Hiring someone is one of those decisions that can seem fairly straightforward until you actually have to make it. You have a position to fill, a set of responsibilities that need to be handled and several candidates who appear qualified on paper. You interview them, assess their experience and try to determine who would be the best addition to your team. And somewhere during that process, you may meet someone you immediately get along with. They understand your questions, agree with your opinions and approach problems in a way that feels remarkably familiar.

That sense of familiarity can be very reassuring, particularly when you’re hiring someone who will work closely with you. You can imagine conversations being easy, decisions happening quickly and the person fitting into your team’s existing way of doing things. They may even remind you of yourself at an earlier point in your career, which makes it easier to believe that they’ll succeed in the role.

The difficulty is that we sometimes mistake familiarity for competence. A candidate who thinks like us can feel more capable because their reasoning makes sense to us immediately. Someone with a different approach may require more questions, additional explanations and a little more effort to understand. If we’re not careful, the first candidate can end up receiving a better evaluation even when the second person might bring capabilities that the team needs more.

This becomes particularly important when managers repeatedly hire people who resemble themselves. Over time, teams can develop very similar ways of approaching problems, evaluating risks and making decisions. That may make everyday collaboration comfortable, but it can also limit the range of perspectives available when the organisation encounters something unfamiliar.

For leaders, the challenge is learning to recognise the difference between someone who will work well with the team and someone who simply feels comfortable to work with. Those aren’t always the same person, and the distinction can have a considerable impact on how organisations grow.

Why We Naturally Prefer People Who Are Similar to Us

Most people find it easier to communicate with someone who shares their interests, experiences or way of thinking. Conversations require less explanation because both people already have a similar understanding of the subject. Agreement comes more naturally, and the interaction often feels positive.

This preference is sometimes described in organisational research as the similar-to-me effect. It can influence hiring when interviewers respond more favourably to candidates who resemble them in ways that may have little connection with the requirements of the job.

There’s research showing that this can happen even in formal selection processes.

In a study published in the Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization in 2012, researchers Manuel Bagues and Maria J. Perez-Villadoniga examined recruitment decisions in the Spanish judiciary. Their paper, Do Recruiters Prefer Applicants With Similar Skills? Evidence From a Randomized Natural Experiment, analysed examinations conducted between 2003 and 2007, where applicants were randomly assigned to evaluation committees.

The researchers found that candidates who performed particularly well in the areas where their evaluators had stronger expertise were more likely to be selected. The study described a measurable similarity effect in the hiring process, even though the underlying evaluation involved formal examinations.

This is interesting because the similarity wasn’t necessarily about personality or whether the candidates and interviewers enjoyed speaking to each other. It concerned the relative importance evaluators appeared to place on different skills, depending on their own strengths.

The practical implication is worth considering. A manager who built their career through analytical problem-solving may place greater importance on analytical skills, while someone whose success came from relationship management may be more impressed by candidates with strong interpersonal abilities. Neither skill is inherently better, and both may be useful. The problem begins when the manager’s personal strengths become the unofficial standard against which every candidate is evaluated.

The Difference Between Being Qualified and Feeling Familiar

Imagine a marketing manager interviewing two candidates for a senior role.

The first candidate has worked in similar organisations, uses familiar marketing frameworks and explains their decisions in ways the manager immediately understands. They have comparable professional experiences and seem likely to adapt quickly to the team’s existing processes.

The second candidate has worked in a different industry and approaches marketing problems from another perspective. They ask questions the manager hadn’t considered, challenge some assumptions about the customer and describe methods the organisation hasn’t tried before.

Both candidates may be capable of doing the job, but the first interview could feel considerably more comfortable.

This is where managers need to examine their own reactions. Feeling comfortable with a candidate is useful information about the interaction, but it doesn’t automatically indicate how well the person will perform. Similarly, a candidate who asks difficult questions or challenges an assumption may be demonstrating precisely the kind of independent thinking the role requires.

Research into hiring decisions has repeatedly raised concerns about relying too heavily on subjective impressions. A 2014 article in Harvard Business Review, titled In Hiring, Algorithms Beat Instinct, discusses evidence that combining candidate information through consistent statistical methods can improve hiring predictions compared with relying entirely on human judgment.

That doesn’t mean managers should hand hiring decisions to automated systems. It does suggest that instinct needs to be supported by a clear understanding of the role and a consistent method of evaluating candidates.

A useful starting point is asking what the position actually requires. If the team needs someone who can independently identify new growth opportunities, a candidate’s willingness to question existing strategies may be valuable. If the role requires careful execution of established processes, the assessment should examine whether the person can follow those processes effectively.

In either case, the manager’s personal preference for a particular personality or working style should receive less weight than evidence of the candidate’s ability to perform the job.

When Every Team Member Approaches Problems the Same Way

A team of people with similar experiences can become very efficient at solving familiar problems. They may share an understanding of the industry, use the same terminology and agree on the methods that have worked previously. As long as the organisation continues encountering similar challenges, this can be an advantage.

The difficulty appears when circumstances change.

Imagine a consumer business that has grown successfully through traditional retail. Its leadership team has decades of experience in distribution, retailer relationships and offline sales. Those capabilities are valuable, and the business may have built its success around them. But when the company begins expanding through digital channels, its existing leaders may evaluate the opportunity primarily through assumptions developed in physical retail.

Someone with experience in digital commerce might challenge those assumptions. They may think differently about customer acquisition, online pricing or the relationship between advertising and conversion. Their recommendations could initially appear unfamiliar or even uncomfortable to the existing team, particularly if they contradict methods that have worked for years.

This is one reason different functional backgrounds can be useful in organisations. People with varied experiences may notice different aspects of the same problem.

A study published in Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes in 2014 examined this relationship. In Information Elaboration and Team Performance: Examining the Psychological Origins and Environmental Contingencies, researchers studied 68 functionally diverse, four-person teams completing a strategic decision-making task.

The research found that exchanging and examining different information helped team performance under turbulent conditions, although the same benefit was not observed in the stable conditions studied.

That distinction matters. Having different perspectives available can be particularly useful when the business environment is changing, but the team also needs the ability to examine those perspectives properly.

Hiring people with different expertise gives an organisation access to additional knowledge. The benefit depends on whether that knowledge is actually discussed and used.

Diversity of Thought Needs to Be More Than a Hiring Phrase

Businesses frequently say that they want people who think differently. The phrase appears in recruitment advertisements, leadership presentations and company culture documents, but it can mean very little unless the organisation is prepared to make room for those differences.

For example, a company may hire someone specifically because they have experience in a new market. Yet once the person joins, every recommendation is evaluated against the organisation’s established way of operating. When they suggest an unfamiliar approach, they are told that the company has always done things differently.

After a few unsuccessful attempts, the employee may stop proposing alternatives and begin following the same methods as everyone else.

The organisation has recruited a different perspective without creating an environment in which that perspective can influence decisions.

This is why managers need to think about what happens after hiring. Different experiences and working styles can be useful, but they also create the possibility of disagreement. People may have different opinions about which risks are acceptable, how quickly decisions should be made or what deserves priority.

A 2021 meta-analysis published in the Journal of Management Studies examined 94 research papers covering 24,425 teams. The study, The Relationship Between Team Deep-Level Diversity and Team Performance, found that differences in personality, values and culture were associated with more team conflict and less positive team processes on average.

That is an important qualification to the idea that every difference automatically improves performance. More varied perspectives can introduce additional information, but they can also make collaboration harder if people struggle to communicate or understand one another.

The manager’s responsibility is to develop a team that can work productively with those differences. Employees need clear expectations, a shared understanding of the team’s objectives and a way to resolve disagreements without turning them into personal conflicts.

Culture Fit Can Become an Excuse for Hiring Similar People

Culture fit is probably one of the most common reasons hiring managers give when explaining why a candidate was or wasn’t selected.

Sometimes the concern is legitimate. A candidate who behaves disrespectfully, refuses accountability or has difficulty collaborating may create problems in a team, regardless of their technical abilities.

However, culture fit can also become a vague explanation for personal preference.

A manager might say that a candidate wouldn’t fit into the team because they seem too quiet, too direct or simply different from the existing employees. Without clear criteria, these judgments can reflect the personalities that the manager is accustomed to working with rather than behaviours that are essential to the job.

In a 2019 Harvard Business Review article, Hiring for Culture Fit Doesn’t Have to Undermine Diversity, Joeri Hofmans and Timothy A. Judge examined the confusion surrounding cultural fit. Their discussion emphasises the importance of defining what fit actually means rather than relying on general impressions of similarity.

This provides a useful distinction for businesses.

A company can expect employees to demonstrate honesty, treat colleagues respectfully and take responsibility for their work. Those expectations describe how people should behave within the organisation. They don’t require everybody to have the same personality, communicate in the same way or approach problems from an identical perspective.

A quieter employee may be just as collaborative as an outspoken one. Someone who disagrees with a manager may still be deeply committed to the company’s objectives. A person with experience in a very different industry may take longer to understand certain internal processes but eventually contribute ideas that the existing team would never have considered.

When evaluating cultural fit, businesses should therefore identify the behaviours that genuinely matter to the organisation and assess candidates against those expectations.

The Financial Case for Different Leadership Perspectives

There is also a broader body of research examining the relationship between diversity within leadership teams and business performance.

One frequently cited study is McKinsey’s December 2023 report, Diversity Matters Even More: The Case for Holistic Impact.

The research found that companies in the highest quartile for gender diversity on executive teams had a 39% greater likelihood of financial outperformance compared with companies in the lowest quartile. The study found a similar 39% difference in the likelihood of outperformance when comparing companies in the highest and lowest quartiles for ethnic diversity in executive leadership.

These findings are interesting, but they need to be interpreted carefully. They describe correlations across companies, and the research does not establish that diversity alone caused those organisations to perform better. It also examines demographic diversity, which is related to but distinct from differences in professional experience or thinking styles.

Nevertheless, the research adds to a wider discussion about whether leadership teams benefit from drawing on a broader range of experiences.

A company whose decision-makers have similar educational backgrounds, career paths and professional networks may be more likely to encounter familiar ideas repeatedly. A leadership team with varied industry experience and different functional expertise may have access to a wider range of information when evaluating important decisions.

The business benefit comes from how that information is used. Different viewpoints can help leaders identify risks, question assumptions and recognise opportunities that may have been overlooked.

The objective should be to build leadership teams capable of making well-informed decisions, rather than assuming that similarity is necessary for effective collaboration.

Hiring Managers Should Look for Missing Capabilities

One practical way to improve hiring is to begin by examining what the existing team lacks.

Managers often write job descriptions based on the responsibilities previously handled by the person who occupied the position. If a successful employee leaves, the natural response is to search for someone with a similar background who can perform the same tasks.

That approach can make sense when the responsibilities remain unchanged. But it is also an opportunity to reconsider what the team needs.

Imagine a marketing team with strong creative capabilities but limited experience in analysing campaign performance. If the manager hires another creative professional because they naturally connect with people from that background, the team may become stronger in an area where it is already capable while continuing to struggle with measurement.

A candidate with strong analytical skills might be less familiar with the team’s creative processes, but they could contribute something more valuable to its overall effectiveness.

The same principle applies to management teams.

A company with excellent technical expertise may need someone who understands customers and commercial strategy. A team that excels at developing ambitious plans may benefit from someone who is particularly good at implementation.

Hiring decisions become more useful when managers evaluate how a candidate’s capabilities complement the team rather than focusing only on how closely the person resembles its existing members.

This also means that the strongest individual candidate on paper may not always be the person who addresses the team’s most important requirements.

The decision depends on what the organisation is trying to accomplish and which capabilities are already available.

Structured Interviews Can Reduce Personal Bias

Recognising personal bias is useful, but awareness alone doesn’t guarantee that hiring decisions will become more objective.

Managers need a selection process that allows candidates to be evaluated against consistent criteria.

One of the most practical approaches is the structured interview.

The UK’s Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, or CIPD, published an updated guide to employee selection methods in September 2026. The guidance recommends preparing job-related interview questions in advance, asking candidates the same questions in the same order and scoring responses against predetermined criteria.

This approach reduces some of the opportunities for personal impressions to influence the outcome. It also makes it easier to compare candidates because they have been assessed using the same expectations.

For example, if a company is hiring a marketing manager, the interview could include a scenario involving an underperforming campaign. Candidates could be asked how they would investigate the problem, what information they would request and how they would decide whether to change the strategy.

The evaluation criteria should be established before the interviews begin. A strong response might demonstrate an understanding of campaign objectives and the ability to identify relevant performance data. Another important consideration could be whether the candidate can distinguish between a problem with the advertising and a problem with the product or customer experience.

The interviewer can then evaluate how effectively each person handles the scenario rather than how familiar their answer sounds.

The CIPD also recommends using interview panels and having assessors record their evaluations independently before discussing candidates as a group.

Independent assessment can be useful because one confident interviewer might otherwise influence how everyone else interprets a candidate’s performance.

Of course, structured interviews do not eliminate every form of bias. The questions themselves can reflect the assumptions of the people who designed them, and evaluators still need to exercise judgment. But a consistent process creates a clearer basis for making decisions.

Work Samples Can Tell You More Than a Comfortable Conversation

Another useful way to evaluate candidates is to observe how they approach work that resembles the responsibilities of the position.

An interview can reveal how someone communicates and explains their experience, but candidates vary in how comfortable they are with interviews. Some people are extremely articulate when discussing their abilities, while others are better at demonstrating those abilities through actual work.

A carefully designed work-sample assessment can help address this difference.

For example, a candidate applying for a content marketing role could be asked to review an existing article and explain how they would improve it. Someone interviewing for an operations position might be given a realistic process problem and asked to identify the likely causes.

The purpose is to understand how the candidate thinks through a task relevant to the job.

The assessment should be proportionate to the role and respectful of the candidate’s time. Businesses should avoid asking applicants to complete extensive unpaid work that could otherwise be used commercially.

The CIPD’s selection methods guidance identifies skill-based assessments as one of the methods organisations can use alongside structured interviews.

For managers concerned about hiring someone with a different professional background, these assessments provide an opportunity to evaluate actual capability. A candidate may describe a solution in an unfamiliar way but still produce an excellent result.

That evidence should carry more weight than whether the candidate uses the same terminology as the interviewer.

A Team Needs People Who Can Challenge Decisions Respectfully

One of the potential advantages of hiring people with different perspectives is that they may question assumptions the existing team has stopped examining.

This becomes particularly important in organisations where senior leaders have been successful using particular methods for a long time.

A manager might have developed a customer acquisition strategy that worked exceptionally well several years earlier. The team may continue using it because the process is familiar and nobody has presented a convincing reason to change.

A new employee with experience in another market might identify changes in customer behaviour or suggest a different approach.

Whether that suggestion is correct will depend on the evidence, but the organisation benefits from having the opportunity to examine it.

The challenge is creating an environment where employees feel comfortable raising concerns.

If disagreements are routinely treated as personal challenges to authority, employees will eventually learn that agreement is safer.

There is also a distinction between useful disagreement and behaviour that makes collaboration difficult. A person who challenges a decision should be willing to explain their reasoning, consider evidence and listen to alternative views.

Managers should apply the same expectations to themselves.

When a leader asks for different perspectives, they need to be prepared to hear opinions that contradict their own. They should also explain how those perspectives were considered, particularly when the final decision goes in another direction.

Over time, this helps employees understand that disagreement can be part of the decision-making process without becoming a conflict between individuals.

Different Perspectives Need to Be Taken Seriously

Hiring people with varied experiences is only useful when the organisation gives them opportunities to contribute.

This point is supported by more recent research.

A study published in the Journal of Business and Psychology on October 12, 2026, titled With Whom You Elaborate Matters: How Learning Orientation Impacts Cross-Culture and Same-Culture Information Elaboration in Culturally Diverse Teams, examined 104 culturally diverse teams involving 587 participants.

The researchers found that the exchange and discussion of information between members from different cultural backgrounds was more strongly related to team performance than exchanges that occurred primarily among members with similar cultural backgrounds. They also found that a team’s willingness to learn influenced how effectively that information was exchanged.

The study specifically examines cultural diversity rather than every form of difference in professional thinking, so its findings should not be generalised without qualification.

However, it illustrates an important principle: the information available within a team matters only when members have the opportunity to share and examine it.

This can be difficult in practice because people may naturally prefer discussing ideas with colleagues who already understand their perspective.

A manager can address this by making sure meetings allow relevant employees to contribute and by asking for evidence behind competing recommendations.

It is also useful to establish clear decision-making responsibilities. Teams can spend too much time debating if nobody knows who is accountable for the final choice.

A good working environment should make space for different ideas while allowing decisions to be made and implemented.

Managers Should Examine Their Own Hiring Patterns

One of the most revealing exercises a leader can undertake is to examine the people they have hired over several years.

Do most of them come from similar educational backgrounds? Have they worked in the same industries? Do they approach problems in similar ways? Are there capabilities the team repeatedly struggles with because nobody has substantial experience in those areas?

These questions can help managers identify patterns that may be difficult to notice during individual hiring decisions.

A manager might discover that they consistently favour candidates who are confident and outspoken during interviews. That preference may have worked well in certain roles, but it could also mean that capable candidates with quieter communication styles have been overlooked.

Another manager may notice that most of their hires have followed career paths similar to their own. If those employees perform well, there may be no immediate reason for concern. However, the pattern is still worth examining if the organisation is trying to develop capabilities outside its existing areas of strength.

The goal is to understand whether hiring decisions are being guided by the requirements of the organisation or by the manager’s familiarity with particular types of people.

Businesses can also review how employees perform after joining. If interviewers consistently favour certain characteristics, it is useful to examine whether those characteristics actually predict success in the role.

That information can help improve future hiring decisions.

The Best Candidate May Be Someone You Wouldn’t Have Chosen Instinctively

Hiring always involves uncertainty.

A candidate can perform well in an interview and struggle after joining. Another person may appear less impressive initially but develop into an exceptionally capable employee once they understand the organisation.

There is no selection method that eliminates this uncertainty entirely.

However, managers can improve their decisions by becoming more deliberate about what they evaluate.

It helps to understand the capabilities the team needs, define job-related criteria before interviewing and assess candidates through consistent methods. It also helps to involve interviewers who bring different professional perspectives, particularly when hiring for a role that requires specialised expertise.

A candidate should be evaluated for the contribution they are likely to make, including capabilities that the existing team may lack.

This may sometimes mean choosing someone whose ideas challenge the manager’s preferred approach.

That can be uncomfortable, especially when the manager is accustomed to being the most experienced person in the room. But a capable employee who sees a problem differently can provide valuable information, even when the manager ultimately decides to pursue another solution.

As organisations grow, leaders need to become increasingly comfortable managing people whose expertise and perspectives differ from their own.

The ability to work with those differences is part of building a strong management team.

Hiring Is Also a Decision About the Kind of Team You Want to Build

Every new hire changes a team to some extent.

They bring experience from previous organisations, knowledge of different processes and their own way of approaching work. Over time, these contributions can influence how the team communicates and makes decisions.

When managers repeatedly hire people who closely resemble themselves, they may gradually create an organisation where familiar ideas receive more attention than unfamiliar ones. This can make collaboration feel easier, but it also increases the risk that important assumptions will go unquestioned.

The research on diversity and performance shows that different backgrounds do not guarantee better results. Teams can experience more conflict when members have different personalities or values, and those differences need to be managed carefully.

But the research also indicates that organisations can benefit when people exchange information that others in the team may not possess.

For leaders, this provides a useful way to think about hiring.

The objective is to find people who are capable of doing the work, who can collaborate effectively and who bring knowledge or skills that contribute to the organisation’s needs. Sometimes those people will have backgrounds similar to the manager’s. At other times, they may have followed completely different professional paths.

The important part is being able to recognise their capabilities without allowing personal familiarity to dominate the decision.

A hiring manager should therefore be willing to ask a slightly uncomfortable question after a particularly enjoyable interview: would I still consider this person the strongest candidate if we hadn’t connected so easily?

It’s a useful question because the people who feel most familiar are often the easiest to choose.

And when you’re building a team that needs to solve problems you haven’t encountered before, the person who brings a different perspective may turn out to be exactly who you need.

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