If you’re interviewing for a job and you’re up against several strong candidates, you might gain an edge from being first. Uri Simonsohn and Francesca Gino examined more than 9,000 MBA admissions interviews and found that interviewers often engage in “narrow bracketing”—assuming small sets of candidates represent the entire field. So if they encounter several strong applicants early in the process, they might more aggressively look for flaws in the later ones.
