Learning what mental traps people can fall for can be important for the hiring process. Familiarize yourself with these. That way, you will be able to recognize construction candidates who know how to look past them. Construction recruiters can also help with this, as they can know how to tell whether candidates would fall for these mental traps.
Construction Recruiters Look Out for Emotional Reasoning
Yes, emotions play a role in many important decisions. However, construction pros should avoid emotional reasoning. This is the fallacy of accidentally making your emotions as important as facts.
One good example of this in construction comes from a situation where your previous material supplier is no longer adequate. If project manager uses their emotions, they may be hesitant to switch to another supplier. This could be true even if you are overpaying for lumber and other supplies or experiencing severe shipping delays. Their hesitancy may come from the feeling that they would betray their old supplier. By contrast, a successful construction pro would look at the numbers and pros and cons of changing suppliers and go ahead with the change.
Instead of emotional reasoning, you want employees who use logical reasoning. Construction recruiters can work to avoid this type of mental trap in candidates by asking questions about important decisions. For example, they can ask about a time the candidate had to make a tough decision and how they came to it.
Blaming Should Be Avoided
Blaming is another mental trap construction pros should not fall for. For example, if a project becomes delayed, the construction supervisor may blame workers slacking, delays in shipments, and poor weather, without placing any blame on themselves. While these may all be valid reasons, this is still falling for the mental trap.
A construction supervisor who doesn’t fall for it would accept their portion of the blame and be honest about the various contributing factors. They would then take the time to figure out how they can prevent a future issue.
Construction recruiters can get a feel for this mental trap by asking about past challenges or failures. Asking about hypothetical situations is helpful, but it is even better to learn about past experiences, as this shows what will really happen.
Personalization Is Also a Concern
In some ways, personalization is the opposite of blaming. With blaming, you find someone or something else to blame for the issues, but with personalization, you take all of the blame. This is done without any logical reason. It can also mean taking everything personally.
In the same example of a delayed project, an example of personalization would be a construction supervisor only blaming themselves, even if other factors are at play. For example, they discount the impact of shipping delays or poor weather on their project.
Conclusion
Your ideal construction candidate will use logical reasoning for decisions instead of emotional reasoning. They will also use logic for other decisions, such as determining blame. This means they will accept only the appropriate amount of blaming themselves, no more and no less.
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