When you talk about the topic recruitment several things come to the mind. Depending on who you are talking to the definition might also differ slightly however mostly it will be defined as a process of finding the “right person” for the “right job”. Ideally the definition will include an “exactly the right person” however this generally is difficult to achieve as this depends on several factors like
(i) Recruitment time
When in the recruitment process started I.e. what time of year, including wither or not it is in the holiday season. Is it a specific time when employees are busy trying to get tasks done before the next fiscal year starts?
(ii) Candidates availability
In order to find the perfect candidate, the candidate should be available in the market. Otherwise, it might be difficult to recruit the ideal person for the job. The other aspect is if the candidate is not available in the market, which people are the best-suited candidates that might suit the role?
(iii) Time and affordability
Generally, time is an important constraint, you normally hire someone because you need that person to become a part of your workforce. Time poses a constraint and as a general rule of thumb, the sooner you find the candidate the better it is for the business. The other important part of this process is to be available to afford the best candidates as normally the best candidates will generally request more pay and benefits than an average worker.
In general recruitment is a very tedious and slow process, and the consequences of a wrong recruitment are also quite noticeable. In the end of the day consequences for the company will always be economical in nature, either one way or the other! For example, if a person is not correct for the job but has been recruited, or if the person is the right person for the job but discovers that our business does not offers the number of challenges or carrier development opportunities for that person, or simply put if a person just chooses to move on and needs to be replaced. In any of the given scenarios the productivity of the business will be impacted. There are several recruitment techniques that are available and which are heavily used in the process of recruiting potential candidates. Most of these techniques are very dependent on the recruiter. The more experienced a recruiter is the more chances there are for successful recruitment of the ideal candidate or at least the most suitable matching profile among the available candidate pool.
The process is normally the same as far as I can tell. Ab course it differs a bit depending on the size of the business, however, initially a need for a resource arises which kick starts the recruitment process. Depending on the need a relevant job description is prepared and advertised into the market to attract as many candidates as possible. If the marketing campaign has been successful a number of candidates submit their CVs which are further filtered down to relevant candidates. A subset of these are chosen to interviews. After the interviews have been conducted, the candidate list becomes shorter and shorter till the recruiter ends up with the best candidates.
Normally the personality of the applicant is evaluated by the HR team, along with the line manager (to be). Personality tests are conducted to see wither or not a candidate suits for the role or to what extent the personality differs from the existing workforce. The personality test gives some good indication of the composition of the team will or might get affected by new recruit. References are checked and a job offer is made and then it is happy days.
During this entire process a number of steps are manual or at least semi-manual, dependent on human logic, experience, and last but not least their feelings.
Can you recall a situation where you were in a position where you might have been best at something, but due to being a bit shy you kept yourself somewhat reserved! What was the consequence of this passiveness? Or maybe you just were tired, depressed, nervous or something similar can this or would this impact the potential outcome? Were you able to land the job?
What if technology could help you in this entire process? What if it could help both you as the applicant and the recruiter to make good matches if not the best ones? Let’s explore how technology can be utilized and how it actively is being utilized for assessing people for job/roles.
1) Use of Social media
It is a known fact that recruiters use social media to find, assess and to some extent verify information regarding an applicant. Facebook and LinkedIn are by far the most heavily utilized tools, Twitter and tool are as well as a presence on the internet too are used during the assessment phase. LinkedIn shows you online CV as well as your history I.e if you have been actively using the application. Your contacts, past jobs, positions and feedback from ex-colleagues reveal a whole lot about you. Same can be said about your presence on other social media sites or just a simple search on Google. The most successful recruiters have a large number of LinkedIn connections and are actively seeking to extend their network to have the best candidates available in their circle.
This same technique is now being utilized by technology, the only difference is that machine learning(ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) is utilized to gather all the information about a person. Removing the human element also removes the ethical aspect however these AI and ML algorithms can be tailored according to needs and according to laws. The technology is not replacing humans in the current version as it still depends upon humans for the final decision making, formatted data is presented as information rather than raw data which must be gathered and then processed. Moving forward these services will be able to evaluate personality of a person based gathered information. Some day to day examples of this can be seen in targeted adds, and relevant searches. A fun and interesting fact worth pointing out Facebook was able to identify a user’s personality better than their spouse already back in 2015-2016 based on their likes. Studies shows that this personality profiling is capable of profiling much more than your favorite color, your favorite bike, or favorite activities. Information as religion, beliefs, sexual orientation, addictive trends and weakness too can be revealed. For more information PNAS published document “Computer-based personality judgments are more accurate than those made by humans” can be studied.
2) Gamification
As mobile devices are becoming more and more common and numbers are up in billions, what better tool to use than games to assess personalities? A recent and emerging trend is the use of games to perform personality checks. These games build a personality profile based on your game results. This approach is far superior than its predecessor which was primarily text and MCQ based tests. The game tests many more aspects of the personality and are even able to check the upper and lower limits (capabilities) of a person and performance under different stress levels. This gives a very precise picture of a person’s personality. More and more games are emerging and commercially available for recruiters. Scorecards are made available as with traditional personality checks, however, you have to option to ask for comparison with others in the same or similar role. This is the power of big data being leashed free to the general public. Imagine being able to pick a handful of people for a specific role and then being able to compare them with a workforce working for Google, Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft or any other small companies. How about being able to compare your workforce with your competing companies and businesses? Quite scaring idea, but at the same time shows what potential the technology has along with the new options that will become available over time.
These databases so-called personality databases are growing each day and currently are living their own lives functioning as separate islands. But it is just a matter of time before one of the giants or a number of giants will jump into this and will start merging these islands to a country or even a continent. Some companies are also actively targeting fresh graduates which provide them free access to games in return of having their data available for interested companies. This is a win, win situation for both parties at least in the shorter run. If you are interested in the topic try reading a bit more about Binnacle, thegameagency or 16companies. Or just a simple search on Google for use of gamification for recruitment will show you what currently is going on within this field. Two big renown companies like Siemens and Marriot are using a similar approach, but with their own developed games/software called “Siemens Plantsville” and “My Marriott Hotel”. Gamification is also being used for onboarding and internal training with a lot of success, but that is a topic for another post.
So, if you are an applicant, start brushing your CV along with stretching your gaming skills, and being a recruiter should should definitely start using the tools available to assist you in your next hire process. If you liked the blogpost, please do share it on social media, and if you have any inquiries regarding the content, please do not hesitate to reach out. Till next time, stay safe.
