--By Rachel Emma Silverman

 

The back-and-forth of job interviews often feels like dating. ‘Will they like me?’ candidates wonder. ‘Will they stick around?’ companies ask.

 

Turns out, hiring managers at elite professional firms really do tend to evaluate candidates as if they were potential romantic partners or new friends, according to recent research by Kellogg management professor Lauren Rivera.

 

The Kellogg study found that employers tend to evaluate candidates on whether they’d be likely to hang out with them, rather than strictly focusing on a person’s qualifications for the job.

 

Even dating site eHarmony is getting into the recruiting game.  The company is developing a recruiting site to more effectively match companies to candidates, says Grant Langston, vice president of customer experience.

 

“Where do people not experience a lot of compatibility?” says Mr. Langston. “One of the first things we came up with was jobs we are currently trying to isolate what are the things that make an employee a good fit.” The product, which is in the early stages, may come out next year.

 

According to the Kellogg research, professionals involved in hiring placed more emphasis on how comfortable or excited they were about candidates than on applicants’ cognitive or technical skills.

 

That doesn’t mean employers hire unqualified workers, Rivera says. But, she adds, her findings show that “employers hire in a manner more closely resembling the choice of friends or romantic partners” than what we might expect. Hiring managers pay especially close attention to criteria such as similar education level and schools attended, shared leisure pursuits and a mutual “spark,”— factors similar to those people use when choosing a friend or mate.

 

In her study, comprised of 120 interviews with hiring professionals at elite U.S. investment banks, law firms and consulting firms, more than half of the hiring professionals ranked “cultural fit”—similarity of background, interests and self-presentation—as the most important factor in an interview.

 

The danger, of course, is that workers from cultural backgrounds that don’t match their evaluators’ backgrounds may be at a disadvantage when they’re up for a job. Especially when it comes to elite jobs, people who come from lower socioeconomic backgrounds might not get the same consideration a well-off candidate would, Rivera says. (The Wall Street Journal)