Talent Pools & Rubber Floaties: Everyone is Invited

Today it’s all about the tech! From attracting, interviewing, evaluating, hiring, onboarding, and training – tech has changed the people game for businesses.

COVID accelerated the use of virtual interviewing and other HR software and made it a necessary, not “the cool thing to do”, for most companies.

Is this a good thing?

Fun fact. A survey found that 54% of Gen Z job seekers will not fill out an application if a company’s technology is outdated. So, start by getting your tech right.

Today, you can do on-demand interviews (giving the candidate preset questions and having them record themselves) or two-way live. You can record sessions and go back and review when you have time, when you get down to two and can’t decide, or if one person on your team had a very different reaction to a candidate – try to see why? (could it be some kind of unconscious bias or the candidate rubbed them the wrong way)

You can give someone a case study and let them present or maybe role play a challenging work situation.  Maybe you can gamify some aspects of the interview process?

Deeper Pools

There is a lot of great talent out there right now!

New recruiting software and virtual interviews are an opportunity to access a more diverse and deeper pool of candidates. To leverage these pockets of talent outside traditional networks, your Head of People/HR must be thoughtful and deliberate. As always with technology, there is the good, the bad, and the ugly.

Virtual interviews eliminate the hassles of scheduling and travel for candidates. Mix that with greater acceptance of work from home arrangements and you remove geographic barriers. Talent can spread beyond the usual startup hubs.

On-demand interviews mean candidates can interview any time that works for them – scheduling around their job, family, or other responsibilities. That is a big win. Particularly right now when people are juggling so many obligations at once.

As the pool of applicants grows for each role now that everyone is looking, or for industries that do high-volume recruitment, companies are relying on AI-driven tools to weed through the pile and to help with decision-making – for example, analyzing interviews. As we have learned, AI can have a discriminatory impact, so companies have to consider reliability of the technology and potential bias.

Do your homework. Don’t over rely or remove the human element entirely – these are human beings with personalities and particular ways of doing things, interacting with teams, adapting to change and responding to opportunities and challenges.

Quickness

The other side of this story is that companies are still relying on their networks for talent. If they are looking to move quick, for example, they may ask around. SocialReferral, a new technology lets employers leverage their employees’ networks. Interesting. It expands the pool, but does it get you the best candidate? Does it get you outside the traditional networks?

Then again it’s easy to see the appeal, employee referrals turn candidates into employees 55% faster (also lead to greater retention rates). Companies need to be mindful.

One interview video software, Harqen apparently delivers up to 70% improved time to hire.

Tech definitely speeds up the process. If you want to snatch up hot talent could be a good thing. If you’re in an industry that is exploding like healthcare or logistics, you may need to move fast.

Culture

Caution. When it comes to hiring, don’t move too fast. Many Founders I work with find that when they made a quick hire, it often didn’t turn out well because the person was a not a good cultural fit or they didn’t dig into their experience enough.

Try to understand who they are as a person. Put together questions for those one-way interviews and two-way lives. A one-way interview is a great opportunity for someone to show their approach to work, their ambition or attitude, and their personality.

Two-way is all about the personal connection. Engagement. Virtual interviews give you the same opportunity to assess gestures, expressions, and body language. Pay attention.

Get past resumes and pedigree. What value will someone add? Not just their skills but in their interactions with others, how they think and process information, what motivates them…

Here are a few questions I like – what’s your favorite interview question?

What’s your superpower?

What's the most important thing I should know about you?

When's the last time you failed spectacularly at something?