it. There was a lovely AI engineer guy who made the system.

[00:15:29] And so please, if you have an AI platform, please do not use the words bias free. Yeah, it just, it won't happen. There's never a way. Because even whenever you think of the softwares that these individuals are creating, there's a prioritization map of what's priority. And what's priority to this person is not going to be what's priority to the next, which means there's never, it's impossible. It's literally impossible. The shortlist itself, the name automatically assumes there's bias in it. Yeah, no. The way that it filters it, sorts it.

[00:15:58] Like so much of what it does, it impacts it. If a candidate does this and it puts them in this group versus that group, now we have to look at what's called human factors, which is whenever someone sits in the seat, what do they typically do? So do I as a recruiter go to pot A or pot B? Because depending on how that is, what influence? So that's another thing. I feel like a lot of people make a lot of AI products with this is how it's supposed to be used. And then a lot of people sit in the seat and they use it how they use it. And none of these are aligned. Correct. And so they're reading data where they're like, oh, this and this and that.

[00:16:27] And it's like, nah, that person didn't use that for this. They use that to do an AI funnel. And they didn't even like, I've just seen it so many different ways that it's silly. If you see it, it should let you know that whoever that product owner is really doesn't know what they're talking about. Candidly. Right. And a product owner sitting in the seat trying to develop a talent product alone with no influence from an advisor or system that came from this space.

[00:16:51] I was, you know, looking at ads the other day and I was like, there was definitely no person of color making this ad. Like those kind of things. Was it Converse? Yes. Girl. I don't want to call them out. Oh, my bad. I'll call you out. Bye. That was stupid. I was like, I've seen some really bad ones. They're all stupid. I know. Zara did it. Like they're all like, what are y'all doing? Well, put a person of color on your marketing team, maybe. Maybe you won't get this back. Ridiculous. Anywho.

[00:17:19] So let's go back to the whole candidate theory about like bringing your whole evaluating the whole candidate to try to eliminate some biases. Because I think that in itself is a little more possible than us saying, let's remove all biases. It doesn't make any sense. Right. Yeah. And actually, you should have used the word prejudices. Because that's really what you're trying to do. Is you're really because every single whenever. So let's think about it. If we think of what's, quote unquote, a bad bias. Right.

[00:17:48] And we're going to use the terms that the people use because that's not what is a bad mental shortcut. No such thing. Like, so we're going to use it in the term that the market uses right now. So what is a bad bias? So a bad bias would be, again, I see a woman. Thus, I don't think she will do the job as well. Thus, I make her prove herself more. We see this a lot in research whenever we look at women who want to get promoted versus men. We've talked about this on the show. Men are often promoted and research shows that whenever you look at the notes that they've taken, they are promoted based off of potential.

[00:18:18] So the aptitude, the ability, the comprehension that they might. Right. And then for women, they are often promoted based off performance. So they have already had to prove. They have had to sit in seat. They've had to do it unpaid. And they've had to do it for some time to be able to come to you and say, this is why I deserve X, Y, Z. That is because of a bias. Nine times out of the 10, and we know this as well, is that I think it's 91% of CEOs are male. And so whenever you look at leadership, they're male.

[00:18:43] And so they will often be able to, using bias, assimilate and connect better with other men because they understand them better. And so, ideally. And so, supposedly. So the point here is, is that we actually see the data points, the outcomes of these biases every day, all the time, everywhere. We see it in the promotion field. We see all these other things. And that's what it looks like.

[00:19:10] So whenever we're talking about a bad bias, quote unquote, that would be what I'm talking about. Something that actually is creating statistical impact that is actually negative, in my opinion, in society. And how do I evaluate if it's net negative? Well, women are 51% of the population, and we only hold 9% of C-suite. So you tell me, honey. You tell me. Everybody. Tell me. Tell me! No, I'm just kidding. Not kidding. Tell me.

[00:19:32] But the point is, whenever we're thinking of biases, and we should have had a counter on this show to count how many times we say bias and then make people take drinks, actually. Shot shots! Shot shots! That would have actually been really funny. They would have been drunk by the end of this episode. Oh my God, they would have been drunk right now. Yeah, probably. They're like, stop singing, I'm dying! Stop it! So, but okay, so let's hop back real quick. So we have our bad biases. Then we have what people want to mitigate, right?

[00:20:02] Because I think those are the two big pieces. Because you'll see it in businesses where you have a lot of different departments, where they maybe have different gender balances as far as data goes, as far as their number of headcount, things like that. And so you'll see the outcomes of these biases in your data, right? And so a lot of times the way that they try to mitigate bias is by saying, well, we need to hire 10 more women in the engineering department. Anybody going to address the small elephant in the room? No.

[00:20:32] That now all we've done is put women in an unsafe place, all in the name of mitigating someone's cognitive shortcut, which isn't going to happen. And what's going to happen is they're going to put all these women in place if they can actually get them out of the hiring process and then hired. And these people are going to treat them in disproportionate ways. They are not going to advance them. We've talked about this on the show. This is the part for me about DI that struggled for me. Oh, big time.

[00:21:00] Was the, okay, we're going to do this quota of numbers. We're going to put all these people in the seats, but we're not going to change anything about the culture. We're not going to help them feel belong. We're not going to try to create a team environment. We're not going to do any of the things that people need to have at a safe workplace. We're just going to put them in the seat. Correct. And so you're talking about that same theory that that's not what you should be doing. Mitigating biases does not mean just putting numbers into a seat. It just doesn't work that way.

[00:21:29] No, it doesn't work that way. And it honestly, it just increases imposter syndrome for all of those individuals from those underserved communities that you just brought in the door. It also proves, I don't know if I should say it this way. I'm going to say it this way. It proves the white man's point. He's like, oh, can't do anything well. Well, you set us up for unsuccess. Right. Like you made sure it was all going to fail. And that's what I think that we saw with DEI.

[00:21:54] And they did it by tokening biases and saying, like, we're going to mitigate those by bringing in people and just shoving them in and leaving them unsuccessful almost again by design. Right. So the purpose of this episode, because right now we're really just in the entry. Sorry, guys. Because here's what I want to illuminate to you all before we really dive in. Biases are happening all the time, every day, in every situation. Biases can be good. Again, it is how I know if I am safe in this room.

[00:22:22] If there's something that signals to me I'm unsafe, that shortcut comes in and says, get out of there. Right. So these biases can be positive as well. They don't always have to be something negative. The other thing that I would say is because biases are happening all of the time, there's a different side to this pancake that people do not discuss. And that is what happens if you harness people's biases?

[00:22:47] What happens if you actually lean in to the bias-y note, to the mental shortcuts, and actually started paving new roads for your managers and new roads for other people to have better mental shortcuts? How can you actually do that as a recruiter? How can you actually change bias in favor for the good, but in favor for your candidates as well? And so that's kind of actually what we're going to talk today. Yeah, let's dig in. Let's go into it.

[00:23:17] How do we change the perception? All right. Yeah. So changing the perception is understanding what a bias is because, again, it isn't all that negative. The prejudice of it is what is negative. And how we move it towards good. And how we move it towards good is this. One, the understanding that it is always happening anyway. That is the number one thing I think everyone needs to understand because sometimes you can walk into this conversation and there is a portion of this that is going to be,

[00:23:42] there is a fine, fine line between influence and manipulation. And I think that a lot of this gets blurred. Wait, wait, wait. Okay. Because I don't even think people understand why we're even talking about influence and manipulation when it comes to bias. Yeah. So back up like two steps. Okay. So here's the backup. And this is kind of why I let us in with the data as well. Yeah. Is bias is making influence. Right.

[00:24:10] Whether we have actually identified that that's what's doing it or not, it is. And so what we're going to work through and talk through today is how, again, do you change those paved roads that your bias does its mental synapses on? How do we change that and actually make it for the positive, for better things? And a lot of that is through influence. Right. And so some of this. So if you are listening, Robert Cialdini is an author.

[00:24:38] He does the, I think, seven now eight. Yeah. Like habits of persuasion and influence. Right. And there's a lot of these. And these are honestly also just social psychological principles. So you have things like scarcity. So I think of Macy's one day sale. Come get here one day. You think of. People fall for it every time. Yeah. Well, or Amazon Black Friday. Today's the day you got to buy it, got to buy it, got to buy it. And I never needed anything more than I do on Prime Day. Like I, all these things I've never needed.

[00:25:05] And so it's this idea that because it's limited, because it's a short time, because it's this, it will increase people's behavior to do X, Y, Z. And it does. Well, we do this with offers. We do it. We do it with, we do it with everything. So that's another reason why I really want people to understand what we're talking about today. You're already doing whether you know it or not. Right. So these are all things. So again, there's the scarcity effect. There is the similarity. So people who assimilate look like each other, things like that.

[00:25:35] I remember one time I was interviewing and the girl had blonde hair and the same glasses as me. And she was like, we look like twins. And the moment she said that, I was like, she's going to pick me. I know it sounds bad, but I was right. And she did. But it was something to where I know that bias is strong. I know it is. We see it. We see it every day. Whether we want to admit that it's that or not, it is. And so at least for me and my social psychological head. And so I say all this to say that whenever we're thinking of other things, so like anchor bias. Yeah.

[00:26:05] So this is one that I think as a recruiter, if you don't understand this, I think you're screwing yourself personally. Well, I think I bet you at least 50% of our audience have any idea. So here's the anchor bias. It'll make a lot of sense once you hear it because it's an anchor. It's kind of this concept that whatever I serve to you first creates this standard in your mind that that is what you should receive going forward. It's kind of like, you know, whenever everybody tells you like.

[00:26:34] Well, I always tell people like if they saw it, the first CEO they ever saw was a male CEO. Right. And then I serve up a bunch of candidates that are like women CEOs. You're never going to see those candidates because your idea. You're juxtaposing them to that threshold. Exactly. And that's what it is. You've made an anchor in their mind. And so a lot of research, I love research on anchor bias.

[00:27:00] It is actually one of my favorite ones, but a lot of them do it with like money. So they'll say, okay, I pay you, I'm just going to make this up because we're at a conference. I pay you $500 for a conference speech. The next time I go to a conference and someone asks me to speech and they say, how much do you make? If I say 500, because that's my anchor, that's my bio, that's my threshold I'm familiar with. But they were going to offer me 5,000 because now I'm in a, so not always is the anchor you're

[00:27:26] given the actual median of what reality is. It's just your reality. Right. And there's a play to that. Not a play, but there's a different side of the pancake to this. And it is, if you know that you are sending whatever candidates you're sending, be smarter about the order that you put them in to be interviewed by your managers. We're getting tricky now. I just want to say. We're getting tricky, but we're not. But you do this every day. We do it every day. I do it.

[00:27:55] I know I do it. I know I put my candidates in a certain order. I do too. I present them in a specific order. I get them on their calendars in a specific order. I do the same thing. And the reason is because we have goals. We all have goals, bro. Do we though? I mean, on Tuesdays. Today. But no, but like we legitimately have goals. And sometimes those contradict. So there are times where I am hired at a certain place to hire very specific XYZs.

[00:28:24] And I'm given that very specification. That is not the same specification the managers are often given. Their job is just to hire the best candidate that I send. It is my job to either find the diverse, whatever it is that we're looking for. That's my job to pump that pipeline with it. Right. However, what I do know is because we have human biases that if I make an anchor that is a five and then I give seven, seven, seven, seven. Cool.

[00:28:53] But had I sent one anchor that was a 10 and then sent seven, seven, seven, seven. That means I have one person getting through. That's it. Versus if I did five, seven, seven, seven. I got three people going through. Do you see how that switches? Yeah, I totally agree with you. This is what I do all the time. I know. I caught manipulation. You call it anchor. I mean, we can all do. I mean, it's playing a little bit of blackjack with your odds. I mean, it's playing your odds. But here's the deal. You were submitting them all anyway. Yes. You were sent.

[00:29:23] The only difference is now you're actually thoughtful towards it. Yeah. You're actually strategic in the fact of, okay, whoever I send them first is going to be what they're going to expect. Do I want to set a bar that if I know my candidate pool is majority sevens, how can I get the sevens through? You know what's funny? I've actually done this the opposite. Well, I've done this with candidates, like presenting candidates, but I've also done it with getting candidates more money. Oh, yes. Oh, yes.

[00:29:53] I'm like, I'm like, listen, you know, I've done all of this manipulation depending on who it is, because I know that people are just humans, right? And not that they're going to fall for everything, but how their brains work is one is a certain way. And if you do the right thing, you can get what you want at the end of the day. And that's and that right there is the key the recruiters hold that I don't think we pay enough attention to. And that's why whenever I say we can change the wealth gap, I bloody mean we can change the wealth gap.

[00:30:22] Like if we are thoughtful to the fact that if we can employ people from underserved communities, if we can employ people who have been unemployment and unemployed for however long, like those hires are magnifiers of what we're actually doing within society to where to me, once you're able to hone this influence, once you're able to understand how the cognitive layer of how

[00:30:47] all of this works, you are actually able to do your job so much better because you have now in an embedded form mitigated actual biases by using their bias. Right. Like you are fighting the fire with the fire. And honestly, it's the only fair chance some of these candidates will ever have. Right. Because someone has thoughtfully and strategically orchestrated how this manager's experience

[00:31:15] will be to ensure that someone that I've sent you that I've said is XYZ is going to get this job. I think we've said this so many times that recruiters don't realize how much of the cards they actually hold, just like affecting the generational wealth gap, but also just within an organization. You are the one hiring a body. You are putting a person in the seat ultimately. Yes, the hiring manager hires them, but you are the one screening and making those decisions

[00:31:44] every day to move people forward or not to move them forward. And as you, you are affecting the organization more than any other department. Then I can't explain to people enough that you hold power. You've just never used it. Yes. Well, and that's just it. You've used it, but you don't know if it's for good or because it's getting used. Like it's and that's the part that I always come back to is like, hey, y'all, because sometimes people will hear this conversation and they feel a little dirty.

[00:32:12] They feel like, oh, you want me to do that? Like it's it's too thoughtful for them. But what's the other side of that coin? We're just going to leave it up to. Yeah, you're going to leave it up. Because if my itty bitty thinking of orchestrating, of putting it in the order makes that much of a difference on who gets hired, this whole thing needs to turn upside down then. I don't know, man. I think if we really had any influence on the world and somebody listens to this podcast and people actually do. Your mom and my mom, dude. And Dwayne. Those are the three listeners we have.

[00:32:43] Thanks, Dwayne. Because you don't know Dwayne, but. But you're going to get to know Dwayne. And you know Rita. So Rita too. Yeah, Rita. Poor Rita. So bless her. But I think we have, again, I talk to so many people about when you think like this, how you think about the power that you hold as a recruiter, as a talent leader, especially how you understand bias, how you understand how you can influence, not manipulate, I hate

[00:33:08] that word, but influence hiring decisions over and over again, how you can do all these pieces of the puzzle. You really hold a ton of power. And this is the best job in the world if you can do that. Yeah, I agreed. Because it gives you this unlocked layer that, again, that attic has been here this whole time. All time. You just never went in it. Right. And so, and everything was already going on with it.

[00:33:35] Again, if your mindset is we don't have that much influence, what does this matter anyway? Then flip it about. See what matters. Well, yeah, yeah. Take your job then. Yeah. Yeah. Like, but, and that's just, it is like, there are so many people who are like, these things matter. These things don't matter. It's like, if it don't matter, try it anyway, because then it don't matter. But if it does matter, then again, we've just found out that biases are that strong to be able to change who we will hire just based on the order. But I think that's so true.

[00:34:04] How could it not be true? And I've tested it. You and I, we've all tested it. Like, are you joking? Like, sorry. It's 100% true. Yeah. It's 100% true. We just very earlier talked about the cognitive resources. So the Pac-Man and the brain, right? You can use that same exact theory with how many interviews do you make your manager sit through in a day? I love this one. It's one of my favorites too. Yeah. But it is, you know, if there's a manager that you often disagree with, right?

[00:34:33] There's one that y'all, y'all often don't see eye to eye, but you're, y'all are all working through it, you know, whatever. You're going to be better off giving them interviews in the afternoon. Why? They have less cognitive resources. They're less likely to actually argue anything. Cause again, remember, we just got home. We're ordering what to eat. I can't even think of what to eat. So guess what? They're going to be basing off vibe. So if you challenge them on like, okay, why wouldn't we go through? They're going to be like, they can't even pick what they're about to eat. Like that's just the way the human brain works is at the further you go throughout the day, you will actually deplete your resources.

[00:35:02] One thing just for the research nerds out here, if you have ever read research on cognitive resources, it is amazing. But one of the coolest studies was actually conducted on how do you replenish your cognitive resources? So once you get to that moment of mental fatigue, of depletion, how do you actually restore it back up? And the number one thing that they found was lemonade. The sugar in lemonade and in a sugary beverage can actually help you replenish. I'm off sugar right now. Don't tell me that. Well, all your coggies, they're all going to be running amok.

[00:35:32] But yeah, so sugary beverages actually can help with replenishing of that. So if you, that's why a lot of people have their 2 p.m. Coke. It's your brain saying, hey, honey, we need a little lift. So this is a very, it feels body, but it is brain, a big thing. So that's, that's another one of the biases that I would say. I'm probably going to have to see that for the next ones because I can't remember. All right. Let's get to the next bias though, Ash, because I think we could go on and on and on about this, but like we could have a whole episode about this.

[00:36:01] No, we're recording. Rona is not there. Rona's so here, y'all. I can't wait for that to be in there. This is why you can't be in front of an audience. I can't. I was this bad on Dr. Phil too. Oh my God, you were horrible at HR Tech. I'm going to have terrible at all of them. Okay. So last and final bias. And honestly, there are so many biases, y'all. There are over hundreds.

[00:36:27] These are, again, these are methodologies of how your brain works and what they have found that the most humans do. Right. Like of all of us, generally, this is what we say normatively happens. Right. One of them is also called false attribution to arousal. I actually love talking about this one only because people, it's the first time that we're going to connect the body with the actual brain in a way that's a little bit different than just cognitive resources.

[00:36:52] And so essentially what false attribution to arousal is, is kind of this idea that the more your heart rate spikes, the more that you will attribute a likeness to whatever you were doing. So example here is in their research study, they took people on dates and they took them to a scary movie or to like a, like a love dove movie, whatever romance rom-com thing.

[00:37:13] And so what they found was that the people who came out of the scary movie, whenever they had to rate how much they liked their date, they rated them much higher than those who went to go see the rom-com movie. And through other various different researches, what they compiled in their meta-analysis is this theory called false attribution to arousal, which is this idea that the scary movie got my heart rate beating, that it got me scared.

[00:37:38] And so because of that heart rate increase, that arousal, I have actually attributed that to my date and attribute it to, I must really like her versus actually taking in that the movie has increased my heart rate. Thus it is the movie's doing not like we have a hard time separating. Probably not.

[00:37:59] We have a, we have a hard time separating what is real because of we're feeling, you know, whatever versus what is real because we're watching again, all of these senses we're taking in and we're having to decide what is the delineating factor amongst those. And we're terrible at it. Humans are horrible at it. And so it's kind of this concept. So one of the ways that this had come up once in recruiting was there was the question by a recruiter. My managers are taking their interviews while walking on a treadmill.

[00:38:29] And the conversation went a whole bunch of different places. I was the only person who took it here. Please know, because I'm the only weirdo that would. But because of false attribution to arousal, I do know that one of the research studies was it was like rock climbing, going out, getting physical versus sitting stagnant. Just even to see the differences there before they even went to see the differences in the movie types. And what they found was, again, those people who had done things that rose their heart rate tend to like their dates more. And so it was the same kind of theory.

[00:38:58] But whenever you go to candidates and now I'm going to do my 30 minute trot with these candidates versus those. Are we going to see a likeness difference based off of the false attribution to arousal? Now that my heart rate has been rising because I am essentially exercising while doing this interview, I actually will have probably more of a heightened fondness towards that candidate strictly because my body is doing something.

[00:39:23] And my brain will have a reaction to it and just falsely attribute it to that person. So it's something that's super interesting, but it just goes to show there are so many ties between you physically, you mentally, how you feel emotionally, like all of these different things connect and they all make influence. They all create some form of domino effect that impacts the other. Again, it's just a matter of how are you harnessing it?

[00:39:53] How are you doing it? What are all the things around it? So that is really what today's episode. And I think using it to define your process, right? Like when I think about how you submit candidates, how you put interviews on a calendar, how you do all these things. I was talking to someone the other day and they were saying that their process needs to revamp, that they are so unstructured in the way they do everything.

[00:40:15] And I was thinking to myself, the only way I survive as a recruiter is to have like this very thought out rhythm to how I do the things I do, right? There's a reason behind submitting interviews at three o'clock versus at nine o'clock in the morning.

[00:40:30] So I think all of your points are so great because this goes to how you can take all of those things that you already know about how the mind, the body and all of those things work together, influence and put them into a process that does influence. Right. And we can call it the reason this started with a lot of disclaimer was that it does sometimes get to the line of manipulation in and in our own heads, in our in our own heads. Right. Because we don't know the impact. Right.

[00:41:00] I mean, in theory, I mean, you know, well, it's still it's still a tricky. And again, it's still it goes. I love the circle, though. It's like, do we do anything? We don't do anything. We do everything. It's manipulation. It's not manipulation. It's such a beautiful circle, but it's a beautiful circle to think about. But it is also you're already doing it. Correct. Right. And that, I think, is the most pivotal part. Every single one of these things is happening anyway.

[00:41:28] It happens every day and you cannot cope for all of them. You can there you can strategize enough to get all of these biases mitigated and all those different things. So what but what you can do is control for the controllables. Right. You can control for the things like prejudice, actually control for them by taking those individuals through a form of training, not just throwing victims at them.

[00:41:52] There are ways to actually dissect and disintegrate the actual issues that we have. This is more for if we know how the cognitive brain works, how can we actually use it in our favor? Because it's working this way anyway. It's never going to the human brain has been the same all this time since we were homo sapiens. We're very innovative people, but we're very adaptable. And that's how we roll. And so it's just something to where, again, this is an addict that has always existed.

[00:42:22] It's never went in. Yeah, right. Absolutely. Talent outside the box today, Ashley. I think this whole thing has been a talent outside the box. I would say that usually this is where we talk about the cognitive and psychological side of what we've been talking about. But I think we did this. We kind of did. But I do actually have a little one. And this is OK. We're going to do talent outside the box. But this is really human life outside of the box. I don't know why. This is one of the biggest researches that I think people have no idea about. But I think once you know it, it actually helps you a little bit in your life.

[00:42:52] It's called the bystander effect. Do you know what it is? A little bit. OK. So bystander effect is kind of this idea that, like, example, let's say somebody fell right in front of us. Oh, yeah. I love this one. And but they fall right in front of us. But you see it. I see it. They see it. I see that there's four other people. I'm like, they've got it. They see that there's four other people. They're like, they've got it. So everybody is kind of now just become a bystander. And no one actually helps the person. Great murder about this. It's Kitty Genevieve.

[00:43:21] And that is one of. Do you know that that is one of the researchers that has stuck with me my whole life? Kitty Genevieve. Great story. Well, scary, sad story. But is what murder story. I mean, good God. They're going to look this up and be like, meh. I love her. What? Oh, my God. Are we talking about the same murder? Anyway, we're going to move past this point for just two seconds. But basically what created the studies was the murder of Kitty Genevieve.

[00:43:50] She I'm not going to go into super, super gory details. But basically, I think it was like 30 to 50 people see in her building and hear. Yes. Yes. This taking place in New York. In New York. And nobody stops it. No one the whole time. People see it. People call. They're like, hey, don't like, you know, everybody. There's acknowledgement everywhere. But no one actually does anything. Not one thing. And you know what I think is hilarious. Whenever I learned about this research study, people were talking about fire drills.

[00:44:18] And they were like, the next time you have a fire drill anywhere that you are, which if you look back to your high school days and think on it, they're like, every single time it goes off. Everybody just looks at each other. Yeah. That nobody actually gets up. Everybody looks to see what the other person's doing. And that is the same theory as bystander effect. It's this thing where everybody looks to see what the other person is doing. And the reason that I'm sharing this with you all today is because, one, for life reasons, you should know that people are always going to be bystanders first. So if you see something, say something, do something.

[00:44:47] Because you might be the only one, even if there's 100 people looking around. So, like, life note there. But, two, the other thing that I think is important is we kind of do it in recruitment, too. Absolutely. We stay by standards until one person leads the way. Until one person. And that, I think, is important with bias. Because right now, we just have people trying to mitigate it, minimize it, put it away. And, again, the things that are prejudice-holding, absolutely, go with it.

[00:45:11] But whenever we're talking about true cognitive synapsis, real actual bias, that's not something that's ever going away. And kind of having this conversation of, it'll leave us, is just silly. And so it's going to take someone leading the path of talking and having these conversations to actually understand how our brain works and actually build processes, strategic structures, and trainings for recruiters around that. And so I say this to say that if you have a passion, one, talent ed.

[00:45:39] But, two, that we shouldn't be bystanders in this industry either. We shouldn't be bystanding just because we know these things are what. We should start leading this industry. We need to be paying attention to these items. Because that's how you change it, is through those biases, those strategic structures, those processes. That is how we actually gain influence for people to say, wow, you're really good at what you do. And it's like, eh, I really just gave you three sevens and a five. But go ahead. That's the difference. That's the difference. Absolutely.

[00:46:09] Ashley, this was really good. As usual, when I let you go with the mic and educate us all, it's so amazing. So this was a good one. And if, you know, I've done a lot of this work over time, but I don't know it as well as Ashley does. But I will say, the more you dig into how the psychological side of anything that we do, it's fascinating. It really is. The mind is a fascinating thing. So do your homework. Do a little digging. Do a little research. Yeah, yeah. He's a good one to start off. Yeah. Great, great, great work there.

[00:46:39] Some great research has gone on in the last couple of years, especially about the effects of AI and all of these. Please do your research. Be a strategic partner. If you don't know where to find us right now, we're at RECFest, but all these episodes will soon be live. We will be at HR Tech this year in Vegas, October 20th through the 22nd. Very excited for that one as well. You can find us on YouTube, Blue Sky Threads. Oh my gosh, we're everywhere. LinkedIn, of course. Please check us out.

[00:47:08] Also, subscribe to our newsletter at talentlesshive.beehive.com. And buy my book, October 27th. Leadership is a practice, not a personality. And we will see you next time. Bye.