Magical Mountains, Magical Job Candidates — Do They Really Deserve Our Awe?

How often does a recruiter have a “wow!” epiphany about a job candidate—an inexplicable impression so strong that nothing more than the briefest glimpse of the candidate or his resume, like a glimpse of a soaring mountain peak,  is required to form and justify it?

That’s a “magical mountain moment”—an immediate (positive) impression that is intuitive, intense, in accord with the consensus of others, and not well understood or analyzed by the evaluator.

Magical “Thin Slices”

That effect is very much like what some research suggests does indeed happen in the course of some personnel evaluations. Specifically, a well-known experiment utilizing a video of a university professor giving a lecture and written evaluations of that professor produced a startling result: In their 1993 article, “Half a Minute:Predicting Teacher Evaluations From Thin Slices of. Nonverbal Behavior and Physical Attractiveness”, Harvard researchers Nalini Ambady and Robert Rosenthal reported that evaluations by students unfamiliar with the professor and based only on watching a 6-second “thin slice” video clip of one of his lectures very closely matched end-of-semester professor evaluations and scores submitted by students who actually took the professor’s full-term course.

Even though viewed without audio, the six seconds nonetheless generated evaluations that closely correlated with those of the professor’s full-course students.

Magical Mountain Moments

A “wow!” glimpse and evaluation of jagged karst mountains on China’s Li River is equally instantaneous, intense, unexplained and yet somehow certain and beyond debate (to the extent that it reflects a majority opinion). “Beautiful!”—who is going to argue with that?

But what about recruiters? Do they—or should they—ever respond to a candidate the way most people respond to mountains—intuitively, intensely, indisputably and inexplicably?

If so, are the reasons and psychology the same or similar in both the case of magical mountain and magical job candidate? If they are similar and can be identified, recruiting in the job market may benefit from understanding and skillfully using and trusting such intuitions as tools.

The case for that kind of intuition is strengthened by a comparison of scientists and recruiters. The mountain-moment kind of “shock-and-ahhh!” sudden experience is quite unlike a typical recruiter’s customary, more carefully gleaned, assembled, justified and explained impressions of job candidates.

But just as great scientists often make great discoveries in a flash of intuition, as well as through meticulous collection, analysis and evaluation of data, perhaps recruiters do or should have their “moment with the mountain” too.

For example, it has long been claimed that (but also disputed whether ) the organic chemist August Kekule suddenly “discovered” the benzene ring while dreaming of a snake swallowing its own tail.

What Makes a Mountain or Job Candidate “Magical”?

If so, it may be that gazing at and “vetting” mountains involves instantaneous intuitions of a sort that could or do play a part in recruiting (and science).

Imagine that a mere glimpse of a candidate—comparable to a 6-second video “thin slice” might be all that is necessary to make strong judgments (in both senses of “strong”, i.e., held with strong conviction and in accord with the consensus of others) about that candidate’s suitability, talents, etc.

The attempt to isolate the factors that make the instant, intense, intuitive and inexplicable impressions and evaluation of mountains and professors can be facilitated by comparing them for commonalities. If such factors can be identified, the processes of recruitment vetting can then be examined for signs of the same factors and effects, or reformulated to incorporate them, where possible.

In this analysis, the focus will be the magic of mountains—with the magic of the experimental “thin-slice” video clips to be the focus of Part II.

So, what makes mountains so easy to size up and able to create such strong, yet not so easily articulated impressions? That’s the task requisite to looking for, identifying, explaining, interpreting or creating a “magical mountain” effect in recruiting.

In the case of mountains, the possible factors unconsciously underlying the “wow!” response include

• Scarcity and novelty: Most people don’t see the Himalayas, Alps or Chinese karst mountains every day or even once in their lives, because these mountains are unique and relatively inaccessible to most. Hence, an encounter, especially a first glimpse, will almost certainly be a “wow!” experience.

However, it seems that such novelty can’t (fully) explain or justify a recruiter “magical mountain moment” with a job candidate.  In fact, scarcity or rarity cannot fully explain the magic of mountains either, since lots of things are scarce or rare, but hardly magical, e.g., cases of full-blown Ebola fever or rabies.

Moreover, candidate rarity or scarcity—either in terms of applicant pool size or rare claimed credentials—will not normally override the cautions inherent in the recruiter’s vetting process. Indeed it is the careful vetting process that determines and, above all, confirms that the credentials are in fact rare or otherwise special.

Hence, although scarcity may, if positive or pleasurable, be enough to cause a magical mountain moment of “wow!” on the Li River, in recruiting, the “wow!” impression of scarcity or rarity is a consequence of careful vetting, not a replacementfor it.

• Mystery:The more mysterious anything seems, the likelier it, including mountains and magic tricks, is to elicit a “wow!”.  Lonely Planet travel guides provide some pre-selection and mystery-killing vetting of the kind that recruiters perform, but, unlike recruiters, those who take on “candidate” mountains with no preparation are just as, if not more, likely to be dazzled by them than those who have done their homework and recon.

In particular, the eternal mystery of “what’s on the other side of the mountain” more or less vanishes  upon seeing guidebook photos from the summit before ascending it.

A recruiter who, without such due diligence, recommended the hiring of a “mystery man”—would soon thereafter find his “shock-and-ooooo!” replaced by the “shock-and-ouch!” meted out by a client or supervisor lambasting him for slipshod screening.

The less one knows about a mountain, the more likely many people are to be dazzled by its mystery and to find themselves in accord with the equally magical impressions of most others. However, the opposite is clearly the case in recruiting.

On the other hand, some mysteries are merely annoying; for example, the mountain-sized garbage truck blocking your view of a quaint cobblestone alleyway is unlikely to create an enthralling sense of mystery about the scene. That’s when a mystery becomes an obstacle.

However, when it comes to the magic of mountains, ignorance can be a virtue: knowing the mundane geology of the formation of karst mountains can diminish their magic, the way explaining a card trick does.

In recruiting, however, ignorance is no defense and will trigger more trouble than magic. So, if a recruiter ever experiences a magical candidate moment, it better not be because of any mystery enveloping the candidate like a mountain mist.

What’s more, both mountains and job candidates can become more magical the less mysterious they become. To see this, try to relate the goose bumps a dedicated geologist will feel upon discovering that the mountain range he is surveying was definitely created in the Paleozoic era rather than the later Mesozoic, as previously suspected.

A recruiter may experience comparable goose bumps upon confirming that the candidate he has shortlisted is in fact a former CEO of a Fortune 500 company.  Less mystery, more excitement.

• Humbling:In a very primeval, existential way, mountains humble us—not only by their physical scale (which always impresses size-conscious competitive primates like us), but also for their temporal span, seemingly eternal compared with our puny lifespans measured in decades rather than their eons.

An alpha-(fe)male job candidate can impress and awe us in approximately the same way. However, there is, excuse the pun, a huge difference between being in awe of a mountain and being awed by a candidate: a mountain does not have to follow up with performance to deserve and validate that awe.

Hence, the magical mountain “wow!” moment is self-validating in a way in which the recruiter’s awe is not, even when the candidate is a 6’4” mountain man.

• Perfection: Some, when asked why they are in awe of a mountain, will mention its “perfection”. Apart from specifying or distinguishing precisely what makes one mountain more perfect than another or more perfect than an orange or spoon, there is the fact that perfection alone is unlikely to be enough to warrant awe, since our daily lives are filled with perfect things that almost never inspire awe–especially those that are precision engineered, such as spoons and ball bearings. So, if a magical mountain moment with a candidate is to be explained, interpreted or justified as an analogue of such a moment at the base of a mountain, perfection alone will be insufficient to explain or justify such awe.

• Contrast:Another possible source of magical mountain (and magical candidate) moments is the perception of a striking contrast (e.g., between the mountains and the surrounding terrain and sky, or between the mountains as a relaxing, fun holiday environment and the office as a high-pressure work environment. But a contrast is just that—a distinctive, sharp difference, without necessarily being positive, e.g., the contrast between a slum and one’s own neighborhood or the slum’s surrounding upscale homes.

Hence, for both magical mountains and magical candidates, a sharp contrast is, at most, only a necessary condition of such magic, not a sufficient condition. This means that for both mountain hiker and recruiter alike, the magic is not reducible to mere contrast. There has to be something else or more for the magical moment to occur or to be justified.

• Conformity: It can be argued that the “oooo-and-ah!” of mountain gazing is, in some instances, nothing more than conformity to social, psychological or cultural expectations, including conformity as a rationalization for having come so far and having spent so much time, money and energy just to see rocks and stone—a surprising and puzzling agenda of much global travel, e.g., to see the Pyramid of Cheops, the Rocky Mountains, the Great Wall of China, Stone Henge, Malbork Castle, the Taj Mahal, Mt. Everest, the Washington Monument or the Venus de Milo.

Locals quite accustomed to, if not fed up with mountains, may see them as unremarkable, overrated, annoying or even suffocating obstructions that block their view of the horizon—much as my previous landlords viewed the glorious, robust and huge cherry tree they pared down to a stumpy fragment of its former glory, just because it obstructed their view of the channel, the island on the other side of it, and, ironically, of the trees on that island.

Analogously, it may be that some recruiters will have a magical mountain moment with a candidate just because it is expected of them by others who are gushing over the applicant.

When that happens, that “magical” intuition can’t be trusted.

• Rationalization:Like a tourist who has invested heavily in making the trip to a faraway mountain, a recruiter may find himself or herself heavily invested in a particular candidate, e.g., in terms of invested time, energy and/or emotion. In such a circumstance, neither the tourist nor the recruiter will readily doubt the wisdom of his or her enthusiasm. Instead, what is more likely is that such doubt will meet strenuous internal resistance, in the form of rationalization of the investment and of the impression of the mountain or candidate as magical.

In this scenario, too, that “magical” intuition shouldn’t be trusted.

• A combination of all or most of the above:Suppose a candidate or a mountain meets all of the aforementioned conditions—i.e., represents scarcity, novelty, mystery, humility, contrast, conformity and rationalization. Is any magical mountain moment and impression triggered by this combination not only likely to be irresistible, but also to be trusted?

Again, the answer is “no”. As ingredients of a big mountain experience, these listed factors are unlike the ingredients of a Big Mac, which also fail to delight individually, on their own, e.g., only salt, unseasoned burger, ketchup or bun, but which, together, define the delights of the Big Mac experience.

The reason the magical mountain moment ingredients fail in combination is that not only are they individually insufficient, they are also individually and jointly deficient,unlike the ketchup and salt on your Big Mac, which, although individually insufficient are neither individually nor jointly deficient.

What’s the takeaway here? It’s this: If a job candidate or a mountain seems magical and if that impression is to be trusted or somehow utilized, it’s going to have to be based on something other than the kinds of reasons laid out as explanations or justifications of the magical mountain moment.

As the basis for elevating impressions into peak experiences and as “thin slices” of mountains or candidates that nonetheless are supposed to warrant a magical mountain moment, the factors identified and discussed above, e.g., scarcity, humility and contrast, simply don’t cut it as good reasons to trust the “magical” intuition.

Or they just cut it too thin.

Image by Michael Moffa