How Unfamiliarity Bias Affects Who Gets Promoted
Have you ever been passed over for an internal promotion, only to have your company opt for an external candidate with less relevant experience?
Unfortunately, this happens all the time.
This week alone, three of my friends said they’ve either personally faced this situation or seen a spouse go through it.
Why does this happen?
What causes companies to opt for external candidates so often instead of choosing the known quantity: an internal candidate who has proven himself or herself already and knows the company inside and out?
In other words, why do companies spurn the bird in the hand to reach for the bird in the bush?
Unfamiliarity Bias
I have a working theory. Let’s call it “unfamiliarity bias” — the tendency to overvalue the capability of an unknown hire compared to an internal candidate.
We overvalue the resume skills we see on paper for external applicants while undervaluing the tangible skills we’ve witnessed from internal applicants.
We fall prey to this unfamiliarity bias for three reasons:
- We’ve seen the weaknesses of internal candidates. After working with someone for even a few months, you get the chance to see their personal downsides. These memories fog our opinions of employees.
- We’ve only seen the internal candidate utilize a narrow band of their skills and strengths. Why? Because we’ve hired them to do a specific job, and they’re doing that job. For instance, we’ve hired a customer service rep to provide excellent customer service — not to lead a team of employees. If they apply for a management position, we’ll think about how we haven’t seen them demonstrate the skills required in this new role (because they have another full-time job).
- We see the external candidate’s highlight reel. All we know about external candidates is what they present to us in their resume, interview, and references. We’re shown a carefully curated image of that person — similar to the curated lives we see on our friends’ social media accounts. Effectively, we’re comparing an external candidate’s highlight reel to each internal candidate’s regular life: the good, the bad, and the ugly.
Let’s unpack what unfamiliarity bias looks like with two stories I’ve witnessed. (Note: I’ve changed the names of the people below.)
Story #1: Kelly
Kelly is an ambitious graphic designer. After three years with her company, she was ready for a new challenge, so she talked to the company executives about her desire to promote. They told Kelly she’d get promoted soon and there were “lots of opportunities” at the firm.
A couple of months later, huzzah! A management position opened up. As fate would have it, the position was for the lead of her same team, so her experience lined up perfectly. However, the company didn’t even post the position internally. They decided to fill the role with an outside hire — someone with less experience who continues to struggle in the role.
Kelly is now wondering whether she’ll need to move on to another company in order to progress in her career.
Story #2: Mark
Mark is a customer service representative with seven years of prior management experience. He heard about an opening at his company for a Team Lead role for another service-related department. Several managers told Mark he was a strong candidate for the role, especially based upon his prior management experience.
He applied for the position but was passed over for the role because he “hadn’t demonstrated leadership” in his current role. He didn’t “rise to the occasion” when the existing Team Lead was out of the office and always seemed busy with his own workload.
The company didn’t receive any strong external candidates for the position, so they decided to leave the role unfilled until they received a good external candidate. In other words, the unfamiliarity bias is sometimes so strong that a capable internal candidate can occasionally be passed over for a promotion for an unknown, future candidate, similar to how NBA teams occasionally trade known stars for unknown future draft picks.
How Can We Overcome Unfamiliarity Bias?
Biases are harmful because they unconsciously sway our behavior.
When a new role opens up, hiring managers and executives truly want to find the best person for the job, and a lot hinges on them making the correct choice (e.g. productivity, employee satisfaction, client satisfaction, company profitability). No one is trying to be malicious when choosing who to promote. Nonetheless, our brains trick us in surprising ways.
This is not to say that promotions should always go to internal applicants. Far from it! That would also be a mistake. External hires bring fresh perspectives, new connections outside the firm, and diverse experience that expands the company’s talent pool.
The key is to avoid unconscious bias in order to make the right decision for what is right for the company.
What Hiring Managers Can Do to Avoid Unfamiliarity Bias
- Acknowledge unfamiliarity bias. Just like most human biases, the first step to overcoming this bias is awareness: we need to realize that we fall prey to it.
- Pry to hear the weaknesses of external candidates. Once we recognize that we’re comparing an external candidate’s highlight reel to an internal candidate’s actual life, we can realize that we need to do everything possible to explore the potential weaknesses of external candidates. Ask tough questions in interviews. Ask the candidate’s references about times when the candidate made an incorrect decision. Refuse to hire anyone without knowing their downside. Everyone has one; we just need to find it and ensure it’s a downside we can accept. If we don’t learn the person’s weaknesses before hiring them, we’ll definitely learn them once they’re on the job, and that’s a much worse time to discover a weakness.
- Recognize that internal candidates have been paid to do a fundamentally different job than this new role. I’m a huge believer in the idea that leadership is not tied to a role or title. You can (and should) lead from anywhere in an organization. However, it’s unfair for us to expect an individual contributor to spend the same amount of time leading, mentoring, and influencing the team that an existing manager can spend doing those same things. We’re paying the employee to perform a distinctly different job, and we cannot expect them to accomplish that job in addition to another job.
- Appoint an internal advocate. If you want to become known as an organization where employees can grow in their careers, give internal hires a leg up in the promotion process. Appoint an advocate who can remind the hiring group of the internal candidate’s strengths and successes. If no one on the hiring team is excited to advocate for the internal candidate, then maybe that candidate is not the right fit after all.
- Determine whether an outside perspective or inside knowledge is more important for the position. If the role requires fresh insight that you don’t think can be found within the firm, it may be best to bring in an outside hire. They may be able to generate new ideas for your company based upon their prior work experience. On the flipside, if the role requires extensive internal knowledge about how teams and systems work together, you may prefer an internal candidate who doesn’t need to be re-educated. Determine what you’re looking for in the role, then use that information to decide whether an internal or external hire is best.
What Applicants Can Do to Overcome Unfamiliarity Bias
- Remind the team of your strengths. If you’re the one applying for a promotion, make the choice easier for the decision-makers by compiling a list of recent accomplishments. Remind them what you’ve done.
- Provide a copy of your resume. The hiring team likely hasn’t seen your resume since you were originally hired at the firm, and they may have forgotten about your past experience. Don’t let them forget about the job knowledge you acquired before joining the company.
- Find an internal advocate. Talk to others in the company who have seen what you can do. Ask them to advocate for you for the promotion. Seek their advice on how to put your best foot forward with the hiring team.
No one wants to be passed over for a promotion, but it happens every day. Oftentimes, promotions are given to others for good reasons. Unfamiliarity bias is not one of those reasons.
Use the tips above to avoid falling prey to this faulty human bias.
*Thanks to Thaddeus Bradley and Jonathan Fulcher for their contributions to this concept.
