In addition to any bias that you have, there is a problem of noise. Different hiring officers looking at the same cases do not read the same conclusion. There's a lot of noise in refereing, even in science. People are being hired that shouldn't be hired, and people are being rejected that shouldn't be rejected. So you can have no bias and a lot of noise, or you can have both bias and noise. They're adjective and independent. And thinking that it's either or is is a mistake. It's a very common so if gogle or apple brings you in saysa, what should we do in our hiring process to get rid of our noise?
Imagine that two doctors in the same city give different diagnoses to identical patients. Now imagine that the same doctor making a different decision depending on whether it is morning or afternoon, or Monday rather than Wednesday. This is an example of noise: variability in judgments that should be identical.
Shermer speaks with Nobel Prize winning psychologist and economist Daniel Kahneman about the detrimental effects of noise and what we can do to reduce both noise and bias, and make better decisions in: medicine, law, economic forecasting, forensic science, bail, child protection, strategy, performance reviews, and personnel selection.