Lessons on the Hiring Process from the Undercover Candidate™ with Nora Burns

Update: 2025-10-01

Description

Many organizations still use outdated hiring methods that turn off top talent and fuel unconscious bias. This leads to bad hires and harms employer reputations. By updating interview processes and using undercover research, companies can reduce bias, improve candidate experiences, and build stronger, more diverse teams that succeed.

Nora Burns, a keynote speaker and researcher, went undercover for over 350 interviews across industries to reveal broken hiring practices. Her research shows many companies conduct interviews like it’s 1983—asking irrelevant questions, being unprepared, and favoring men even in female-dominated roles. As founder of The Leadership Experts, Nora helps companies redesign hiring and onboarding by focusing on candidates’ potential and removing bias.

In this episode, Nora shares surprising findings: she was offered jobs she wasn’t qualified for due to bias, traditional interview questions waste time, companies accidentally share confidential info during interviews, and candidates decide whether to stay or leave within their first three hours on the job.

What you will learn from this episode:

Why traditional interview questions like "strengths and weaknesses" are counterproductive and what to ask instead.
How unconscious bias affects hiring decisions based on gender, area codes, college names, and even Zoom backgrounds.
Simple fixes for interview preparation, confidentiality, and creating bias-free application processes.

"Interviews over time have gotten shorter and shorter and shorter, especially for frontline jobs. We're doing those interviews in 20 to 30 minutes. If I'm spending five minutes on what's your greatest strengths, what's your greatest weakness, that's a high percentage of my overall time to get to know this candidate that I've just wasted."

– Nora Burns

Valuable Free Resource:

Connect with Nora on LinkedIn for hiring process insights and visit theleadershipexperts.com for consulting services.

Topics Covered:

02:30 - The genesis of undercover research: How Nora realized she hadn't been interviewed in over a decade while designing hiring processes for clients, leading to her decision to go undercover as a candidate

05:15 - Research methodology and ethics: Creating character personas, funding the research independently, and ensuring candidates knew she wasn't a guaranteed hire to maintain ethical boundaries

08:45 - Outdated interview practices: Why organizations are still "hiring like it's 1983" with tired questions that waste time and generate predictable, unhelpful responses from candidates

12:20 - Better questioning strategies: Moving beyond strengths/weaknesses to ask about development priorities and industry knowledge that reveals actual capabilities and cultural fit

16:30 - Interview preparation failures: How hiring managers show up late, unprepared, and treat candidates poorly, damaging the employment relationship from the start

18:45 - Confidentiality breaches: Shocking examples of organizations leaving candidates alone with payroll records, P&L statements, and unlocked laptops during interviews

22:10 - Unconscious bias in callbacks: A-B testing results showing male candidates consistently receive more callbacks, even for traditionally female roles like receptionist

24:45 - Geographic and socioeconomic bias: How area codes, college names, and Zoom setups create unfair advantages and disadvantages for candidates

27:20 - The critical first three hours: Why employees decide to stay or leave within their first three hours on the job and how organizations fail at basic onboarding

Key Takeaways:

"We need to stop hiring for comfort and start hiring for capacity and for what they actually will bring to the organization. A lot of our old school questions are really built around comfort and, oh, they think just like me." –Nora Burns

"People were making the decision as to if they would stay a year within the first three hours of employment. We are shockingly bad at the first three hours." –Nora Burns

"Whenever you say my gut tells me, bias is coming in. That's your stories that you've collected over time. There's something about me that reminds you of somebody else that you love." –Nora Burns

Ways to Connect with Nora Burns: