Understanding The Forgetting Curve – WalkWater Talent Advisors

 How long can you retain what you have read, seen, or heard? Obviously, every individual has his or her own capacity to retain any information in their minds. Some may forget almost everything within the first 48 hours, while others can retain the information for years together. 

But, broadly, people forget a lot of information in the first 48 hours, after which the rate of loss decreases as ideas are moved into long-term memory. Considering this rate of memory loss, there’s a “Forgetting Curve” that is used to identify how people retain or lose information that they encounter every day.

What is the Forgetting Curve?

Way back in the 19^th century, there was a psychologist names Hermann Ebbinghaus. This was the time when higher mental processes were seen as beyond the scope of traditional science, which is why Hermann wanted to investigate the way human beings remember and forget information. He did so by conducting a simple experiment on himself. For several weeks, he gave himself a task of remembering and reciting some nonsensical absurd words. He measured his performance over time, which helped him uncover his rate of memory loss. He plotted the same on a graph, which is now known as the “Forgetting Curve”.

Is the Forgetting Curve appropriate?

You’d argue how one individual’s mental performance can decide on a general curve followed by the entire world. We agree that Hermann’s experiment was conducted only on himself – an individual, which means that the report is biased. But, the truth is that the graph made by him happens to be familiar for a huge number of people. There have been a number of experiments conducted, which have shown a lot of variety in how quickly people forget new information. But, one thing that has been detected is that almost 90% of people forget a large chunk of information within the first 48 hours. And, this is what identifies with the Forgetting Curve.

Why do we forget most of the information so quickly?

Can you imagine, we lose most of the information we obtain in the first 48 hours itself!? How awful that is! But, why does this happen? Why is it that we forget most of the information, and retain a part of it? Why don’t we remember everything, or forget all of it? Well, there is a logic behind the fact. It’s natural for all of us to prioritize our memories. We prioritize the memories we feel strongest or most important, and retain that information in our minds. And, what is not so important for us, we’re hardly concerned about remembering that information. In fact, our memory can be affected by numerous criteria, such as the relevance of the information, complexity of the information, our memory strength, and the relationship between new information and existing memories.

How does the Forgetting Curve affect recruitment?

The Forgetting Curve is a useful tool in designing ways to support recruiters, and help them build their skills. Because of the fact that we tend to forget most of the information in the first few hours of attainment, recruiters are always focused on regular learning, constant development, and information reinforcement. Remember, recruiters will retain information only if they find it important, useful, and meaningful. You need to thus make it interesting and important for recruiters to remember you so that when you’re looking towards beginning or moving further your career, you know they’ll be quick on helping you find out the right opportunity. So, when approaching the best recruitment companies in India like WalkWater Talent Advisors, make sure you have an interesting and attractive resume, bio profile, and social media profile. It may certainly take some time before you can be of serious interest to such recruiters, but you should keep putting in your efforts towards achieving the same.