Detachment Bias

Greg Wyatt • January 30, 2023

I don’t have a PhD in Recruitment Psychology.


Nor am I a Stoic.


Although I have grown up sharing many traits with Stoicism, which led to me reading about this millennia-old philosophy to understand myself better.


I recommend researching Stoicism for many situations, not least of which is a difficult job search.

“Focus on the process, which is in your control. Detach yourself from the outcome, which is not,” is one piece of advice I give to job seekers.


It’s a quality which helps with expectation management and resilience, given every ‘no’ or ‘lack of answer’ is less disappointing.


It’s a funny thing too, detachment - it’s a quality that pulls others forward in the right context.


Have you ever noticed that Salespeople who aren’t desperate for a sale are often more likely to win your purchase, especially if they focus on the process of giving you what you need?


Especially for commodity goods sold by multiple sellers, where you can choose from many - which salespeople do you trust more to buy from? Not that this is a candidate analogy… hopefully.


I’m sure they do care, it’s just that they aren’t hung up on your decision.


And while detachment is an excellent quality for a candidate, it’s something you should be conscious of as an interviewer.


Does learning being detached from outcome make them better candidates, or just better interviewees?


Well-delivered answers in an interview don’t guarantee a good hire, nor does confidence or the desire to want something you can’t have.


Indeed the people I’ve supported in their job search with this advice were excellent candidates to start with and just needed help with their interviewee skills (most have interviewed well enough as an employer).


Back in 2012, I managed a volume recruitment programme for a tech manufacturer, in the East of England. We took a multichannel approach to fill vacancies, including the effective use of referrals.


One such hire was a CNC machinist, let’s call him Kevin.


The hiring manager knew Kevin from his previous job – he was highly skilled, in a skill-short vacancy, and would fit in well with the team. And he really wanted to join the new business too!


Yet, he interviewed badly, a bundle of nerves who was unable to show his skills in his words.


The hiring manager said to me, “we can’t hire him off that interview”.


I asked him if the interview was representative of what he was like to work with, and the answer was no.


Quite the quandary, so the hiring manager took Kevin out for a beer and they had an informal chat, leading to his appointment.

Kevin was there for six years.


This leads to the question – can it be that bad interviews hide good candidates?


It’s certainly the case that, in general, people who don’t need a job interview better than people who do.


Think about any time you’ve been out of work, and how your confidence levels were reflected by your situation, as well as your requirements in an interview process.


Speak to anyone that has consistently recruited for senior appointments, and we will tell you the odds lie heavily in favour of those who are already employed.


It’s one reason why headhunting has a perception of finding better candidates than other approaches.


Typically, we approach people who are happily employed, and sceptical that a move will improve their lot – their detachment engenders confidence and enables them to challenge the new employer to gain objective insight on whether it’s the right move.


Logically and realistically though, a person’s situation isn’t tethered to their capability.


Going in with the attitude that ‘no’ is an acceptable outcome, and that the interview is there to confirm whether that candidate should be interested, leads to a more attractive performance.


While there’s commonly an element in an active job search of being willing to compromise to gain good employment.


Over time, if you interview regularly, it’s easy to build up a stereotype of who is likely to interview well and who isn’t, and to use previous experiences as a predictor of future success.


Of course, this links back to the advice I give jobseekers, to interview from a detached position, because I know how it is often perceived by employers.


Yet the opposite holds true too – detachment isn’t evidence of quality, it’s evidence of process.


The perception that someone is a worse candidate because of a weak interview is understandable yet can be false if you consider the ‘why’ of their interview.


Hard to unpick given all you have to go off is their interview performance.


But what you can do is check for detachment bias.


Does your experience of previous interviews create an assumption that a detachment from outcome means a better candidate?


Or does the fact someone is having a challenging time in a difficult job search, with impacted confidence levels, and a need for employment – does this influence their interview performance negatively?


All you need do is give people a chance and make their interview process more accepting and accessible - which any interviewee will benefit from.


If you’d been struggling to recruit, you may find excellent candidates were already in an unexpected place: right under your nose.


Actually, for me that’s a key point of identifying any bias in recruitment – to strip out assumption and prejudice, allow full access to candidates, and assess on capability and contribution.


It’s the commercial benefit of doing the right thing.


p.s. While you are here, if you like the idea of improving how you recruit, lack capacity or need better candidates, and are curious how I can help, these are my services:

- commercial, operational and technical leadership recruitment (available for no more than two vacancies)

- manage part or all of your recruitment on an individually designed basis for one client

- recruitment coaching and mentoring (one place available at £200/hr + VAT)

- recruitment strategy setting

- outplacement support

Just hit email greg.wyatt@bwrecruitment.co.uk to check if my approach is right for you.

Why five? Innovation from Iteration, pt 1

By Greg Wyatt • February 26, 2026
So here were are, the start of a new series. This series may be around 10 editions, looking at the things other industries do that we can implement into recruitment. These were written 3 years ago, right at the start of the AI zazzle, and in some ways have dated quite a bit. In others, the way in which they haven't dated at all, because the principles of how we live our business lives can be universal. So, I'm not sure yet, how much editing I'll do, whether there will be any inclusions, or whether I'll leave articles intact, as a moment in time. I've learnt all of these notions from candidates and clients, as I came to understand the function of their vacancies. Hearing about the daily practice from people doing jobs, I couldn't help but notice the same relevance in recruitment. So while these articles are hardly comprehensive, perhaps they'll make you look at your candidates differently, in what we can learn from them, and how that might improve our recruitment. Why five? December 2022 Ask anyone involved in active recruitment what their key problems are, and they’ll likely talk about skills shortages and candidate behaviour. On the face of it, problems which are out of our control, worthy of complaint with little opportunity to find improvement. But what if these were issues that weren’t entirely out of our control? What if we could apply a replicable process to understand what’s really going on, and how we can make a difference? Fortunately, we needn’t invent the wheel, as other industries have already done this for us. One such is 5Y, or Five Whys, a problem-solving technique that was developed by Toyota in the 1930s. It's part of the Toyota Management System that has inspired much of my work. Five is the general number of “Why?”s needed to get to the root of a problem. Often you can get to the heart of the issue sooner, sometimes later. Often there are multiple root causes. More than just solving problems, it’s about establishing practical countermeasures to prevent these problems from coming up in future. 5Y is an example of Toyota’s philosophy of “go and see”: working on the shop floor to find out how things work in practice to find ways for iterative improvement. This isn’t a theoretical idea to try out on a whim – it’s based on grounded reality and almost always works. There are two costs – time and accountability. Here’s a practical example, then a recruitment one. (Names have been removed to protect my identity) Problem 1 : The children were late for school. Why? Traffic held us up. Why? We left the house late. Why? The children weren’t ready on time. Why? Their school uniforms weren’t prepared. Why? We hadn’t set them out the night before. Here the countermeasure is to get everything ready the night before, rather than blame traffic for being late. Perhaps we might have gotten to school on time without heavy traffic, but that is an element out of our control. Of course, here there is another root cause – very naughty children – but better to focus on the simple changes. And sometimes traffic is the root cause after all, once you’ve ruled out other elements in your control. (2026 note: my eldest now often drives my youngest to school. A time laden solution I hadn't considered three years ago. Now I don't care if they're late 😆) Problem 2: Candidates keep ghosting us. Why? They weren’t committed to responding. Why? They didn’t accept my requirement for a response. Why? They saw no value in my requirement. Why? I didn’t create an environment where this requirement has value ( root cause 1 ). Or because they are very naughty candidates, with a bad attitude. Why have we allowed someone with a bad attitude in our recruitment process? Because we didn’t prequalify them well enough ( root cause 2 ) The first root cause is something we can work on by giving candidates what they need, building trust, and working to mutual obligations. There are many ways to do this – I’ve already talked about examples in previous newsletters. It comes down to good candidate experience and reciprocity. The second root cause requires us to work harder at understanding candidate needs, aspirations, behaviours and attitudes at the outset of a recruitment process. There’s a reason for their behaviour. We can be accountable for finding it. That’s no mean skill to develop, yet an essential one for anyone whose core responsibility is recruitment. And it’s hard to do in a transactional volume process, so the question then becomes, does your process help more than it hinders? You can apply 5Y to any issue you come across, as long as you are prepared to be accountable. At worst you may find that the things that were out of your control are at fault. In this case, you are at least armed with good information to report to your stakeholders, by ruling out other possibilities. What’s the point of doing all this? For me it’s continually improving how I recruit, with the consequence, in the example above, that I am rarely ghosted at all. And you can 5Y any issue you come across. Are poor agency CV submissions their fault, or in part down to your briefing and process? Are skills genuinely scarce, or is your requirement unrealistic? Is it true that your agency hasn’t listened to you, or do you engage the right partners in the right way? 5Y has the answers. Regards, Greg

Map the Market. Jobseeker Basics XVIII

By Greg Wyatt • February 23, 2026
What follows is Chapter 21 in A Career Breakdown Kit (2026) . It's a good example of how a job search is an inverted recruitment exercise, but also how the same principles from recruitment can be applied in a job search. Market mapping is one of the first steps of a search process in what is often called headhunting. Here though, instead of an exercise that helps find a person for a job, you help find a job for you. This can be in one chunk, at the outset, and iteratively, as you learn more information. It's a great example of how LinkedIn can be used as a data repository, given the vast majority of professionals are present here. And if they are present here, the insight that is their careers is too, allowing you to identify potential viable employers, who works there, and therefore where else they may have worked, with further potential hiring managers. The snake that eats its own tail. Try doing the iterative work above, every time you come across someone new, whether in an application or in networking . You can use this to build out your network, identify companies to contact proactively. Simon Ward and I will talk more on this in our LinkedIn Live on Tuesday February 24th at 1pm GMT. You can join us, and view the full recording afterwards, here: Is The Nature Of Networking Changing for Job Hunters? If you happen to read this as a hiring authority, market mapping is one of the invisible processes in a structured search. It can often take me 80 to 100 hours to fully map a role for potential viable candidates, given I try to find non-traditional candidates as well as those that are easier to find through sourcing. 21 - Map the market Market mapping is a common activity in executive search. Why wouldn’t you adopt the same approach in your inverse of a recruitment exercise? The idea is to fully understand your market, so that you are better able to navigate it. This is a summary chapter because market mapping is both a strategic and a tactical exercise. I’ll cover some of the How of mapping in Part Three. There are three ways in which to map the market. The vacancies you are qualified for This is about determining which vacancies you should focus your attention on. In which domains does your capability directly apply? This could be context related, if your expertise is in start-ups, growth, downsizing or other contexts. It could be industry related - your process manufacturing expertise might directly apply in food, plastics or pharmaceuticals. It could be job related, with the right applicable skills. Establish where there is a market for you, and if what you offer is needed by that market. Advice on the transferable skills trap (p55) and whether you are qualified (p178) to apply will help. The geography of your job search Where are all the employers and vacancies that you can sustainably commute to? A geographical map can help you target opportunities by region. What resources are available to help you with this map? Searching online for local business parks, even driving around them, can give a list of viable companies to contact. Directories and membership hubs. Local newspapers, social media stories. If you see a company you like the look of, say from an advert, search on their local post code. Who else might be there? The chapter on doorknocking (p241) has more ideas. The people of your network Every time you come across someone you might build a relationship with, connect with them on LinkedIn. Then check out their career history. Who else have they worked with? Where else have they worked? This works for peers, hiring managers, and recruiters - a headhunter in one company may well have worked in a similar domain in a previous one. Is there anyone at these previous companies you should introduce yourself to? What about their listed vacancies? Building out a map of relevant recruiters to develop relationships with (if they answer the phone) can lead to vacancies. Treat it as an iterative exercise. Check out the chapter on networking (p236). This map isn’t just about potential opportunity. It’s also about information that might be helpful now and in future. This might be for job leads. It might be industry insight you can share through content. It may even be topics for conversation in interviews or with peers. Make sure you track it in the right way, whether through Notion, Excel or other resources you have available. With any information, check it is accurate, then prune appropriately. Prioritise on degrees of separation (closest first) and context fit (where what you need is most closely aligned with what you offer).