And today’s guest is…
When you’re invited to appear as a guest on The #SocialRecruiting Show — as a relative unknown — it’s very flattering. It helped me that I know one of the hosts, Katrina Collier, from our time together working agency-side between 2005–2010 — is this the reason I was invited onto the show? — I certainly think it helped, however, Katrina and Audra are two professionals who know what they want for their show — in short — they’re only going to invite folks on that add something value to the community they have built around the show.
Automation versus Human
The premise of the show was to discuss the trends, challenges and (perhaps) conflict of opinion regarding the use of automation versus human interaction within the interview process. It helped the discussion that I’m currently running a survey asking about interview trends in 2018 and professionals thoughts on the 2019 landscape — you can take the survey yourself here as it’s open until 31st December 2018.
Some stats that I prepared pre-show from the survey so far included:
- less than 16% of Hiring Managers, In-House and RPO Talent Acquisition and Recruitment professionals surveyed so far have used ‘video-based’ interviewing in 2018 — over 26% have stated they will use video interviewing technology in 2019
- The survey asked ‘Which of the following interview formats have you used / prepped a candidate for in 2018?’ — the rank order so far is: 1st). Face-2-Face 2nd). Phone 3rd). Technical Assessment and then Cultural assessment fit was quite low in the ranking — however, correlate that to the question the survey asks about a ‘poor hire made in 2018’ and over 73% said it was down to poor culture fit and values alignment to their business.
- Companies reviewing the automation of parts or all of their interview process need to think about their ‘digital readiness’ to implement new solutions and the net result for the interviewee experience.
- Over 50% of survey respondents so far don’t have a member of HR involved in any part of the interview process.
- Video recruitment is a top 5 LinkedIn Global Recruiting Trend
- New interviewing techniques (e.g., soft skills assessments and job auditions) are gaining favour as ways to augment traditional interviews, but adoption is still early.
Debate
Thankfully, some of these points started questions and debate in the ‘chat channel’ as show favourites such as Steve Levy, Alex Brock, Tris Revill and Mark Lundgren introduced their opinions which included:
- there is no proven data that interviewing for ‘culture fit’ achieves anything more than a baseline for likability and manageability
- individuals that talk and discuss the concepts and business case for introducing new tech, such as AI, VR, AR or Blockchain, often don’t have a baseline understanding of the actual technology in the first place
- there are examples of companies making offers without the need for an interview (*CV assessment only)
- anyone quoting “..and the LinkedIn report said…” are probably not worth listening to in the first place.
: these opinions certainly made for further debate when cross-compared to the stats I’d introduced from the survey.
Culture Fit
Of personal interest was the opinion regarding ‘culture fit’ interview data. My thoughts are that, whilst there is no conclusive data at this stage (a point I respectfully acknowledge), that doesn’t mean that as recruitment and HR professionals, we should dismiss the idea and not try to create, test and learn with ways to assess for culture fit within the interview process.
I see it as our responsibility to produce this data and then share it with our community.
For the full show and all the discussion points, you can reply it here and listen to it here.
glennnetworks 