The Small Big: How a Simple Change Leads to Better Recruitment Outcomes

Why your interview order is quietly sabotaging decision quality.

Small Changes, Big Results: The Tiny Tweaks That Transform Recruitment

What if the difference between poor outcomes and great ones wasn’t a major restructure but some small tweaks?

There’s a brilliant book called The Small Big: Small Changes That Spark Big Influence, which explores exactly that; the small behavioural tweaks that dramatically shift results, and when applied to recruitment, yields significantly improved hiring decisions.

A Small Change That Saved Restaurants Thousands 

One example from the book involved restaurant no-shows. The experiment tested a simple tweak during the booking call: Instead of saying “Let us know if you need to change your booking,” staff asked  “Can you call us if you need to change the booking?” and then paused until the customer agreed, which they do, but the pause is important and the commitment from the customer makes the difference. We like to be consistent in our behaviour and many people will stick to a commitment to maintain that consistency. Not everyone, but a lot do.

That small adjustment resulted in a 37% drop in no-shows.

One sentence + one pause = huge impact.

While it perhaps sounds trivial, no-shows are far from trivial. In the UK alone, missed health appointments cost an estimated £800 million per year. A small behavioural nudge can save millions.

What’s the Small Tweak in Recruitment?

It’s this:  Put the interview last.

Most organisations still interview strangers first, then run probity checks and then may test.
But interviewing people before you know anything meaningful about them is flawed. We can’t help it; our brains form early impressions and then we look for information to support those impressions, i.e., conformation bias. That is the single biggest reason why hiring mistakes are made.

Further to that, candidates increasingly rehearse their responses using coaching, rehearsed narratives, and most probably, AI tools. No wonder traditional interviews are such poor predictors of performance.

Flip the order → improve the outcome 

The small change that delivers  dramatically better hiring decisions  is simple:

1. Screen candidates first
2. Test second
3. Interview last

By the time you get to the interview, the candidate is no longer a stranger and you’re armed with data, behavioural insights, and context. That lets you ask sharper, more targeted questions and make significantly better decisions.'

One small change. One significant improvement in hiring decisions.

Sometimes the most powerful improvements don’t require more time, more costs, or more complexity. Just a smarter sequence.  

1. Put the interview last.
2. The results will speak for themselves.