A key part of choosing the right hire is having an idea of what you’re actually looking for.
It’s a fact that many indicators commonly used to assess candidates have very little (if any) predictive power when it comes to performance in the workplace.
Indicators such as years of experience, where the candidate went to school (or for that matter the grades they got), or previous employers are really poor indicators of future performance. But thankfully there is a really well-established and tried-and-true way to increase organizational competence in assessing candidates. Structured interviews, scoring guides (or Rubrics), validated tests, and a process that encourages teamwork over siloed decisions.
We tend to overestimate how good we are at instinctively assessing people. Harvard Business Review found that regarding hiring decisions, data-based hiring methods always outperformed human instincts by at least 25% - even in cases when humans had more information about the candidate.
<aside> 💡 Read more about Interviews and Tests here
</aside>
The idea is that any variation in candidate assessment is a result of the candidate’s performance, not because an interviewer has higher or lower standards, or asks easier or harder questions.
Having a clear-cut idea of which skills and abilities to grade and how to grade them across the interviewing phase is fundamental to successfully assessing the right hire. Having a firm understanding among your team and hiring managers about what you’re looking for from candidates and clearly communicating this with the team is how you set up a great assessment process.
Being transparent with candidates about the use of standardized interview questions can reassure them that they are being given the same opportunities as others. It gives you the option of providing the candidate with examples of the type of questions you will be asking them ahead of the interview, allowing them to prepare and feel more confident. This in turn can decrease nervousness, allowing them to demonstrate their work skills - rather than their performance skills.
Pipelabs will continuously build a selection of Rubrics that are usable in Scoring Guides across all verticals. Which will empower our clients to easily start using this way of working.
An assessment center does not refer to a location, but to a process that focuses on a set of varied exercises which are designed to simulate different aspects of the work environment. It can be understood as a method for assessing aptitude and performance; applied to a group of relevant candidates that are scored on several different skill sets.
By using a set standard and structure as to how grading is done the act of offering candidate feedback is suddenly not only easier but also more transparent and understandable. Hiring decisions are personal and usually important for the individual and getting rejected without really understanding why or on what grounds is commonplace.
By employing Scoring guides the candidate feedback can easily become much more professional and to a certain degree less about what the interviewers “feel” about a candidate. This, in turn, tends to build trust between the hiring organization and the individual. Something that is a key component in building relationships over time.
Understanding why one was not suited for a particular role based on clear set criteria and getting that feedback can be the start of a conversation rather than the end of one.