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Personnel Review
“With recruitment I always feel I need to listen to my gut”: the
role of intuition in
employee selection
Andrew Miles Eugene Sadler-Smith
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To cite this document:
Andrew Miles Eugene Sadler-Smith , (2014)," “With
recruitment I always feel I need to listen to my gut”: the
role of intuition in employee selection ", Personnel Review,
Vol. 43 Iss 4 pp. 606 - 627
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/PR-04-2013-0065
“With recruitment I always feel
I need to listen to my gut”: the role
of intuition in employee selection
Andrew Miles
Liaise Loddon Limited, Basingstoke, UK, and
Eugene Sadler-Smith
Surrey Business School, University of Surrey, Guildford, UK
Abstract

Purpose – This qualitative study of managers’ use of intuition in
the selection process aimed to
understand if and how managers use intuition in employee
hiring decisions and suggest ways in which
the use of intuition might be improved. The paper aims to
discuss these issues.
Design/methodology/approach – Semi-structured, in-depth
interviews were conducted with
managers from a range of backgrounds, and with varying
experience of recruitment and selection.
Findings – Findings revealed that reasons for the use of
intuition included personal preferences,
resource constraints and recognition of the limitations of more
structured approaches. Intuition was
used an indicator for performance, personality and person-
environment fit. Intuition tended to be used
with requisite caution; participants were aware of its limits, the
potential for bias and the difficulties
in justifying its use; several participants used their intuitions in
concert with more structured,
non-intuition based approaches.
Research limitations/implications – The small-scale
investigative study has limited generalisability.
The paper concludes with five specific recommendations on
how to improve managers’ understanding and
use of intuition in employee selection.
Originality/value – Despite increased interest in intuition in
management there is a paucity of
qualitative studies of intuition-in-use in management in general
and in personnel in particular. This
research helps to fill this gap.
Keywords Qualitative, Decision making, Intuition, Hiring,
Employee selection, Gut feel

Paper type Research paper
Introduction
In spite of the widely held view amongst IO psychologists that
“analysis outperforms
intuition in the prediction of human behaviour” (Highhouse,
2008a, p. 336) interviewer
intuition remains AN “elephant in the room” of employee
selection. Managers may
frequently place more faith in their ability to “read people”
(Myers, 2002, p. 189),
and cleave to selection choices based on an “overall”,
“impressionistic”, or “holistic” but
essentially intuitive judgement rather than using objective
evidence garnered by
using the tools and techniques of employee selection. How can
we make sense of such
seemingly arational behaviours and choices? In this paper we
report a small-scale
qualitative study which addressed the need for more empirical
research on why
and how managers used intuitions in their employee hiring
decisions (Slaughter and
Kausel, 2014).
Dries (2013) encapsulated the paradox of intuition in selection
thus: organisational
decision makers on the one hand overestimate the validity of
intuition whilst
simultaneously underestimating the validity of paper and pencil
tests. Highhouse
(2008a) made the point more forcefully: one of the greatest
achievements of IO
psychology has been the development of selection decision aids,
but one of its greatest

The current issue and full text archive of this journal is
available at
www.emeraldinsight.com/0048-3486.htm
Received 24 April 2013
Revised 21 March 2014
Accepted 6 April 2014
Personnel Review
Vol. 43 No. 4, 2014
pp. 606-627
r Emerald Group Publishing Limited
0048-3486
DOI 10.1108/PR-04-2013-0065
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failures has been an inability to convince employers to use
them. Highhouse (2008a)
also laid some of the blame at the door of popular books which
“extol the virtues of
intuitive decision making” (p. 334) such as Blink: The Power of
Thinking Without
Thinking (Gladwell, 2005) and Gut Feelings: The Intelligence
of the Unconscious
(Gigerenzer, 2007). The nub issue for Highhouse (2008a, p.
336) was the “considerable
irreducible unpredictability” of employee assessment that
imposes a “glass ceiling” on
the effectiveness of the process as a result of the fact that there
are determinants
of performance that are not known or are unknowable at the
time of hiring. Although
there is a plethora of knowledge regarding applicants’ reactions
to employee selection
procedures (Diab et al., 2011) there is a dearth of understanding
about why managers

find intuition so appealing and how they use it in employee
selection decisions.
Slaughter and Kausel (2014) in a state-of-the-art review of
employee selection
decision research argued that descriptive information about how
intuition-based hiring
decisions are made and why managers “cling” to intuition is
lacking and that
qualitative research in the form of interviews in this regard “can
be especially helpful”
(p. 75). These various shortcomings and suggestions motivated
and supported the
need for our research.
This paper contributes to a growing body of scholarship on the
nature and
significance of intuition in business and management (Burke
and Miller, 1999;
Dane and Pratt, 2007; Hayes et al., 2004; Miller and Ireland,
2005; Parikh et al., 1994;
Sadler-Smith and Shefy, 2004; Salas et al., 2010), as well as
debates surrounding the
salience of intuition in HR in general and selection in particular
(Allinson and Hayes,
2000; Colarelli and Thompson, 2008; Diab et al., 2011;
Eisenkraft, 2013; Fisher, 2008;
Highhouse, 2008a, b; Jones and Saundry, 2012; Lodato et al.,
2011; Klimoski and Jones,
2008; Monks et al., 2012; Myers, 2002; Nickson et al., 2008;
Skinner, 2004; Spence
and Petrick, 2006) and the shortcomings in the practices of
employee selection in
some sectors (Lockyer and Scholarios, 2007). In spite of these
various efforts there
are surprisingly few studies devoted to researching the role of
intuition in employee

selection practice. Moreover its salience is likely to be
amplified in the non-HR
specialist settings which prevail in many organisations hence
we felt it was important
to address this issue in the research.
Theoretical background
It is long-established that human decision makers are far-
removed from the rational actors
which scientific management assumes (Kahneman and Klein,
2009; Simon, 1987).
Rather, our decisions and choices are governed by two,
sometimes complementary
sometimes competing, modes of cognition one of which is
“cold”, objective, rational,
reflective and analytical (generally referred to as “System 2”
processing), the other which
is “hot”, subjective, affective, reflexive and intuitive (“System
1”) (St Evans, 2008;
Haidt, 2001; Lieberman, 2007; Stanovich and West, 2000). Both
systems are integral to
effective problem solving and decision making in personal and
occupational settings.
Recent theoretical developments provide a solid foundation for
more theory-driven
research in personnel selection (see: Lievens et al., 2002).
Within this broad dual-processing theoretical architecture,
intuitions themselves
may be conceived of as involuntary “affectively charged
judgments that arise through
rapid non-conscious and holistic associations” (Dane and Pratt,
2007, p .40). They are
an outcome of System 1 processing and a manifestation of
expertise (Klein, 2003)
captured succinctly as “analyses frozen into habit and the

capacity for rapid response
through recognition” (Simon, 1987, p. 63). Simon’s axiom
reminds us that the capability
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to intuit is built-up over several (e.g. ten or more) years’
practice, reflection and
feedback (see: Ericsson et al., 2007). In professional domains,
such as management,
intuiting is uniquely suited to situations characterised by
complexity, uncertainty and
time pressure (Burke and Miller, 1999; Klein, 2003). Under
such conditions, including
those pertaining to selection, experienced managers tend to be
guided by holistic
judgements based on “gut feelings”. So much so that there is a
commonly held, deeply
ingrained and highly resistant-to-change belief that choosing the
right employee is
often best-treated as a matter of experience and intuition
(Highhouse, 2008a).
For example, Burke and Miller (1999) in their study of senior
managers in the
USA reported that 40 per cent of participants used intuition to
make personnel or
people-related decisions including interviewing and hiring. This
finding corroborated
earlier research findings by Parikh et al. (1994).
More recently scholars have argued that intuition is non-unitary,
i.e. there are
several different types of intuition, namely: expert intuition,
creative intuition, moral
intuition and, especially relevant to our study, social intuition

(Dane and Pratt, 2009;
Gore and Sadler-Smith, 2011). In so far as social intuitions are
concerned, strong
empirical evidence for the processes underlying holistic,
impressionistic intuitive
judgements may be found in so-called “thin slice” research.
Ambady and colleagues
observed that ratings by untrained observers based on
evaluative thin slices (video
clips between two- and ten-seconds in length) can predict
important outcomes with
high levels of accuracy including students’ rating of teachers
(Ambady and Rosenthal,
1993), effectiveness of sales managers (Ambady et al., 2006),
surgical malpractice
(Ambady et al., 2002b), and physical therapists’ performance in
terms of patient
outcomes (Ambady et al., 2002a). Thin slices are more valuable
for assessing
interpersonal rather than non-interpersonal task-related skills
and provide powerful
predictions of performance, explaining approximately 15 per
cent of overall variation
based on aggregated data (Eisenkraft, 2013).
Whether we like it or not first-order, face-to-face social
judgements (Highhouse,
2008a) such as whether or not a job candidate is likely to make
a suitable subordinate,
co-worker, team member or boss, are always likely to elicit
context-specific instinctive
and intuitive assessment of traits, motives, and intentions
(Colarelli and Thompson,
2008; Klimoski and Jones, 2008) through the processes of social
intuition. The
associations involved are divergent and broad, based on the

holistic integration of
numerous sources of information from multiple channels (Gore
and Sadler-Smith,
2011). From the perspective of the interviewer social intuitions
are involuntary
and difficult-to-control whilst from the perspective of the
interviewee, even though it
may be possible to consciously and effortfully manipulate the
content of the verbal
channel of communication, for most people (skilled liars
excepted, see: Porter et al.,
2008) states such as anxiety are communicated implicitly and
effortlessly to
interviewers through tone, pitch, and gesture (DePaulo, 1992).
Myers (2002) alerted us to the perils of interviewer and
interviewee intuition in
such situations. The source of the “interview illusion” (Myers,
2002, p. 191), which can
result in a gap between the interviewer’s impression of a
candidate and reality, are
manifold. For example, an unstructured, intuition-based
interview may focus more
on a candidate’s declared intentions and future behaviour but
these are likely to be a
less useful predictor than their past performance (Myers, 2002).
Similarly, most
interviewers are likely only to get feedback on candidates their
intuitively based hires
several months or years (or even not at all) after the decision
was taken and hence learn
very belatedly whether the decision was a “hit” or a “miss”,
furthermore they do not
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normally get any feedback on the potentially successful hires

they intuitively failed to
appoint (Fisher, 2008). Ultimately over-confidence in, and
delayed and incomplete
feedback on the correctness of intuitions, allied to hindsight
bias resulting from
overemphasising “intuitive hits”, may lead managers not only to
assume that events
were more predictable than they were in reality but also to an
inflated self-perception of
and unreasonable confidence in their intuitive hiring ability
(Ames et al., 2010; Fisher,
2008; Myers, 2002). Such attribution errors may lead managers
to ascribe successful
hiring decisions to their own intuitive expertise while placing
the blame for failures on
other factors, such as the process itself or where they were
overridden, the poor
judgement of colleagues. The consequences for selection and
assessment practice in
organisations as well as professional policies of bodies such as
CIPD are significant.
However, whilst this paper is not implied advocacy for intuition
or an explicit critique
of the rational model, it is noteworthy that intuition is largely
ignored by professional
codes of conduct.
Ames et al. (2010) framed the issue of whether or not
interviewers should trust their
intuitions as essentially a metacognitive question and observed
that the accuracy of
first impression judgements tends to be modest, whereas first
impression confidence
tends to be relatively high (thus supporting the somewhat
sardonic precept that
intuitions are “sometimes wrong but never in doubt” Sadler-

Smith, 2008, p. 28), and
“for the vast majority of impressions, accuracy and confidence
tend to be unrelated to
one another” (Ames et al. 2010, p. 273). The conflation of
accuracy and confidence may
be a result of the substance of a message and its forcefulness
being interpreted
as proxy for its validity (e.g. “If I got a quick and clear answer,
it must be true”) (Ames
et al., 2010, p. 274), i.e. “confidence is a fallible cue to
accuracy” (Ames et al., 2010,
p. 275). This effect is amplified by the automaticity and potency
of affect (“gut instinct”)
in intuitive judgements.
In sum: since adaptive psychological mechanisms such as social
intuitions are
often automatically and “stubbornly” (Highhouse, 2008a, p.
333) relied on alongside
or in preference to other more objective methods of employee
selection (such as
personality assessments tools which are “evolutionarily novel”,
Colarelli and
Thompson, 2008, p. 347), it is vital that intuitions are deployed
as effectively as
possible in order to militate against their down-sides and
maximise any likely benefits
which may accrue from their use (Hogarth, 2010; Myers, 2002;
Sadler-Smith, 2010).
Answers to the core question of our study (i.e. if, how, and why
the intuitive perspective
remains so appealing to management practitioners) are
important not only for human
resource research but also for the improvement of managers’
selection practices and the
design of HR policies (even if it turns out only to be to provide

exhortations to avoid
intuition at all costs).
Method
Sample and procedure
A convenience sampling strategy was used in order to obtain
participants for this
exploratory study. Our intention was to interview both HR
specialists and managers
from as wide a variety of organisations as was practicable. The
sampling strategy was
chosen to meet this need. We advertised via social media for
participants with
experience of employee selection who would be willing to be
interviewed. The use of
personal social networks resulted in access being granted to
large organisations, while
the use of different social networking sites resulted in the
respondents coming from
a wide range of backgrounds in terms of role, organisational
size, and experience.
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Role of intuition
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There were 13 participants (ten of whom were from a
managerial rather than an HR
background) representing organisations ranging from small
(under 15 employees)
to large (over 100,000) employers. Five of the participants were
self-employed or
working in smaller companies (digital design, project
management, corporate
healthcare consultancy) and eight participants were employed
by multi-nationals
(healthcare, technology, media sectors). Participants ranged

from HR executive
to senior management level. Participants were labelled A-M for
the purposes of
the analysis.
Data were collected using semi-structured, in-depth interviews.
During the
interviews participants were encouraged to talk about selection
decisions made in
previous jobs as well as in their current role (the interview
protocol is contained in the
Appendix). Interviews lasted approximately 45 minutes on
average. Interviews were
recorded digitally and transcribed verbatim. Prior to their
interview, based on a variant
of the Critical Incident Technique (Flanagan, 1954), each
respondent was asked
to prepare by recalling two specific hiring decisions they had
made, one with
a positive outcome, and one with a negative outcome. In the
interviews, which were
interviewee-led, interviewees were asked to talk about these
decisions.
In practice the discussion of the incidents often led into more
general dialogue
around selection in general, hence participants tended to talk
about a wider range of
incidents. All of the interviewees made mention of intuition,
and hence afforded
opportunity for follow-up and probing.
Data analysis
Following the interpretive approach of Butterfield et al. (1996)
we aimed to “obtain
a better understanding of how managers actually think and feel

about these
situations [y] we were at least as interested in learning the
managers’ perceptions
as we were in learning of the reality”, we allowed “responses to
be relatively
unconstrained” and for “rich meanings and interpretations” to
be conveyed from
managers to researchers (pp. 1485-1486). We do not lay any
claim to a grounded
approach. A three-phase process of unitising, categorising, and
classifying
comprised the content analysis. In the first phase (unitising)
individual “thought
units” (TUs), i.e. “a complete thought or idea” relevant to the
selection process
were identified in the interview transcripts (Butterfield et al.,
1996, p. 1483). Clear
references to intuition or synonyms for intuition, and what
could reasonably be
thought to be references to intuition, were selected; for example
“with recruitment,
I always feel I need to listen to my gut instinct” (Participant H).
The resulting TUs
were transferred onto index cards, with notes made on each as
to which interview the
TU had come from, and if the respondent was referring to a
positive or negative
selection experience. The process generated initially over 700
TUs. These were
filtered in the first part of the categorising phase.
While ideas for themes and categories formed inevitably during
data collection and
analysis, the aim was to “let the data speak for themselves”
(Butterfield et al., 1996,
p. 1483). Themes were allowed to emerge by matching similar

cards together, based on
internal convergence and external divergence. The first filter
that was applied was to
look through the TU cards for anything that appeared to refer to
intuition, including
“instinct”, “gut feel”, etc. The second filter was based on re-
reading the cards to look for
possible emergent themes with the aim of removing TUs that
were simply describing
the selection process and focus attention on those that were
concerned with the
research question. The filtered 328 TUs were then sorted into
similar first-order
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categories using the internal convergence/external divergence
method referred to
above and each category given a label “in an attempt to capture
the shared message
of the thought units within it” (Butterfield et al., 1996, p. 1484).
Once all the cards had been sorted into categories they were re-
read and re-
checked against the labels; at this point some categories were
re-labelled and some
cards reassigned. In order to check the reliability of this process
an independent
researcher was given a list of the final categories and a random
sample of 70 cards
(20 per cent of the total) and asked to sort the cards into the
listed categories. In total,
50 out of the 70 cards (71 per cent) were sorted correctly,
giving a Cohen’s k for
inter-rater agreement of 0.70 (Randolph’s free-marginal multi-
rater k) calculated using an
online k calculator (Randolph, 2008) and indicating

“substantial” inter-rater agreement.
In the classification stage, the categories were grouped into six
second-order themes.
This was a subjective process based on the immersive approach
to the data described
above (Marshall and Rossman, 2006; Rossman and Rallis,
1998). An overview of the data
structure is shown in Table I.
Theme Category (first-order code) Sample statement
Perceived problems
with selection
Specific occasions when
selection failed
“He did a really good [interview and] test
[y] then we popped him into his team
and he [y] was like a completely different
guy” (E)
General unreliability of
selection process
“There’s a huge unpredictability in any
recruitment” (F)
Use of rational
methods
Use of tests/set tasks ( positive
opinion)
“[A task is a] really good way of testing
and making sure the person we hire is the

right one” (H)
Use of competency questions/
structured interview ( positive
opinion)
“I look at the things that are critical to me
in terms of competency and ability in
those areas and take questions from a
bank of questions” (A)
Use of assessment centres
( positive opinion)
“[An] assessment centre [y] done in the
right way [y] is about as easy a selection
process as you can do” (A)
Use of psychometric tests
( positive opinion)
“There’s lots of caveats around
psychometric tests. But [y] used in the
right way, they’re very useful” (A)
When and why a rational
process is inadequate
“Nothing’s perfect, and a test is not
perfect” (D)
Perceptions of
intuition
Intuition as hard to explain “This gut feeling, it’s very, very
hard to

quantify” (B)
Intuition as a physical feeling “It’s like a physical kind of [y]
it’s like a
little tripwire in my head” (B)
Pace of intuitive judgments “You form an opinion of somebody
pretty
quick” (F)
Intuition as experience “As you get a bit older you just get a bit
more comfortable following your gut” (B)
Intuition as a predictor of
personality
“Generally how they came across [y]
what kind of person they would be like to
work with” (H)
(continued)
Table I.
Overview of data
structure
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Findings
In what follows we discuss the themes, illustrate them with
relevant “power quotes”
and offer additional “proof quotes” in Table I (Pratt, 2009, p.
860).

Problems in selection
Two categories emerged within the “Problems with Selection”
theme: “failures of the
selection process” and “difficulty and unpredictability of
selection processes”.
Participants described specific failures in selection, where
despite their belief that
Theme Category (first-order code) Sample statement
Intuition as a predictor of
performance
“A colleague [y] had a massive gut
instinct about someone else [y] and she
was hired, and she is brilliant” (I)
Intuition as a predictor of “fit”
(specifically, not personality in
general)
“Once I saw her up against the others, I
had quite a strong feeling that she had a
good organisational fit” (K)
Intuition as bias “Maybe I felt like I was being judgemental
– a judgement that was fed by
stereotypes” (D)
Intuition as an impression of
physical appearance
“Everything about him was soft.
He looked soft, he had soft hair,
he had a soft face, soft body, soft
clothes” (D)

Other definitions of intuition “I thought there was something
funny,
I thought the answer was all right but,
there was something odd there” (B)
Effectiveness of
intuition
When and why an
unstructured/intuitive
approach is inadequate
“An unstructured interview lacks the
transparency of a structured
competency-based interview” (A)
Negative statements about
intuition
“It’s not reliable because it’s just your gut
feel and as you might get it horribly,
horribly wrong” (C)
Positive statements about
intuition
“I do think that gut reaction [y]
speaks a lot because it’s the only
thing you can rely on in the face of
all that information” (E)
Justifying the use of
intuition
Participants unwilling/unable

to rely on intuition
“I couldn’t articulate [the gut feeling], so
[y] I just couldn’t make it stick because
all the other evidence was contrary” (E)
The influence of others’
intuitive judgements (or lack of )
“[Intuition] is more of a valid response if
it’s shared” (C)
Positive interplay of intuitive
and rational judgement
“No matter how hard you try to be as
systematic, as pragmatic, whatever you
want to call it, that [gut] feeling is there”
(M)
Role of rational and
intuitive judgement;
additional outcomes
and reasons
Ensuring fairness/objectivity in
the process
“Everyone follows exactly the same
process so it’s completely objective” (A)
Ensuring fairness/value in
feedback
“You really need to give robust feedback
and the best way of ensuring that you can

do that is to have a good process that
stands up to scrutiny” (A)Table I.
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the process was robust and promised to be effective, the
candidate simply failed to
perform when in the job. For some participants this came as a
surprise:
It was a very good interview [y] his CV was really good [y] he
ticked the boxes in terms of
potential experience [y] he came through really well [y] he did a
writing test [but failed in
the job] [y] Honestly, I have absolutely no idea [why the
selection process failed] [y] I sit
there and I do think about it often. I just don’t quite know
(Participant E).
Others appeared to view the process as inherently more risky,
and seemed less
surprised by its failure:
Maybe he didn’t have the grit and maybe we didn’t pick up on
that in the interview [y] it’s
sometimes quite difficult (Participant M).
Of the selection process in general, participants acknowledged
its imperfections in
two main areas: the “unpredictability” of human behaviour and
the “inadequacies”
in the process:
There is a real unpredictability factor about people, and I don’t
think any process is ever
going to totally unpick it (Participant B).

Surely [recruitment and selection] cannot be this difficult right?
(Participant G).
Selection is not an exact science to start with [y] it’s difficult
(Participant M).
Comments reflected a view that selection is to an extent
“probabilistic”, and that there
are likely to be factors which may determine future performance
that are not knowable
easily at the time of a candidate’s appointment.
Use of rational methods
As far as rational methods themselves were concerned, set tasks
such as in-tray
exercises or presentations were felt to be useful and seen as an
objective way
of assessing both “hard” and “soft” skills and which could be
combined with other
methods:
You can almost imagine what they are going to be like in front
of a customer (Participant D).
We can ask all the competency-based questions in the world,
but until you give them
something to do, you often don’t know which way they’re going
to go (Participant H).
Participants were aware that combining selection methods can
be used to overcome the
limitations of a specific method:
There’s [sic] lots of caveats around psychometric tests. But I
think in their best iteration, used
in the right way, they’re very useful [y]We’ll put [candidates]

through [a psychometric test]
and use that as the basis to structure a second round interview
[y] honing in on some of the
key competencies [y]. You can sit down and say to the
candidate “You’ve been through
the interviews, you did the [psychometric test], you’ve had the
feedback from that and this is
fundamentally why you’re not suitable for this role”
(Participant A).
However, a number of criticisms of rational selection methods
were made by some
participants (making up about a third of the TUs in this theme).
Criticisms were either
directed at the methods themselves, or at the practical difficulty
of using them in
particular recruitment situations or business contexts. For
example, rational methods
were sometimes criticised for being too restrictive, too
complicated, too limited, or
beyond the resources of the respondent’s organisation.
Comments suggested that the
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rational methods available to respondents may be irrelevant to
the specific recruitment
problem they faced, or did not suit the respondent’s particular
preferred approach:
If you’ve got a field colleague who has to [y] make � number
of money towards a target,
then that’s a completely different set of skills that you’re
looking for, and so the one-size-fits-
all questionnaire doesn’t necessarily fit (Participant E).

I don’t think we’re a big enough company to do [psychometric
tests] [y] [If] you’re getting
500 people to apply for 50 jobs a year then you can probably
run them (Participant F).
Convincing non-HR managers of the utility of rational selection
methods may lie in
ensuring that such techniques are tailored to the specific hiring
context in the firm,
and that an understanding of the manager’s personal preferences
and capabilities
as well as resource constraints are taken into account. What
became clear during
the course of the interviews was that in some situations (e.g.
time- or other resource-
constrained) intuition may be the only viable approach for
managers.
Use of intuition
A number of participants described intuition as being “hard to
explain”, understand or
quantify, which may account for attribution errors – managers
struggle to explain a
phenomenon which does not appear to be associated with the
effortful or conscious
processing of information, i.e. intuiting (the process rather than
the outcome) is
non-conscious and therefore difficult to “locate”:
I don’t know [how I recognise intuition], because if I knew, it
would make life a lot easier
(Participant J).
How would you explain instinct, that’s really hard? (Participant
C).

This “gut feeling”, it’s very, very hard to quantify (Participant
B).
Intuition (the outcome of the process of intuiting) is
acknowledged as “affectively
charged” (Dane and Pratt, 2007, p. 40) and one participant (G)
used metaphor profusely
in describing intuition:
[A] twinge [y] gut reaction is really a good way of putting it.
But it’s like a physical kind of
[y] it’s like a little tripwire in my head [y] it’s a bit like a flick
switch in my head [y] it’s just
so feather-light [y] (Participant G).
Participant G’s account fits with the notion of intuition as
embodied/somatic which,
when combined with the non-conscious aspects of intuiting,
further sets it apart from
conscious, rational, affect-free processing. Participants also
reported intuitions as
emerging rapidly:
You form an opinion of somebody pretty quick (Participant F).
Intuition was seen as a manifestation of experience. Simon
(1987, p. 63) described
intuitions as “analyses frozen into habit and the capacity for
rapid response through
recognition”, later encapsulated in the notion of “intuition-as-
expertise” (Sadler-Smith
and Shefy, 2004) and “intuitive expertise” (Kahneman and
Klein, 2009). Participants
described intuition as both rooted in, and derived from,
experience and as something

that they became more comfortable with the more experience
they had. Managers’
self-confidence in their levels of intuitive efficacy must
however be viewed sceptically
given that subjective confidence in intuition is unlikely to be a
valid indicator of
either intuitive expertise or the accuracy of an intuition-based
prediction given the
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well-documented potential for biases and errors in intuitive
judgment (Ames et al.,
2010; Kahneman and Klein, 2009):
[Intuition is] I suppose, from your learned experiences with
other people (Participant C).
That [gut feeling] comes with experience because you use your
experience to think, hmm, I’ve
seen your type before (Participant M).
As you get a bit older you just get a bit more [y] comfortable
[y] following your gut
(Participant G).
Intuitive expertise takes time and the right environment to
develop properly, hence
managers should be suspicious of intuitions that are not based
on relevant learning
and valid experience (Hogarth, 2010).
Participants accorded considerable importance to intuition as a
“predictor of
personality”. Moreover personality was considered an important
contributor to
employees’ performance:

A sense you’ve got of the person and their character, and what
they can bring to the team in
addition to their skill set [y] If she was going to have to be put
in front of important
[business partners], how charming would she be, and how
sensitive would she be to the
people that she was talking to? (Participant H).
Participants reported themselves as feeling capable of detecting
accurately and
predicting the consequences of both positive and negative
personality traits and they
valued intuition as an informal assessment of job-related
personality traits:
My gut instincts in the fact that she is incredibly ambitious are
right [y] You’re trying to
think personality fit [y] I mean that is totally gut instinct [y]
how can you measure that?
(A positive impression later confirmed by positive experience
when the candidate was hired)
(Participant I).
My concern with him was that he was soft (A negative
impression later confirmed by
negative experience when the candidate was hired) (Participant
D).
With respect to personality this resonates with Schmid Mast et
al.’s (2011) findings,
however while managers may with some justification generally
feel confident in their
intuitions in this respect, it is important to bear in mind that
intuitions are more fallible
in judging a target’s honesty (Schmid Mast et al., 2011).

“Intuition as a predictor of performance” was accorded
considerable significance by
a number of participants:
I just got this feeling that he was going to really, really struggle
(A negative impression later
confirmed by negative experience when the candidate was
hired) (Participant B).
A colleague [y] had a massive gut instinct about someone else
[y] a really good feeling
about her, and she was hired, and she is brilliant (A positive
impression later confirmed by
positive experience when the candidate was hired) (Participant
I).
And also regarding performance in particular contexts, for
example assessing how
candidates might perform under pressure:
You have a gut feeling for people and how they react under
pressure (Participant E).
When they’re under pressure, how are they going to behave,
how are they going to hold
themselves? (Participant G).
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Intuition was also reported as being useful in predicting
performance where a
candidate’s ability to make an immediate positive first
impression was regarded as
a key part of the role, for example for sales staff:

A salesperson should electrify you [y] so if you haven’t got that
in a conversation, they’re not
a salesperson, don’t waste your time (Participant D).
If somebody’s going to be a sales person [y] if they can’t get
that first impression bang on
when you meet them then that’s how they’re going to present
themselves to every client
(Participant F).
For these types of situations, participants felt that their own
subjective first impression
was a valid means to assess a candidate’s ability. Intuition was
also seen as a way
of assessing an individual’s potential to contribute to a team’s
performance in those
situations where their unique contribution might not be easily
identifiable or
measurable. For example, in describing the difficulty of hiring
software designers and
developers:
The best you can do is to get a feel for their interests and the
websites they would use online
to find out the information they would need [y] I have quite a
good feel for recognising a
good designer or developer that isn’t very good [yet], but has a
lot of potential [y] as well as
spotting someone who already is [good] (Participant J).
Participant J described how looking at a website that a
candidate had worked on
previously could give some idea of their ability, but as the site
would have been built
by several different people, the candidate’s own input might be

difficult to assess,
hence one way of assessing a developer’s talent and potential
was to use a subjective
impression based on J’s experience in digital media and design.
The term “fit”
also was used by a number of participants in referring to a
candidate’s potential
for assimilation into the organisation’s culture; intuition was
seen as a valid way to
judge organisational fit:
I’ve had gut instincts that someone is a really good fit
(Participant I).
I had quite a strong feeling that she had a good organisational
fit (Participant K).
There is a gut feeling about [y] how a candidate would fit with
people outside of their
immediate team (Participant L).
A number of participants used intuition as a quick-and-easy
method for assessing fit
which otherwise might have to be assessed by arriving at by
matching an objective
measurement of organisational culture against the candidate’s
profile. This is
a potentially complex assessment exercise which may be beyond
the resources
and capabilities of many non-HR specialist managers and
organisations with small or
non-existent HR functions.
A number or participants expressed concerns that their
intuitions might
be based on stereotypes and hence recognised the potential to

succumb to biased
judgements:
If you’re in the same trade for a long time [y] I’ve seen my
bosses do it in the past, they
become quite blinkered [y] I won’t pick somebody over there
because I can’t see him because
of my blinkers, but you might need somebody over there [y] I
think we’re all guilty of
occasionally falling in the trap [y] I expect “animal A” and I get
“animal B”, and I don’t
really want “animal B” [y] but maybe “B” has got a lot of
qualities that “A” hasn’t got
(Participant M).
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Participants also reported making intuitive judgements based on
candidates’ body
language or physical appearance, and also were able to report
cases of such
judgements being subsequently confirmed by experience:
When you’re interviewing, what they say verbally is such a
small proportion around how
they manage what they’re telling you [y] I think non-verbal’s a
lot [y] when you ask them
difficult questions do they wriggle? (Participant G).
I’ve got to be honest, that there’s a part of [my impression was]
that she looked the part
(A positive impression later confirmed by positive experience
when the candidate was hired)
(Participant K).
Everything about him was soft. He looked soft, he had soft hair,
he had a soft face, soft body,

soft clothes (A negative impression later confirmed by negative
experience when the
candidate was hired) (Participant D).
Interviewers respond positively to aspects of physical
appearance towards which they
are favourably disposed (e.g. attractiveness). A corollary is that
it may be possible for
a candidate to actively manage the way he or she comes across
in the interview
through self-presentation tactics.
Effectiveness of intuition
Participants’ statements about the inadequacy of intuitive or
unstructured methods
highlighted several issues, for example lack of confidence in a
process that lacked
a rational component and the difficulty of justifying intuition:
Managers might make a personal connection with somebody and
not with somebody else, but
that’s not really judging their competency for the role
(Participant A).
Should a candidate ever challenge, why didn’t I get the job [y]
the kind of open-ended CV
style interview [y] gives you too much opportunity to get
yourself into a hole as a hiring
manager (Participant A).
Managers might reject intuition simply because it is not rational
(with the danger that
its potential may also be overlooked or ignored). On the down-
side several participants
considered intuition to be inaccurate, unreliable, and
inconsistent also they recognised

that intuitive judgements might be seen as unfair:
Obviously gut instinct goes wrong sometimes (Participant I).
It’s not reliable because it’s just your gut feel (Participant C).
Gut instinct on one day can be different to another day
(Participant I).
I mean, of course I’m going to be questioned on [my instinct]
(Participant H).
I don’t think I rely on [intuition] as much because [it’s not] fair
to candidates (Participant G).
Such attitudes may themselves be biased and founded in a set of
negative assumptions
about intuition rather than an appreciation of situations in
which intuition is likely to
be more or less effective. Participants also expressed confidence
in intuition (e.g. in
situations of information overload), and described it as a valid
part of the selection
process, based on positive past experiences:
With recruitment I always find I need to listen to my gut
instincts (Participant H).
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I do think that gut reaction and your own personal experience
speaks a lot because it’s the
only thing you can rely on in the face of all that information
(Participant E).

These positive statements appear may be based on
generalisations and participants’
reflections on their own positive experiences where their
intuition appeared to have
served them well (their intuitive “hits”) but overlooking those
occasions where it let them
down (intuitive “misses”). There is the clear danger of
attribution errors and hindsight
biases in intuitively derived judgements, and this is a likely
concern for HR practice and
policy. Again, an informed understanding of the strengths and
limitations of intuition is
likely to lead to more informed judgements about how and when
it could be used.
Justifying the use of intuition
Participants’ views on the usefulness of intuition for selection
decisions were
somewhat mixed. For example, Participant A felt that intuition
should be kept out of
the process altogether, and even those participants who
expressed favourable opinions
about intuition also tended to express some uncertainties and
caveats about its
usefulness on its own. Reassuringly, participants overall either
felt unwilling or unable
to rely on intuition alone, feeling that intuitions needed to be
tested either by seeking
confirmation, for example by eliciting the intuitions of
colleagues, or by subjecting
their feelings to analytical scrutiny.
Participants held these views for various reasons. Some viewed
intuition as less
valid than other sources of data, or as an unfair means of taking
hiring decisions.

Intuitive judgement sometimes presented only a part of the
overall rating of the
candidate, and was not considered at the time to have sufficient
weight to overrule
other factors (even if the issue later turned out to be a major
issue in one candidate’s
subsequent performance). This lack of “weight” was associated
with the inability
of intuitions to counter other sources evidence, or from a
consideration of other
contextual factors such as the power and status of the intuitor:
Why did I overrule it [intuition]? Why did I not listen to it?
Because I didn’t value it as much
as the other things I was hearing (D’s intuitive doubts were
later confirmed to have been well
founded by the candidate’s performance once hired) (Participant
D).
If ever I get a gut feel, I just try to knock that gut feel out
somehow by asking questions that
are going to disprove [it] (Participant C).
At the time I [y] didn’t have the ability or in fact the role where
I could have [said] this isn’t
right, I can’t tell you why but it just isn’t, he doesn’t feel right,
whereas now I could have that
quite easily (Participant E).
Although intuition is recognised as having a part to play, there
was a tendency to
downplay its importance or to give candidates opportunity to
counter the impressions
made by intuition:
I thought this isn’t going to work out within [y] the first couple

of minutes [y] but then
I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt (Participant I).
Also difficulties in articulating intuition, and the absence of any
demonstrable process
(intuiting is non-conscious), made it difficult for managers to
argue for its validity:
I do remember thinking; I’m not sure about you. You know
when there’s something that
doesn’t [y] but I couldn’t argue with the skills, with the display,
with the [y] nothing [y]
I couldn’t articulate it so [y] I just couldn’t make it stick
because all the other evidence was
contrary (Participant E).
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Related to the articulation and shared interpretation of
intuitions, some participants
felt they would have more confidence in their own intuitions if
they knew they were
shared by a colleague. But there were also suggestions that
managers should avoid
mentioning their own intuitions to avoid prejudicing colleagues’
intuitive judgements,
moreover it is difficult to convince a colleague of the value of
your intuition if they do
not share it:
[Intuition] is more of a valid response if it is shared (Participant
C).
The gut feel [wasn’t discussed because] my boss was going to
do that for herself [y] she
didn’t need mine (Participant K).

I tried to raise an objection based on the gut feel[y] and [the
colleague] didn’t get it at all
(Participant E).
This has implications for the improving the interpretation of
intuitions. It may be
improved by free-and-frank discussion of the subject and by
managers incorporating
feedback from others to build their intuitive judgement skills
(see: Sadler-Smith and
Shefy, 2004).
Comments surrounding the interplay of intuitive and rational
judgements
were represented by the largest number of TUs. It was widely
acknowledged
by participants that rationality and intuition had a part to play
in the selection process
(i.e. combination of both should yield a better outcome than
solely relying on one
or other):
The gut feeling you get is perfectly relevant [y] but it’s not the
only thing you consider
(Participant D).
No matter how hard you try to be as systematic, as pragmatic,
whatever you want to call it,
that [gut] feeling is there (Participant M).
Participant M further summed up the realities of selection for
many managers
confronted by the need to hire employees:
It’s a matter of just simply not trying to shut your eyes to
anything (Participant M).

There were also indications that managers might value their
face-to-face intuitions
over more objective assessments in the assessment of team
roles:
I would take more from her, and her experience, or her answers,
than I would from the [team
profiling assessment], the profile would get less of a rating
(Participant K).
The most frequent response from participants was that intuitions
should be
scrutinised using and supplemented by rational approaches.
Moreover, intuitions have
to be expressed in a way that is interpretable by others and also
justifiable to
stakeholders:
Well, can we investigate what the [intuition] is? I appreciate
it’s not going to be [y] it’s
because of A, B and C, but I want to try and understand that
better [y] what I’m saying is,
can we get anything else out on the table to understand what it
is you’re worried about [y]
There’s just something that was not quite right about you.
Right, what does that mean?
(Participant L).
Participant B adopted a rule-of-thumb for capturing intuition in
the selection process
within the context of a highly systematic recruitment process
based on a series of
tests and interviews (i.e. competency-based interview questions
which are scored

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numerically and entered into a spread sheet). In this instance
candidates must achieve
a minimum score to be offered a job:
We’ve found the weighted spread-sheet alone didn’t enable us
to objectively deal with any
doubts, that gut feel thing, about if in doubt, throw him out, so
we introduced the second score
to, objectively handle the gut feel [y] The gut feel turned into
the “suitability score”
(Participant B).
If managers are more aware of intuition, and are more able to
correctly identify it and
to understand its potential usefulness, they are more likely to be
confident in relying on
it where appropriate. An understanding of the nature of intuition
should also enable
managers to combine intuitive and rational judgement more
effectively, and to explain
its use more clearly and confidently to others. Ultimately, the
ideal outcome would
be an environment where invalid intuition-like processes are
correctly identified and
excluded, while potentially useful intuitions are openly
admitted to, recognised,
collectively interpreted and valued.
Ensuring fairness
Finally, participants expressed the need for an objective process
that could stand up to
scrutiny if challenged and provide clear and constructive
feedback for candidates via

a rational approach per se or the “rationalisation” of intuitions:
We were doing that [y] so that everyone was treated equally
(Participant J).
You really need to give robust feedback, and the best way of
doing that is to have a good
process that stands up to scrutiny (Participant A).
We’ve never interviewed someone and said we have a bad
feeling about it, we’ve always said
[y] their interpersonal [score was] two out of five (Participant
B).
However, one participant preferred to avoid admitting openly in
her/his organisation
to having made an intuitive decision and was prepared to offer
an alternative
interpretation for the outcome to candidates:
[When] you instinctively feel that they’re not very good, I think
you just say that
comparatively there was someone else who has a bit more
experience (Participant H).
In this instance a post hoc rationalisation was used to “cloak”
an intuitive assessment
of a candidate’s suitability, this response resonates with models
of human judgement
and decision making which argue that intuitive sensemaking
may often precede
rational sensemaking (Haidt, 2001; Sonenshein, 2007).
Discussion and implications
Our findings underscored the importance of context and
supported the view that the

hiring behaviours of decision makers are often a function of the
organisational and
business environment in which selection decisions are taken.
For example, rational
assessment methods were generally well regarded and used by
participants. Criticisms
of such approaches emanated from the recognition that they
were either incapable of
assessing certain specific qualities or were not well-suited to
particular hiring contexts.
Moreover the use of methods such as personality tests and
assessment centres
sometimes exceeded the resources of the organisation. This was
especially so in the
case of smaller firms. This constraint may help explain
managers’ stubborn reliance on
intuition, but is worrisome given the significance accorded to
personality in employee
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selection (Moy and Lam, 2004) A negative consequence is that
managers may reject
objective assessment methods that have high up-front costs,
opting instead for a more
“intuitive approach” (the up-front costs of which are minimal),
without fully
appreciating the potential longer-term costs and consequences
of not using objective
methods (see: Fisher, 2008; Highhouse, 2008a). In terms of the
“up-side” of contextual
knowledge, and from the perspective of “intuition-as-expertise”,
our findings support
the view of intuition-based hiring as based on managers’
intuitive appreciation of
context as a result of experiences and learning (prior analyses
“frozen into habit” and

conferring the capacity for “rapid response through
recognition”) (Simon, 1987; Klein,
2003; Klimoski and Jones, 2008; Sadler-Smith and Shefy, 2004;
Salas et al., 2010) and
their confidence, whether warranted or not, in their ability to
“spot talent”.
In so far as intuition itself was concerned, participants
recognised that intuitions
occurred involuntarily in the selection process and espoused a
variety of positive and
negative attitudes towards them. Echoing the point made earlier,
perceptions of
intuition’s effectiveness varied according to context. It was seen
as being useful
or effective in situations where there was an absence of hard
data and when the hard
data itself was felt to be inadequate, and as an approximate
indicator of a general
“overall impression” of a candidate. It was less useful or
effective when quantification
or competence-based assessment was required, when used in a
wholly unstructured
way, and when it reinforced stereotyping of candidates.
Moreover, our data supported
the view that there are individual differences in the significance
accorded to “faith in
intuition” (see: Epstein et al., 1996). This finding resonates
with Lodato et al. (2011) who
observed that managers who preferred intuition-based hiring are
likely to be
“experiential” (i.e. feelings based) thinkers.
Learning is a root problem (and solution) in the use of intuition
in selection
decisions. Without an appreciation of the value of non-intuition

based hiring as well as
the “pros” and “cons” of intuition-based hiring managers are
more likely to be seduced
by subjective confidence (“feelings of rightness”) and duped by
their own hindsight
biases (e.g. remembering their intuitive hits, whilst “burying”
their misses). In the
absence of meaningful feedback (e.g. weak data on the
performance of those whom
they appoint on the basis of a gut feeling, as well as on those
who they chose not to
appoint) managers are unlikely to develop good hiring-based
intuition. In terms of
the practical implications developing good intuitive judgement
depends on the nature
of the learning environment. For example, Hogarth (2010)
described “kind” learning
environments as those where the information processed leads to
valid inferences
(feedback is neither missing nor distorted). In “wicked”
learning environments on
the other hand “samples of experience are not representative
and feedback might be
missing or distorted” and “mistaken beliefs can lead to
dysfunctional actions in the
form of self-fulfilling prophecies” (p. 343).
A further problem stems from an overreliance on individual
interviewers’ intuitive
judgements, especially given the fact that participants
themselves felt they would have
more confidence in their own intuitions if they were shared by
or could be shared with
a colleague. Effective interpretation of intuition is an important
corollary of this
finding. Furthermore, and as noted earlier, so-called “thin

slices” can provide powerful
predictions of performance based on aggregated data, hence to
maximise the value
of intuitions and simultaneously guard against individual
inconsistencies and
idiosyncratic biases it may be better, where possible, to collect
and combine the
intuitive judgements of multiple interviewers and “pool”
impressions even if it is of
only one or two other interviewers.
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An important and consistent finding was participants’
perspective that intuitive
and rational approaches are best used to complement each other.
For example, in
situations where objective methods are proven to work well on a
stand-alone basis
(e.g. in the assessment of cognitive abilities), intuitions are not
required and should not
be accorded any role whatsoever in the process, for example
“she had an intelligent
look in her eyes” is not a valid assessment of intelligence
(Kahneman, 2011, p. 233). By
the same token, if a pool of candidates is identified as equally
competent through
objective means, an intuition-based approach in a face-to-face
interview may be one
way, and sometimes the only way, of distinguishing between
equally well-qualified and
capable candidates especially when a choice has to be made and
additional data are not
readily available. As noted, one participant reported a bespoke
system he had

developed to capture subjective intuitions in an attempt to
render any holistic
impressions which arose during the interview amenable to
scoring. More generally the
adoption of a structured and systematic approach militates
against the problems
of focusing on performance-irrelevant factors, applying
different standards to
different applicants and basing evaluations on inconsistent
criteria (Eisenkraft, 2013;
Highhouse, 2008a, b). One should not lose sight of the fact that
intuitions are
judgements (Dane and Pratt, 2007), therefore intuition-based
hiring is one means by
which “hypotheses” about candidates may generated (e.g. “I
thought there was
something funny [y] something odd there”), a corollary of this
is that immediate
feedback on the validity of the judgement may not be available
until sometime after the
hire has been made, this further underscores the need for
knowledge of results as basis
for developing “educated intuitions”.
Organisational decision makers usually want to hire a suitable
person in as timely
and efficient manner as possible (Klimoski and Jones, 2008) and
intuition is always
likely to be an important element of the hiring process so long
as human judges are
involved. In so far as whether intuition-based hiring is “good”
or “bad” we concur with
Ames et al. (2010) that the evidence does not support a blanket
“yes” or “no”. Miller and
Ireland (2005) considered intuition to be a “troublesome
decision tool” (p. 29), Hogarth

(2010) argued decision makers should only consider trusting
their intuitions when
past experience is “both representative of the situation relevant
to the decision and
supported by much valid feedback” (p. 343). Sadler-Smith and
Shefy (2004), in the
light of the potential pitfalls of intuition, offered managers
practical guidelines for
developing better “intuitive awareness” (p. 88). The general
caveats that these various
authors draw attention to are underlined and amplified in light
of our findings and the
fact that intuitions occur involuntarily in the complex, dynamic,
and uncertain social
setting which characterises hiring process, therefore it is
imperative that “gut feelings”
are acknowledged and managed effectively.
In taking this agenda forward there are further pertinent
theoretical issues which
our research brings into sharp relief. Highhouse (2008a)
referred on the one hand to the
“irreducible unpredictability” of the employee assessment and
selection process and
on the other to the mistaken belief that it is possible to achieve
near perfect precision in
predicting a hire’s performance in the job role. How are we to
make sense of this
conundrum? Kahneman and Klein (2009) in debating the powers
and the perils of
intuitive judgement drew attention to the attributes of the
decision environment itself
and the role it plays in the development of intuitive skill. They
used the term “validity”
to refer to the causal and statistical structure of the relevant
decision environment. For

example there are likely to be available early cues that a
burning building will collapse
(much of Klein’s early research was on intuition in fire-
fighting), however similarly
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valid and publically available cues about how a particular stock
will perform is highly
unlikely to be available (if it were many would use it).
Therefore to learn to recognise
the likely relationships between objectively identifiable
predictive environmental
cues and subsequent events and final outcomes in the first (high
validity) case is more
plausible than in the second (low validity) case. Therefore
reliable intuitive expertise is
much more likely to develop when the decision maker operates
in a high validity
environment in which he or she can learn the causal rules that
govern the relationship
between cues, events, and outcomes (Kahneman and Klein,
2009).
An inference that may be drawn from Highhouse’s (2008a)
argument is that the
relationships between the objectively available cues and
outcomes do not render
employee selection a high validity environment in so far as
intuitive expertise is
concerned. This issue of the validity of the selection
environment is an unresolved
question and therefore presents an important debate for
employee selection
researchers. Relatedly, as noted above, a number of researchers
have mooted the
existence of a “social intuition” (Dane and Pratt, 2009; Gore

and Sadler-Smith, 2011)
drawing on various theoretical resources including emerging
insights from social
cognitive neuroscience (Lieberman, 2007). The validity of
social intuition in employee
selection is unknown currently. Hence, a further issue for
employee selection and
intuition researchers to explore is the role played by the
proposed construct of
social intuition in the employee selection process and its
efficacy in determining
the outcomes of employee selection decisions. For example,
does “good” social
intuition enable some managers but not others to recognise cues
that are predictive of
employee performance? If such intuitive expertise exists can it
be articulated
and interpreted, and integrated subsequently into an
organisation’s employee selection
procedures?
In addition to these implications for research the following
practical
recommendations are offered to practitioners and policy makers:
first, managers
should understand and accept that selection is probabilistic, and
that perfect prediction
is impossible. The selection process is an assessment of the
benefits and risks of hiring
a particular candidate, and errors will be made however
rigorous the process, and
however experienced the recruiter. Furthermore, choosing the
right candidate is not the
sole function of selection, and managers will have other
agendas, including furthering
wider business interests; second, managers should

systematically choose rational
selection aids that are capable of assessing relevant
performance-related qualities in
candidates. The choice of methods should take into account
specific hiring contexts
and the views and preferences of hiring managers. A “one size
fits all” approach is
unlikely to be effective; third, organisations and managers
should better understand
the nature and role of intuition as a distinct form of information
processing with its
own strengths and limitations. More emphasis should be placed
on intuition in
management education, and managers should be more open to
discussion and
understanding of intuition. To support this, organisations should
endeavour to create
environments in which good intuitive judgement can be
developed and learned via
coaching and feedback; fourth, managers should aim to develop
and deploy a
“cognitively versatile” style of decision making for employee
hiring in which intuition
and analysis are used in contextually appropriate and mutually
reinforcing ways,
for example by seeking more data when interviewer’s intuition
says “yes” but the hard
data says “no”, or by interrogating the data more scrupulously
when it says “yes” but
the interviewer’s intuition says “no”. This approach could be
formalised within the
organisation’s policies.
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Conclusion
By way of conclusion we offer a brief summary in terms of our
research questions, namely
if, why, and how management practitioners make intuition-
based hiring decisions.
As far as whether or not managers use intuition in hiring
decisions, the answer appears
unequivocal. All participants discussed the use of intuition in
employee selection
(described variously as “intuition”, “instinct”, “gut feel”, etc.)
and it was relied on to
varying degrees according to the individual and the context.
Intuition was perceived as
being hard to explain, based in experience and manifested as a
physical feeling which
emerged rapidly and involuntarily. Some participants were more
convinced of its benefits
than others however we did not seek to embark on any
quantitative analysis of individual
differences in this regard as a basis for generalisations (though
this could be an area for
further investigation). The reasons for the use of intuition
included personal preferences,
resource constraints and recognition of the limitations of more
structured approaches.
Intuition was used an indicator for performance, personality and
person-environment fit.
Intuition tended to be used with requisite caution. Participants
were aware of its limits,
the potential for bias and the difficulties in justifying its use.
Several participants used
their intuitions in concert with more structured, non-intuition-
based approaches.
The topic of practitioner beliefs about selection method and
processes is “gargantuan”

but it is an area into which “research has made little or no
inroads” and represents
a “severe shortcoming” (Anderson, 2005, p. 19) of the field. In
terms of the contribution of
our research, to the best of our knowledge, there are no
qualitative studies that have
investigated the use of intuition in employee hiring decisions
moreover there are relatively
few qualitative studies of intuition in management per se. This
small-scale investigative
piece of research contributes both to the general intuition
literature as well as making
a modest incursion in research into intuition-based hiring
decisions. This perceived gap is
an important one to fill given the high importance that is
attached to intuition-based
hiring in practice and the consequences and costs of getting
such decisions wrong.
The research also provides a contribution to on-going more
general debates about
practitioner attitudes and beliefs about selection methods and
processes. Our findings
provide justification for researchers, practitioners and
professional bodies to attend
explicitly to intuition – an elephant in the room of employee
selection. They provide
a basis for further investigations of a phenomenon which is a
fundamental aspect of
human nature, somewhat neglected in human resources research
but widely recognised
and used in human resource practice.
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Sonenshein, S. (2007), “The role of construction, intuition, and
justification in responding to
ethical issues at work: the sensemaking-intuition model”,
Academy of Management
Review, Vol. 32 No. 4, pp. 1022-1040.
Spence, L.J. and Petrick, J.A. (2006), “Multinational interview
decisions: integrity capacity and
competing values”, Human Resource Management Journal, Vol.

10 No. 4, pp. 49-67.
St Evans, J.B.T. (2008), “Dual-processing accounts of
reasoning, judgment, and social cognition”,
Annual Review of Psychology, Vol. 59, pp. 255-278.
Stanovich, K.E. and West, R.F. (2000), “Individual differences
in reasoning: implications for the
rationality debate”, Behavioural and Brain Sciences, Vol. 23
No. 5, pp. 645-726.
Further reading
Damasio, A.R. (1994), Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason, and
the Human Brain, G. P. Putnam &
Sons, New York, NY.
Hodgkinson, G. and Clarke, I. (2007), “Exploring the cognitive
significance of organizational
strategizing: a dual-process framework and research agenda”,
Human Relations, Vol. 60
No. 1, pp. 243-255.
O’Brien, J. (2008), “Interviewer resistance to structure”,
Industrial and Organizational Psychology,
Vol. 1 No. 3, pp. 367-369.
Appendix. Interview protocol
1. Current job title and organisation.
2. Experience of recruitment – how long, how many, etc.
3. Do you tend to have regular close contact with people you
have hired?
4. Asked to think of two hiring situations, one positive, one
negative, have you been able to do so?
5. Can you tell me about one of them – start with whichever you
prefer?

6. How was the decision made?
7. What influenced the decision?
8. What assessment methods were used? Why? What objective
information was available/sought?
9. Ask re mix of intuition/rational analysis and how this
proceeded.
10. Did I/RA refer to different aspects – “I felt they would fit
in, but thought they didn’t have the
required skills”?
11. What later confirmed/contradicted that decision?
12. Can you tell me about the other?
Corresponding author
Professor Eugene Sadler-Smith can be contacted at:
[email protected]
To purchase reprints of this article please e-mail:
[email protected]
Or visit our web site for further details:
www.emeraldinsight.com/reprints
627
Role of intuition
in employee
selection
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This article has been cited by:
1. Edwin N. Torres, Cynthia Mejia. 2017. Asynchronous video
interviews in the hospitality industry:
Considerations for virtual employee selection. International
Journal of Hospitality Management 61, 4-13.
[CrossRef]
2. Eugene Sadler-Smith. 2016. ‘What happens when you
intuit?’: Understanding human resource
practitioners’ subjective experience of intuition through a novel
linguistic method. Human Relations 69:5,
1069-1093. [CrossRef]
3. Mihajla Gavin, Susan McGrath-Champ. 2016. Devolving
authority: the impact of giving public schools
power to hire staff. Asia Pacific Journal of Human Resources .
[CrossRef]

4. Aura Nortomaa. 2015. To Ordain or not to Ordain? A Self-
Determination Theory Perspective on How
Ministerial Candidates and Dioceses Use Psychological
Assessment in Ordination Process. Journal of
Empirical Theology 28:2, 242-262. [CrossRef]
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhm.2016.10.012
http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0018726715602047
http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1744-7941.12110
http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/15709256-12341332
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