The job interview isn’t going anywhere. Rightly so, it remains the centrepiece of the recruiting exercise but you’ll notice that I didn’t say the “traditional” job interview.
As a way of predicting job success it’s flawed in so many ways, particularly the unstructured job interview that will only predict job success 13% of the time. The structured interview is a bit better, predicting success 18% of the time.
Ironically, back to that LinkedIn study, 63% found that the traditional interview couldn’t assess candidate behavioral traits, 57% said the traditional interview didn’t assess candidate weaknesses and 42% said the interview allowed too much bias.
With that said, the discipline (if we can call it that) of talent acquisition has become obsessed with automation, AI and finding as many ways as possible to not talk to a candidate.
The interview steps up to the plate, makes everybody feel good by putting the “human” back in to “human resources” and doing not much for recruiting and retention.
So what’s new in the world of recruiting and talent acquisition?
- Video interviews
Talking of interviews it seems like the video interview is getting hot. The kind that doesn’t require an interviewer. Here at Gateway we tried it 2 years ago, it was an absolute total, unmitigated, colossal and dismal failure. I’m not sure how clear I’m being. A LinkedIn survey of 9,000 talent professionals showed that 18% of them viewed video interviews as an effective innovation. I really hope that they put an interviewer in the room too.
So what was the issue?
Stop reading this blog post and now and talk to your laptop. Now you know the problem.
- Testing cognitive skills
I’m not entirely certain why this is only now becoming so big. Literally every academic study done in the last 85 years has shown a direct correlation between job performance and general mental ability. There’s also a strong link between cognitive skills, integrity, ability to be trained, engagement and promotion.
- Behavioral Testing
In house recruiters have been using behavioral studies for a lot longer than search firms or staffing agencies. That appears to be changing as the shortcomings of the interview are being exposed.
The beauty of behavioral testing is that it gives so many insights in to the candidate that it becomes easier to plan for their career, adopt appropriate communication and motivation strategies, manage them and of course engage them. Engaged employees are retained employees.
That same LinkedIn survey of 9,000 talent professionals found that 59% of them viewed behavioral testing as a useful innovation. This was by far the most popular innovation among the group.
- Not so artificial intelligence
Remember the old saying about common sense not being so common? I’m beginning to feel the same way about some of the AI tools used in recruitment. Some (that shall remain nameless) appear to be solving a problem that we never knew existed.
I won’t dwell on it but while there are definitely ways to improve the recruiting process, it is a function of human resources and we maybe need to focus a bit more on the “human” bit rather than the “resources” bit.
What innovations are you seeing?
What innovations would you prefer not to see?
Drop a comment in.
