Applicant Tracking Systems: Optimizing for Efficiency, Deprioritizing Accuracy.

ATS in TA: Necessary But Not Sufficient

ATS platforms offer significant advantages in streamlining the recruitment process
and centralizing candidate management. 

They act as a digital repository for all candidate data, allowing recruiters to efficiently organize and access information in one place.

By automating various tasks, such as resume screening, interview
scheduling, and candidate communications, ATS reduces manual efforts, freeing
up valuable time for recruiters to focus on building relationships with candidates
and making strategic hiring decisions.

ATS platforms also have several shortcomings. 

A significant one is the inherent "one size fits all" approach of many ATS systems. These platforms often come with pre-built interview guides that suggest fairly banal and generic questions, leading to a lack of depth and personalization in candidate assessments. 

Additionally, ATS scorecards tend to be non-numeric, limiting the granularity and precision in evaluating candidates and make it challenging to measure and validate the recruitment process.

While ATS platforms do allow companies to measure certain
recruitment KPIs, such as time-to-fill, source of hire, and applicant flow, these metrics are often fairly basic and may not capture the intricacies of the hiring
process.

If you are only using an ATS to enhance your hiring, it's time to elevate your hiring game. More on how to do that on the upcoming posts.

#recruitment #interviewintelligence #informedecisions

WHEN YOU NEED EXPERIENCE TO GET THE JOB BUT YOU NEED A JOB FOR EXPERIENCE

#informedecisions #hiring #recruiting

DO YOU AGREE WITH @SIMON SINEK?

Although we admire @simon sinek, we beg to disagree with him on this one.

You should definitely hire for both attitude and skills.

Although skills can be taught, some, particularly human skills (also known as “soft skills”) such as effective communication, emotional intelligence, and servant leadership, can take a long time to develop. When hiring for a role, we strive to onboard new hires within a reasonable timeframe and maximize ROI on the hire.

That doesn't mean we only need to hire “perfect” candidates (do they even exist?). On the contrary, the skills-based approach to hiring encourages leaving our preconceived notions on what is the relevant experience and education at the door and to assess candidates on obtaining the relevant skills for the position.

A growth mindset and positive attitude can certainly aid in skill acquisition through curiosity, self-learning, openness to feedback, and introspection. However, if the required skills are too far from the candidate's current abilities, these qualities can only go so far.

 

FIVE WAYS TO MAKE YOUR JOB INTERVIEWS MORE INCLUSIVE AND DIVERSE

Job interviews are a crucial part of the hiring process, but they can also perpetuate discrimination and bias if not handled properly.

Here are five ways to make your job interviews more inclusive and diverse:

1. Review the position’s description and requirements: Make sure that the language you use in your job description and requirements is gender-neutral and doesn't exclude any particular group of people.

2. Train your interviewers: Provide training to your interviewers on unconscious bias and cultural competency. This will help them avoid making assumptions about candidates based on their appearance, race, or background.

3. Create a structured interview process: Use a consistent set of questions for all candidates and avoid relying on the interviewer's gut feeling. This will help reduce bias and increase the diversity of your hiring.

4. Be mindful of your body language: Be aware of your nonverbal communication during the interview, including maintaining eye contact, smiling, and nodding when appropriate.

5. Encourage diversity in your recruitment process: Consider recruiting from a variety of sources and actively reach out to diverse communities. This will increase the diversity of your candidate pool and give you a better chance of hiring a diverse and inclusive team.

By implementing these strategies, you can create a more inclusive and diverse hiring process that will help you to find the best candidates for your organization.

Remember, diversity and inclusion are not only values, but also drives better performance and innovation.

4 WAYS TO CREATE A POSITIVE CANDIDATE EXPERIENCE AFTER THE INTERVIEW

1. Don’t ghost - sounds intuitive, right? yet, so many companies don’t get back to candidates after they invested time and effort in the hiring process.

2. Don’t stall - waiting for an interview answer can be a nerve-wracking experience. If the time to make a decision is prolonged, keep the candidate informed and notify them when they can expect an answer, even if it’s a general range.

3. Provide feedback - in case you reject a candidate, don’t just respond generically with the “we decided to move forward with more suitable candidates” line. They invested their time and hopes in the process and what you can give back to them is extremely valuable — feedback. For example, “we feel your storytelling and data/python capabilities need to improve.” For even better feedback, be as specific as possible and, if possible, share examples from the interview. Some candidates might push back on the feedback, but most will appreciate the opportunity you gave them to improve for their next opportunity.

4. Collect feedback - both from candidates that were rejected and hired. Besides the fact that it will help you learn and improve your hiring practices, you are giving candidates a voice, which is a way to show respect and appreciation.

8 WAYS TO CREATE A POSITIVE CANDIDATE EXPERIENCE DURING THE INTERVIEW

For many, an interview is a stressful situation. As an interviewer you have the power both to create a positive experience for the candidate that will allow them to be at their best or induce more stress and create a negative candidate experience (see our #interviewhorrorstories).

So what can you do to help a candidate be at their best?

1. Smile - welcome the candidate with a smile — it’s as simple as that. This will immediately make the candidate feel welcomed and relieve stress.

2. (very short) Small talk - “How was getting here?”, “How has the process been so far?”, “How are you feeling today?” These types of questions help the candidate ease into the interview.
Disclaimer: do not get caught up in a conversation that can flow to irrelevant directions that might bias you, such as the candidate lives in the same neighborhood as you, and take up precious interview time.

3. Introduce yourself - your name, role, and short background.

4. Manage expectations - regarding interview goals, duration, stages (if they exists), note taking (”I will be taking notes throughout the interview in order not to rely on my memory, but on what you actually say”), allotted time for questions (”We will allocate 10 minutes at the end of the interview for your questions”).

5. Allow time for thought - some of the questions asked in an interview require pulling specific facts and stories from memory and some require heavy information processing. Not all candidates are “quick on the draw.” Allow candidates time to think and let them know it is ok to take their time. In cases when a reasonable amount of time has passed you can offer the candidate to go back to the question later.

6. Leave time for candidate’s questions - we sometime get so caught up with asking the candidate questions and gathering as much information as we can that we do not leave enough time for their questions. Remember, you can also learn a lot from a candidate’s questions and that the candidate also has to choose you. It’s your responsibility to provide them with sufficient information to make an #informedecision.

7. Thank the candidate for their time - again simple, but shows respect to the candidate’s time.

8. Share information on the next steps - “Expect to hear from us in the next X days, In case we move forward the next steps of the process are…”

3 WAYS TO CREATE A POSITIVE CANDIDATE EXPERIENCE BEFORE AN INTERVIEW

Before an interview, transparency and communication are the main contributors to a positive candidate experience: 1. Set expectations - regarding interview date and time, number of interviewers and their role, interview duration, interview medium (F2F, Zoom, Teams etc.) 2. Share information - what will be the focus of the interview? what types of questions will be asked? will the interview include some kind of a professional task? simulation? challenge? If you have sample questions that you can share with candidates in advance that will minimize uncertainty and allow the candidates to be at their best. If you are using an interview or video platform to conduct the interviews, make sure you share instructions on how to connect to the platform and check for audio and video. 3. Make candidates feel welcomed - send an email or a text a day before reminding the candidate about the interview and convey the feeling of anticipation from the organization’s side to meet and get to know the candidate better. Use phrases like: “We are excited/looking forward/anticipating to get to know you better.” You can also create anticipation from the candidate’s side by writing: “During the interview, the interviewers will share more about the position and department and how do these connect to the organization’s mission,” “You will have a chance to learn about…,” or “You’re invited to ask questions regarding…”

UNECCESARY INTERVIEW QUESTION #2: WHERE DO YOU SEE YOURSELF IN FIVE YEARS?

3 reasons NOT to ask “Where do you see yourself in 5 years?” in an interview:

1. It’s a worn-out question the interviewee is expecting and most likely has a scripted answer to.
2. The interviewee knows what you want to hear and will tell you just that (”I see myself progressing professionally to managerial positions within your organization).
3. The world of work is rapidly changing and no one knows what will happen in five years — people change jobs and careers, adopt a side hustle, juggle multiple gigs, change priorities during life.

So what should you ask instead?

If your goal is to understand the candidate’s aspirations and motivations you can ask:

Where DON’T you want to be in five years?

This will bring up interesting answers about what the candidate is aiming to avoid: working in a big or small company, doing the same job they are doing today, etc.

Another possible question is:

What is your biggest career aspiration?

This might also change with time, but it can reveal how high the candidate is reaching and how they define their success (in terms of status, salary, knowledge, impact, etc.)

UNECCESARY INTERVIEW QUESTION #1: WHY DO YOU WANT TO WORK FOR US?

There is a good chance the candidate doesn't aspire to work specifically for you, rather you were one of the company’s they applied to in their search.

When you ask this question you are asking for a socially desirable answer or, in other words, you are waiting for the candidate to tell you what you want to hear. All you will learn from this question is if the candidate researched your company in advance — nothing about their motivation.

If you want to understand a candidate’s motivation you can ask questions like:

What other positions have you applied to?
Which components of your current or previous job did you like and dislike?
What are the job’s key components you are attracted to? which ones are you concerned about?
If you had a chance to earn more and do less of (liked job component) or earn less but do more of (liked job component) - what would you choose?

Image Source: Bored Panda

Please don’t "tell me about yourself"

3 reasons why asking “tell me about yourself?” is bad interviewing practice:

1. Broad and unfocused: As an interviewer, you’re racing against the clock to collect the information that will enable you to decide if the candidate fits the position. “Tell me about yourself” can take the interview anywhere, including places that aren’t necessarily related to the job’s relevant skills.
2. Candidate experience: ”Tell me about yourself” is a stressful question for many candidates. “What does the interviewer want to hear? about my experience? hobbies? relevant skills? etc.?” A vague, open-ended question like this needlessly adds stress to the interview process.
3. Interviewer bias: This is a great place for bias to creep in. Candidates that have done their homework about the interviewer can impress them with irrelevant facts like "we went to the same school" that automatically generate biases like "similar to me" bias.

#informedecisions #recruiting #hiring #interviews #candidateexperience