Arbeitspapier

Interview sequences and the formation of subjective assessments

Interviewing is a decisive stage of most processes that match candidates to firms and organizations. This paper studies how and why a candidate's interview outcome depends on the other candidates interviewed by the same evaluator. We use large-scale data from high-stakes admission and hiring processes, where candidates are quasi-randomly assigned to evaluators and time slots. We find that the individual assessment decreases as the quality of other candidates assigned to the same evaluator increases. The influence of the previous candidate stands out, leading to a negative autocorrelation in evaluators' votes of up to 40% and distorting final admission and hiring decisions. Our findings are in line with a contrast effect model where evaluators form a benchmark through associative recall. We assess potential changes in the design of interview processes to mitigate contrasting against the previous candidate.

Sprache
Englisch

Erschienen in
Series: Discussion Paper ; No. 497

Klassifikation
Wirtschaft
Micro-Based Behavioral Economics: Role and Effects of Psychological, Emotional, Social, and Cognitive Factors on Decision Making‡
Demand and Supply of Labor: General
Personnel Economics: Firm Employment Decisions; Promotions
Thema
hiring
interviewing
contrast effect
memory

Ereignis
Geistige Schöpfung
(wer)
Radbruch, Jonas
Schiprowski, Amelie
Ereignis
Veröffentlichung
(wer)
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München und Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Collaborative Research Center Transregio 190 - Rationality and Competition
(wo)
München und Berlin
(wann)
2024

Letzte Aktualisierung
10.03.2025, 11:44 MEZ

Datenpartner

Dieses Objekt wird bereitgestellt von:
ZBW - Deutsche Zentralbibliothek für Wirtschaftswissenschaften - Leibniz-Informationszentrum Wirtschaft. Bei Fragen zum Objekt wenden Sie sich bitte an den Datenpartner.

Objekttyp

  • Arbeitspapier

Beteiligte

  • Radbruch, Jonas
  • Schiprowski, Amelie
  • Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München und Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Collaborative Research Center Transregio 190 - Rationality and Competition

Entstanden

  • 2024

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