It seems that even experienced recruiters find it difficult to avoid subconscious biases when they hire CEO’s and others at the executive level.

Or is it a coincidence that significantly more Fortune 500 CEO’s are 6 feet 2 inches or taller when compared to the average American population (30% vs 3.9%) or that voice quality also plays into the evaluation process?

According to Schumpeter’s article “The Look of a Leader” in The Economist (27/9/2014) voice quality accounts for 23% of listeners’ evaluations while the actual content of the speech only accounts for 11%. Good posture and physical fitness also play an important part of our subconscious evaluation of candidates for top executive roles. In the world of executive search, these things are referred to in rather nebulous terms as ‘executive presence’ and ‘gravitas’. And even if we are guilty of perpetuating favoured CEO traits, does it matter? What would be the implications in terms of the quality of hires if we were to actively discount these biases?

Read the full article here, including what are considered NEGATIVE stereotypes – which includes ‘uptalk’ (something I’ve blogged about before!)