Do you feel like your recruitment and selection process doesn’t yield the results you’d hope for? Many recruiters feel the same. 83% of the surveyed by SHRM report having trouble recruiting suitable candidates. When asked about the main reason for those struggles, three-quarters of them point at skills shortage.
But could it be more of an oversight than a shortage? Perhaps our recruitment and selection methods that should be helping at amassing talent are actually obstacles.
While over eight out of ten recruiters say that talent is the #1 priority at their company, it seems like they’re not hiring for that. Only 33% of the surveyed HR professionals state that skill assessment is a part of their typical hiring process.
If it’s talent you’re looking for, case-based screening may be your solution. This alternative recruitment method allows you to look at candidates from a different perspective and improve your recruitment goals. Are you curious to learn how? Keep reading.
#1. Reduced Bias & Increased Fairness
Did you know that resumés have been used for almost 80 years? Now, if you were to guess, how many companies continue to rely on resumés to evaluate candidates? According to Murray Resources, 52% of recruiters still rate them as either the 1st or the 2nd most important part of the recruitment and selection process.
The problem with resumés is that they are of no help when looking for talent. The reason? Unconscious bias.
Unconscious bias has entered the chat
The impact of unconscious bias and its impact on hiring decisions is no longer a new concept. In fact, a staggering 96% of recruiters realise the grave consequences it can have on their ability to hire talent.
For one, many candidates can be discriminated against when sending their resumés in. A study conducted by the University of Toronto found that applicants with non-white sounding names were up to 53% less likely to receive callbacks.
Does it mean that they were simply underqualified? Not necessarily. The candidates had the same qualifications, so clearly, lack of skill-fit wasn’t the issue.
No bias in sight, talent in the spotlight
Whether your recruitment and selection methods are prone to conscious or unconscious bias, they don’t help your overall recruitment goals. Case-based screening, however, fixes that problem.
At Innoflow, we believe that everyone has talent, and we strive to help organisations see it. Your candidates are asked to solve a case (a.k.a. work samples) tailored to your organisation and the exact position you’re hiring for. Our software successfully removes all potential biases and lets you focus on one’s skills. How do we ensure that?
- Fair chances: all candidates are presented with the same case. A fair chance at showing relevant skills.
- Full anonymity: upon application, all your candidates need to provide is a case solution and their e-mail address. No names, no photos, no age, no bias.
- Fair evaluation: judges responsible for case evaluation must have pre-defined criteria they judge on. No place for favouritism.
In the words of Tina Herrman, General Manager at Experis ManPowerGroup, “We believe that everyone has talent, and Innoflow enables us to give all candidates the chance to show it.”
Remove all bias and put talent in the spotlight. We’re more than happy to help!
#2. More Diverse Candidates
Mirror, mirror on the wall – who’ll be the most diverse company of them all? Hopefully, you! A struggle for creating a diverse workforce isn’t an easy one.
While 76% of European organisations consider diversity and inclusion a priority area, only 23% of HR professionals think their strategies are highly effective.
Does your recruitment strategy follow the classic job post-resumé-interview theme? Perhaps, that’s where the problem lies.
Your requirements may be deterring
How often do we come across a job post looking like a monthly shopping list? But instead of veggies and candy, all you get is a plethora of terms that seem to be targeting that 1% of people who fit the profile perfectly.
That’s not to say you shouldn’t look for the best candidate possible. On the contrary! But unfortunately, many job posts don’t truly reflect the job and may limit your talent pool dramatically. Meaning you’ll only attract a narrow audience. That’s where your diversity goals meet a sad end.
Did you know that, for example, women are much more critical of their competencies than men? As research shows, female applicants feel they need to match 100% of the listed criteria for the job, while men settle on 60%.
Don’t overwhelm your candidates with a plethora of requirements. Yes, prepare them for what’s coming, but as for proving their skills – show them the job.
Show me your skills
If you’re looking to attract a diverse range of candidates, set one main requirement – solving a case. When your applicants see that all they’ll be judged on is their skills and not how impressive their resumé looks, more of them will feel invited. On top of that, since case-based screening reduces bias, you may find yourself surprised by the candidates you get!
Heidi Wassini, Talent Acquisition & Employer Branding at Vivino, says, “In our Innoflow recruitment processes, we experience a significantly more diverse final 10 compared to our normal processes.”
She’s not the only one to see diversity benefits. Based on our data, companies that apply case-based screening to their recruitment and selection process report an overall 62,5% increase in diversity.
Limiting your requirements to one – proving the skills you’re looking for – helps you access a diverse, untapped talent pool you might otherwise overlook. Or that would overlook your company.
#3. Improved Quality of Hires
In today’s business competition, having the right people in the right jobs is of paramount importance. Yet, as mentioned, many recruiters note having problems finding suitable candidates.
Let’s see how case-based screening can impact your recruitment and selection methods to improve the quality of hires.
Predicting future job performance
Predicting future job performance is a key element when hiring. You want to be as sure as possible that the person you choose will be a productive employee and preferably stay with the company for longer.
However, if you rely on resumés to make such predictions, you’re not unlikely to find yourself in a pickle. And that’s because resumés are not a reflection of one’s talent. They’re a mere description of the past and a self-assessment of one’s skills.
A staggering 30% of the surveyed by Zippia admitted to lying or bending the truth on their resumés. Even worse – 80% of them are never busted for lying. If you base your hiring decision solely on the information provided by a candidate, you might as well be making a wild guess based on potential lies.
Now, case-based screening leaves no room for fortune-telling. In an extensive study, Schmidt & Hunter (1998) discovered that screening methods focused on evaluating actual skills are the most reliable when predicting future job performance. In fact, they’re almost double more efficient than unstructured interviews.
And there’s some truth to it. Mark, a British recruiter, posted some time ago about his experience with one of his candidates. The candidate told him that he had gone through 11 interviews with one company. Eleven. Is that truly necessary to judge one’s fit?
The beauty of case-based screening lies in our approach. The cases we create are tailor-made for a position within your organisation specifically. What does it mean to you? You’ll be able to look for the exact set of skills you need and forget about the lengthy process.
Quality matters more in the end
As mentioned before, every company wants to broaden their talent pools to find talent. But answer truthfully: would you prefer 1000 applications out of which only 5% is of any use or 100 of great value right away?
Solving cases is no picnic. It can be challenging and take up to 90 minutes. Because of their nature, it lets candidates pre-select themselves. If candidates decide that they don’t want to spend their time solving it, they can quit the process. Benefits for you? You end up with fewer candidates, but those you do get are motivated and already believe they have the right skills.
Sometimes talent won’t show on a piece of paper, and you’re risking missing out on great additions to your team.
Bjarne Lauritsen, Director of Operations at Bring, “With Innoflow, we are now able to find the talents, which we would have missed out on in a resumé screening.”
#4. Better Candidate Experience
Candidate experience is the proverbial elephant in the room. Everybody knows it’s important to the brand and recruitment efforts, but not everyone takes action to fix it. Where to start? With your recruitment methods, obviously.
Say no to boring recruitment
How many times have you sent a resumé to apply for a job? Personally, I stopped counting after 100. And mind you – I consider myself lucky with my job hunts. The process of sending the same document gets tedious and frustrating really fast. In fact, it completely lost any meaning to me.
I’m not alone in this sentiment. 30% of job seekers decide not to move forward in the application process because it’s too frustrating. Perhaps your website is not mobile-friendly, or the process has too many stages. Or maybe you require them to fill in the same information multiple times – the universal job seeker’s pet peeve.
Now, what if you offered your candidates something new? As it turns out, over two-thirds of candidates prefer job-relevant assessments, such as work samples. Even those who withdrew from the process at some point had a better opinion of the company’s recruitment.
A positive candidate experience should matter to you no less than employee satisfaction. Why? Because job seekers are four times more likely to consider you as a future employment opportunity even after rejection if they were satisfied with your recruitment.
Feedback? Yes, always
What is one thing that almost all candidates want but few get it? According to LinkedIn, for 94% of the respondents, it’s feedback. How good are employers at satisfying that #1 candidate’s need? As shown by the Murray Resources report, not too great.
- 61% of applicants receive a notification when they apply for a role
- 61% receive status updates throughout the recruitment process
- 45% are notified when the position they applied for has been filled
That means that approximately 50% of candidates never know what’s going on with their application in most cases. They don’t know if it was received, where in the process they are, or if the process for them is already over.
The overall dissatisfaction it produces is not hard to find. For example, Lara, a LinkedIn user, decided to share her experience with the online audience.
It’s known that recruiters often don’t have enough time to send feedback to every candidate, let alone make it meaningful. That’s where our Innoflow process comes with a solution. Thanks to the way our software is designed, candidates always:
- know upfront how many steps the process has
- get notifications about where the process stands (e.g. when their case solution is being evaluated)
- receive meaningful feedback based on the evaluation criteria
How does it work in practice? Pretty well! Just look at a comment we received from Shruthi Dasarapu, one of the candidates who took part in our recruitment.
#5. Time-Cost Efficiency
The conventional recruitment and selection process usually consists of resumé screening, phone screening, and at least one round of interviews (unless you’re really indecisive and need 11). How much time does it take your recruiters? Many hours, depending on how many applications you get.
We all want things to be time-cost efficient, and businesses know it better than anyone. So why not optimise your recruitment and selection strategy by trying case-based screening?
Not to give you unfounded facts, let’s hear out one of our clients:
Alex Bondo Andersen, Chief Technology Officer at Smart-Trial, “For multiple positions, Innoflow allowed us to evaluate and manage all candidates in an efficient way and ultimately find the best one for each position.”
Our software helps you save, on average, 30% of the time spent on screening applicants during the recruitment and selection process. As mentioned, you get fewer (but better-suited) candidates as many pre-select themselves and evaluating their case solutions is also faster. It takes between ten and twenty minutes, depending on the case complexity.
You might think: but isn’t it faster to eye a resumé? Yes, it usually takes 7.4 seconds. But are the results satisfying?
Considering that Denmark reported 33% of mis-hires last year, perhaps the answer is no. Test for skills to predict better future performance and enjoy the right candidates in the right places.
A New Model for The Old Normal
For a long time, it’s been thought that resumé screening was the only way to hire. But people no longer want to be evaluated based on a piece of paper that will never tell their full story. Nor will it reveal their true potential.
Case-based screening is not only a way to get job seekers excited with a new way of hiring. It gives everybody an equal chance to be judged for their talent and nothing more.
For your business bottom line, it’s also no less beneficial. You get to broaden your talent pool, find more suitable candidates, diversify the team, and work more efficiently – something your current recruitment and selection process may not be doing.
Ready to join the visionary Innoflow customers and adapt your recruitment and selection process to that worthy of the 21st century?
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