Game Theory in Job Interviews and Recency Bias
Preparing for a job interview is a daunting process. Between the preparation you need to do for the hiring manager’s potential questions, getting your resume and other documents together, and managing the stress of it all, adding another factor to this process may seem like yet another source of pressure. However, if given the option to, it may be advantageous to consider how you should approach choosing an interview time.
According to the article from Indeed, “Is It Better To Interview for a Job First or Last?”, candidates who have the last, or one of the last interviews of the hiring window may benefit from recency bias. This form of bias occurs because the last candidates’ interview, responses and skills were the last ones encountered by the hiring manager, meaning that they’re more likely to recall information about this candidate, as opposed to earlier ones. This kind of bias is especially likely if interviews are taking place over a long period of time, and if there are a large number of candidates.
The payoff matrix below shows the effects of recency bias, or lack thereof, on two of the candidates in an interview process. The payoff values on the matrix represent the advantage that each candidate gets from recency bias, over one another, as well as the entire pool of applicants. 0 is a low advantage, 0.5 is a moderate advantage, and 1 is a high advantage. If both candidates have an earlier interview, the hiring manager’s ability to recall information about either of them will not be as strong. If one candidate has a later interview than the other, recalling the later candidate’s information will likely be easier. If both candidates have later interviews, they may not have a drastic edge on one another in terms of timing, but they will both have an advantage over the entire applicant pool.
For both candidates, choosing a later interview is a dominant strategy since an alternate strategy, an earlier interview in this case, would not produce better results in terms of playing to this advantage.
