Hey!

I had an applicant who was arguing with me once when I rejected him.

I told him that based on the other candidates in the pipeline in doesn't make sense to present his application because they are clearly a better fit than he is and it will be setting him up for failure.

He replied in a snarky way, but the idea was he didn't realised recruitment process is based on how other people perform.

I remember reading that and thinking: my sweet summer child. "So much of this IS about how you compare to the other people and you have no idea it's even happening."

Last issue we talked about anchoring and if you missed it, it's available HERE​

This week we'll talk about the person who was interviewed right before you walked (or connected) in.

You never see them.
You’ll never know their name.

And they might be the reason you got (or not) the job.

Imagine this:

Same day, two candidates, same job. Both fine, ok-ish.
Average, not a rockstar or anything, solid 6 out of 10.

The first one goes in right after a candidate who was just fucking extrordinary. Sharp, polished, the best the hiring manager saw all week. Our 6 follows that.

How do you think they appear?

They look flat. Forgettable. “Not quite there.”

Our second 6 goes in right after a candidate who absolutely bombed it- froze, rambled, babbled. Our 6 follows THAT.

How do you think they appear?

They look sharp. Composed. “Wow, she nailed it.”

Same two people. Similar level. One gets a callback.

And the best part?

The interviewer will swear on his dog's life they judged both fairly.

What’s happening

The contrast effect: you’re not scored against the job.

You’re scored against whoever went last.

Interviewers often think they’re measuring you against a fixed bar.

But they’re not. The bar moves and by bar I mean the previous person in the chair.

Strong candidate before you drags the bar up making it harder for you.
Weak one drops the bar, and you clear it easily.

Same you either way.

It was first pinned down in 1972. Wexley and his team had trained interviewers score identical candidates, changing one thing only: who went right before.

Same candidate. Same answers.
But put them after a strong person and they read as average.
Put them after a weak one and the same performance reads as impressive.

Picture a couple of points swinging on a ten-point scale - enough to move someone from "let's proceed" to "not quite for us," based on nothing but who sat in the chair before them.

Fifty years of studies later, it still holds.

Why your brain does it

Your brain doesn’t store a number for “good candidate.”

It has no fixed 6-out-of-10 sitting in memory to check you against. So when it needs a standard, it grabs the nearest example it has . And what's usually the nearest example? The person it just watched.

That’s it. Judging anything is really judging it against something, and the most recent thing is the easiest to reach for. You do this everywhere. A $4 coffee feels fine after you priced a $9 cocktail and outrageous after $1.50 gas station coffee. The coffee never changed (well, technically it did, but you know what I mean). What you compared it to did.

An interviewer does the same thing with people, all day, without noticing. The last face becomes the ruler for the next one.

And you have to understand one important thing - companies very rarely know exactly how they are going to evaluate candidates and against what requirements. They have an idea, a direction because they needed to put something down. But very very often who they actually want is not the same of what they need and it crystallises in the process.

The tells

You often can’t see the person before you, that's obvious. But the hiring team remembers and the contrast effect kicks in.

1. No time for reset. Often happening when interviews are back-to-back, no break in-between. If hiring team is jumping from call to call you can bet your ass you are going to be compared to the previous person.

2. The competition mention. “We’ve had a really strong field,” or “we’re seeing a lot of great people for this". I swear, when you hear that it’s literally the bar being set in front of you, out loud. They’re telling you the last few were good, which means you’re being measured against them, not against the job. When you hear it, that’s your cue to be sharper and more distinct, not more agreeable.

3. Your slot. I already wrote about it in the past, but you want your slots either early in the morning or right after lunch. It gives you couple of advantages, one of them is you will be the benchmark because there was no one to be measured against.

The play

You can't pick who goes before you.

But you have the ability to influence an energy in the room and you can use that to your advantage.

Here’s the evidence, and I was genuinely surprised, because it is not subtle.

In 2024, two economists got hold of thousands of real interviews - actual admissions and hiring, real decisions on the line.

The clever part: in their data, who you followed was basically luck of the draw. Nobody arranged for the strong candidates to land in nice tidy slots.

So if a pattern shows up, it can't be "better people just happened to go at better times" - the only thing left to explain it is the contrast itself.

And oh boy, the pattern was god damn brutal.

In their data, if the person right before you got a yes, your own odds of getting a yes dropped by about 20%. In some of their settings it ran higher still. Not because you were worse.

Because the interviewer had just spent a yes on someone else - and you were next.

Now, to be clear here, the study proves the bias is real. It doesn't prove my way out of it works because nobody tested that.

So treat what follows as informed tactics, not gospel.
They cost you nothing and they line up with how the effect works.

Break the rhythm before you start. When you sit down, don’t dive in. Ten seconds of warmth (a real hello, a slow breath, one line that isn’t about the job) resets the tempo and quietly wipes the last person’s pace off the table. You become the start of something, not the continuation of whatever just happened.

Start with a bang. The first thing they get from you becomes the new benchmark. Lead with the story you’d want them repeating to their boss later. Don’t save it for later.

Give them one clean line to carry out. They’ll compare you to the next person too. Hand them a single sentence (your one obvious strength, said plainly) that goes into the next interview as the thing to beat.

The counter-play

Sometimes you just draw the bad slot, it happens. You follow the standout, and the room feels cooler than you earned.

You can’t fix that from inside the chair. Ignoring it won't help either.

One move: reset the frame out loud. A calm “I know you’ve had a long day of these” gently reminds them you’re a fresh person, not the next data point in a row.

It doesn’t erase the effect. It nudges them back toward judging you.

And if it goes badly for no reason you can name sometimes this is why.

Not you. The chair before you.

The line

Using this isn't gaming anyone. You're not pretending to be better than you are. You're just making sure that if the person before you had a shocker, that's their interview - not yours. You want to be judged on you. That's the whole ask.

Just don't talk shit about the people before you (or any other people at all - no one likes those people)

One rep this week

Next time you book, ask for the first slot of the day, or the first after lunch.
Say you focus better earlier. Truth is, doesn't really matter what you will say as long as there is some justification to your request (there are research for that as well, but that's for another time).

The logic: first in the morning, there's no one ahead of you to be measured against.

Ten seconds to ask. Almost nobody does.

Best,
Patryk

Next issue: they decided about you in the first thirty seconds. The other forty minutes were them looking for proof.

The research, if you want to go deeper:

The 1972 study that pinned it down - Wexley, Yukl, Kovacs & Sanders: https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1972-20387-001

The 2024 field study - Radbruch & Schiprowski, “Interview Sequences” (free working-paper PDF): https://www.ifo.de/en/cesifo/publications/2024/working-paper/interview-sequences-and-formation-subjective-assessments

Summary of the study: https://cepr.org/voxeu/columns/sequential-contrast-effects-hiring-and-admission-interviews