Insights
Why Hiring Instincts Waste Human Potential
I used to think I had good instincts about people.
You know the feeling. You sit across from someone and within minutes, you’ve decided. Sharp or not. Leadership material or not. Good fit or not.
I was confident in that radar. I could just tell.
I was spotting familiarity
Then I started paying attention to who I picked. Same schools. Same references. Same way of framing a problem. Same sense of humor.
I wasn’t spotting talent. I was spotting familiarity.
It was pattern-matching
Lauren Rivera spent years embedded in hiring at elite banks, law firms, and consulting firms. She found that interviewers consistently chose candidates who shared their hobbies, backgrounds, and cultural markers — not those with the strongest skills. They called it “fit.” It was pattern-matching.
Wasted human potential in the economy
A University of Catania simulation tracked a thousand careers over forty years and found something even more uncomfortable: the most successful people weren’t the most talented. They were moderately talented and very lucky. We just told ourselves the story backward.
Here’s the reframe I can’t shake: what we call “great instincts about people” might be the single largest source of wasted human potential in the economy. Not because we’re malicious. Because similarity feels like quality — and that feeling is invisible, especially to the person having it.
The institutions that unlock the most potential won’t be the ones with the best talent radar. They’ll be the ones brave enough to ask whether talent radar was ever real.