Skip to main content

How technology can help us hire the talent of the future

The most innovative businesses today aim to re-empower their employees to think and act like entrepreneurs. This means that the jobs of the future are geared towards leaders, self-starters, resourceful and creative people with a vision. Qualifications and past experience, while still important, might not be the best indicators of success, so attitude, competencies and personality traits increasingly gain ground in the selection process.

That got me thinking that balancing efficiency and accuracy in the selection process may become even more difficult with these slightly elusive criteria, especially in the context of an ever-growing number of applications.

Don’t let good candidates slip through your fingers

For a high number of applications, we can spend days or even weeks going through all the CVs so we can decide which candidates to invite to the second round. At the same time, we all know that the people with the best CVs are not necessarily the right people for the job.

While assessments and personality tests do prove themselves useful, we simply cannot use them as the first step of the application process. So, as things stand, we either make decisions on the CVs alone, or we take the even lengthier path of calling our candidates for a screening interview.

If you ask me, this results in an unnecessarily lengthy and inaccurate process. I’m willing to bet that many good talents end up in the rejected pile because they don’t look attractive enough on paper, while we sometimes waste time interviewing the wrong candidate. To solve this, we need to look at ways to increase the accuracy of our screening process, with minimum time commitment.

Hiring for attitude and personality 2.0 – automated video interviews

If we look at some of the HR tools available, the solution is simple: use video interviews. Think about it, what if the candidates could present themselves to you and could explain their CV in a snippet? Candidates can record themselves on any device with a camera and the recruiter can review the interview in only a few minutes. You would spend the same amount of time as you currently do on reviewing CVs, but with the added bonus of seeing the person behind the bullet points. And not to mention how much time you can save on the phone, if you simply pose the questions once and ask all the candidates to send you their answers. Since all candidates get the same treatment and the exact same questions, video interviews for screening candidates could be the perfect mix between efficiency, fair-process and personal touch.

The personality test of the future

The advancements in big data and data analysis make an interesting promise to deliver a complex and accurate profile of a candidate, simply by having machines analyze candidate data. What’s more, for these machines the candidate is the data. HR technology companies are already using facial recognition software to scan video interviews and “read” facial expressions to determine the personality of a candidate. Some even go as far as to make hiring recommendation based on it. In other words, in the near future, cleverly written computer programs will give us accurate, objective and reliable information about a candidate’s personality, competencies and potential by analyzing how they respond to questions in a video interview.

In short, the trend seems to be to take as much real-life information about the candidates in order to understand who they are. Whether this is done through algorithms or by simply watching a presentation, the message is simple: if personality really matters, we should judge the person and not a piece of paper. And the first step towards hiring people for who they are and not what boxes they tick, is to use video interviews. Happy Hiring!


 

Infographic | 10 most needed work skills of 2020 | Download