Come on, feel the noise
Nate Silver’s best-selling Signal and the noise book is standard reading for anyone trying to predict future outcomes. Hiring decisions fall squarely within this bracket.
However, reading Silver too closely or literally can be dangerous. “The signal is the truth. The noise is what distracts us from the truth.”
Well yes, and no. This assumes that your model – mental or otherwise – is perfect. And as the statistician George Box so beautifully reminds us, “All models are wrong, but some models are useful.”
For those willing to put the extra effort to understand why, how and where our hiring models are wrong, there lies a huge opportunity. Just as with advertising, there is value in the wastage.
In marketing terms, there is always room for profitable lead-based surprises to be found in the noise.
In talent terms, we could think of these deficiencies in job-market models as overlooking the ‘dark horses’, or hidden gems.
So as with so many things in life, when the signals fail you have to go looking in the noise.
James Whiteman is co-chairperson of the social mobility workstream at Diversity Project
