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Written by Nathan Hewitt

A CV tells you nothing

CVs are still the most frequent data source used

This seems obvious but yet even today this is the key data source used in screening and hiring. For grad recruitment, your degree, your university and your uni results are key filters used in screening.

It’s already been four years since Ernst & Young removed university degree classification as an entry criterion as there is ‘no evidence’ it equals success. Students are savvy and they know how competitive it is to secure a top graduate job. In the UK, the Higher Education Degree Datacheck (Hedd) surveys students and graduates about degree fraud. The annual results are pretty consistent – about a third of people embellish or exaggerate their academic qualifications when applying for jobs. Read more here >

We analysed ~13,000 CVs, received over a 5 year period, all for similar roles for a large sales-led organisation. From this data set, 2660 were hired and around 9600 rejected. We wanted to test how meaningful the CV is as a data source for hiring decisions.

Can you pick which group was hired?

Look at these two word-clouds. One represents the words extracted from the CVs of those who were and the other from those who were rejected. Which would you pick?

A word cloud depicts the relative frequency of words appearing in the set of resumes by the size of the words in the word cloud, i.e. words in larger font size appears more than the ones in smaller font size. Given that the two word clouds show no significant differences in the words in larger or smaller font sizes means that the two groups are indistinguishable based on the words used within CV’s.

The Bottom Line? The CV is not a reliable data source to guide hiring decisions.

P.S If you had picked Group 2 you would have been right.

Not only does the CV not matter, but it also turns out our prior experience doesn’t count for much either.

Josh Bersin, the premier topic expert in our space, articulates how hard it is to predict performance through traditional testing in this way .

“Managers and HR professionals use billions of dollars of assessment, tests, simulations, and games to hire people – yet many tell me they still get 30-40% of their candidates wrong.”

And now the definitive publication for all things HR, leadership etc. the Harvard Business Review, has shared research that prior experience is also a poor predictor of performance. Read more >

So what signals DO tell you something about whether a person is a good fit for your role, or for your organisation?

Whether their background is similar to yours or the person in your team who is a star? Whether they have played a competitive sport at a senior level (because that’s a good indicator of drive and resilience)? Or maybe whether they are a different ethnicity, gender, educational background to the rest of your team because, you know … diversity is meant to be good for business!

The list of performance ‘signals’ are as many as the number of people (interviewers) you have interviewing new hires. It’s a deeply personal decision like who you choose as a partner and we all feel like we know what to look for. But we don’t.

And no amount of interview or bias training or even interview experience is ever going to make us better at these decisions.

But experience does matter, but it’s a different type of experience. It’s the experience that comes from doing something 10 x, 10,000 times, a million times, with feedback on what worked, what didn’t, under what context etc. And of course, if one could remember all that.

Think of a different context- the grading of an exam. If you ask your teenager or university-aged son/daughter what would make them trust an exam result, they would likely say
1. Consistency
2. Anonymity
3. Data-driven, i.e some kind of formula for assessment, that assures consistency and fairness.
4. The experience of the assessor.

The fact is … just as no human driver will ever match the learning capability and velocity of a self-driving Tesla car, no assessor will ever be as good as a machine that’s done it a million times. The same applies for AI in recruitment.

No human recruiter will ever match the power, smarts and anonymity presented by a machine learning assessment algorithm.

We would love to see you join the conversation on LinkedIn!


Suggested Reading:

https://sapia.ai/blog/everybody-lies/


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Predictive Analytics: Your resolution will fail, here’s a promise you can keep

When technology is used in the right way it can enhance and improve our lives

During this seasonal holiday a great many of us will start to create plans for the forthcoming New Year. We’ll think about events, occurrences and happenings of the year gone by and many will commit to doing things better next year.

Even though studies have shown that only 8% of people keep their New Year’s resolutions , we still make (and subsequently break) them. But the intention was there, so good work!

Have you ever stopped to think about the processes your brain undertakes to enable you to set your goals for the New Year? No? Well, luckily I’ve done that bit for you. To make that resolution you combined your current and historical personal data and produced a future outcome, factoring in the probability of success, based on your analysis. A form of predictive analytics, if you like!

Predictive Analytics.

Using historical data to predict tomorrow’s outcomes

Thinking about those things you did (and didn’t do) this year and predicting/projecting for next year.

So now you know what it involves and we are (loosely) agreed that you’re on board with predictive analytics, when better than to tell you now that 2016 is going to be the year when we really start to see the benefits of predictive analytics within our jobs and people functions at work.

I think it’s now universally accepted that when technology is used in the right way it can enhance and improve our lives across every sector and industry. Most fields have seen significant developments over the last 20-30 years as technology is increasingly used to further our understanding of the way things work, enabling us to make better decisions in areas such as medicine, sport, communication and, arguably, even dating (predictive analytics is used in all of those sectors by the way!) so why not use it to help us find the right people for the right organisations?

Did you know you no longer need a top-class honours degree to work at Google?

Every employee is put through their analytics process allowing the business to match the right person with the right team, giving each individual the best environment to allow their talent to flourish.

Companies such as E&Y and Deloitte are using different methods to tackle the same problem – removing conscious and subconscious bias attached to the name and/or perceived quality of the university where applicants studied.

Airlines, retail, BPOs, recruitment firms a growing number of businesses within these sectors are using or on-boarding predictive analytics to achieve upturns in profits, productivity and achieving a more diverse and happier workforce.

Predictive analytics helps us make people and talent decisions to positively influence tomorrow’s business performance without bias, so I guess the question is this – if it’s already a proven science to achieve results, why isn’t everyone doing it? How long until everyone starts to use, and see the benefits, of predictive analytics?

Which logically raises the question: what are the benefits?

  • Time efficiencies – wouldn’t it be great for all parties in an interview to know that the data is indicating this role and person are a good fit before the candidate walks into the room? Hopefully reducing the reliance on both parties to be having a “good day”.
  • Diversity, inclusion removing the optics so often associated with a role. No more stated, or implied, previous sales / retail / PR experience but instead you can attract people from as broad a spectrum as possible knowing the data will help identify those candidates who have the foundation for success within your business and could well be your next superstars!
  • Churn/attrition – wouldn’t it be great to know that you can fill your 10 / 50 / 2000 seasonal/part-time roles from a pool of candidates who will have a higher chance of staying with the business longer, becoming successful brand ambassadors for your company leading to happier staff and customers alike.
  • Unique to your business – wouldn’t it be fantastic to know that all of these predictions are tailored purely for your business? For example, knowing that a candidate not overachieving in their previous role at one of your competitors isn’t reflective of their potential and that you can take advantage of their previous training and knowledge because the data says they’re going to be a better performer within your business.

Data can be big and it can be daunting, but it can also be invaluable if you ask and frame the right questions and combine the answers with human knowledge and experience. You will be surprised by the insights, knowledge and benefits that your business can obtain from even the smallest amounts of data. Data you probably already collect, even if it’s unknowingly or unwittingly!

List of Recruiting Resolutions

So as you start rummaging through your brain trying to remember where you filed your finest seasonal outfit(s) (that might just be me!), start prepping for the new year budgets, or start writing your list of resolutions let me help you frame a few questions:

  • Does your sector suffer from a skills shortage?
  • Would your company like to know which candidates from another sector have a higher likelihood of success post-training?
  • Would your business like to see an upturn in performance or people metrics such as increased sales, decreased absenteeism, longer tenure for better performers or a more diverse workforce? Would your Finance, Talent or HR head of department like to see an improvement in the variety of measures that indicate a better, more productive and happier workforce?

Statistically, your personal New Year’s resolution is unlikely to be on course in 12-months time so instead, why not make a resolution to bring predictive analytics into your talent processes in the upcoming year?

You’ll see the benefits for years to come, and that’s a promise we can both keep.

Happy holidays!

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90% Faster Hiring Results for Tribepad Users with Sapia

Being able to access interview automation just got so much easier inside Tribepad, with Sapia. To explore the use cases for Sapia, let’s chat.

What does this mean for Tribepad users?

Here’s a quick rundown:

Sapia is an interviewing platform that offers every applicant an interview – by mobile chat.

  • All candidate first interviews are now fully automated. They answer 5-7 behavioural interview questions by text. With interview completion rates of 90%, the experience speaks for itself.
  • Candidates get something back of great value with 99% candidate satisfaction scores.
  • Candidate’s answers are assessed, scored and ranked in Tribepad for you to see.
  • Lastly, you get to the best talent much quicker with 90% recruiter time savings, against standard recruiting processes.

See solutions here

And now that we are integrated into Tribepad, you get all of these smarts inside your existing Tribepad application. At Sapia, we interview every applicant in-depth and at scale for you. Overall, this is by using a text chat that helps you find the best people fast. Our underlying data science has been accepted and published in international journals.

Tribepad is feature-rich, why do I also need Sapia?

Firstly, no one’s time is served well by screening thousands of CVs. With every additional applicant costs your business an extra $20 in screening if you are doing it the old way, automating the screening process is the commercial decision companies are now making.

  • This means you get talent in faster, and that can impact business metrics
  • It means everyone gets an interview – without your team having to do any of the grunt work
Sapia is used by a diverse range of business all around the world. Still, most of them have similar challenges of:
  • Finding the right people for their most important roles 
  • Identifying those people fast and efficiently
  • Interrupting bias in hiring and promotion
  • Ensuring every person hired amplifies your values
  • Creating a candidate experience that is engaging and rewarding.


How does it work for Tribepad users?

Once your vacancy is created in Tribepad, a corresponding interview link will also be created.

Candidates click this link to enter their text-based interview. This is known as the ChatInterview.

As soon as candidates complete their interview their results are displayed inside Tribepad. You also get to see the candidate’s personality assessment. With the pre-assessment already done for you, it makes shortlisting much faster. Thus, by sending out one simple interview link, you nail speed, quality and candidate experience.

As a Recruiter on Tribepad, for what roles should we use Sapia?

The SmartInterview experience is most commonly used for high-volume recruiting. Our customers typically use it in frontline customer-facing roles (like contact centres, customer service) and/or for low-skill roles.

We help manage the disconnect between attraction and retention. This is all done by allowing Recruitment Teams to work more efficiently to hire the best talent. All is done whilst ensuring the applicants feel good about applying for a job role.

Sapia solves the time problem of managing a large applicant pool. It also tackles the quality problem of pin-pointing the best people from that pool. Additionally it solves the candidate experience problem by offering every applicant a fair chance at the opportunity (everyone gets an interview) on platforms they love to use. Simultaneously every candidate gets something of immense value in return for their application.

We already use Tribepad. How do we connect Sapia?

We are glad you are asked! The first thing to note is Sapia is a paid app and sold separately. Next, to explore the pricing that suits your organisation, let’s chat. Lastly, our team can take you through the integration process and describe how the interview automation experience works.


Join the conversation

Also, to keep up to date on all things “Hiring with Ai” subscribe to our blog!

Finally, you can try out Sapia’s SmartInterview right now, or leave us your details here to get a personalised demo.

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Here’s where to start with improving your employer brand

In this jobs market, the secret to success is not necessarily a huge job ad budget or a top-range salary and perks package. You don’t even need to be the biggest, or the best known – many are the top-notch candidates that have been ghosted by the world’s most sought-after companies.

How to improve your employer brand | Sapia.ai employer brand software
If you want to improve your employer brand, a mix of consistency, technology, and marketing nous is required.

You do, however, have to invest in employer brand. Most of us know this, of course, but few companies have made the appropriate investment in long-term brand building. It’s a marketing play, fundamentally, and it’s difficult to do right, but the benefits can be huge for your business.

Why should you care about employer branding?

It’s your best long-term approach to recruiting. If you give every candidate a caring, consistent, and memorable experience, you will dramatically increase your fill rate AND your talent network. People talk about good experiences – in fact, according to our own data, a single good experience while applying for a job makes candidates 77% more likely to recommend you as an employer of choice.

The good news is, too, that the impact of an employer brand can be easily measured, according to Dr John Sullivan: By the number of job applications you receive each year. Now, don’t confuse this point with the opening sentence of this post – there’s a difference between a company’s brand and its employer brand. You might be a Fortune 100 company with a household name, but if your job application process is terrible, people will know you and remember you for that. 

(And, if you’re not careful, a poor employer brand will end up affecting your wider brand.)

Where do you start with improving employer branding?

Your employer brand touches everything. You have seconds to introduce yourself to candidates, show off your best features, and get them to apply. That doesn’t mean, however, that you need to throw everything out and start again. Start with some easy wins, and then take a wider focus to include things like your technology and feedback processes.

Stodgy artwork, pixelated logos, spelling errors, outdated information, broken links… these will break your recruitment strategy before it has had the chance to work. So start here.

Employer brand audit checklist

Channel Items
Website Is our ‘About us’ section up to date?
Do we have a ‘careers’ or hiring information page?
Do both sections, along with the rest of our website, adequately reflect our values?
Social media platforms Is our ‘About us’ section up to date?
Do we include correct contact information, including to our website?
Does our imagery and content reflect our brand values?
Are our job postings attractive and adequately promoted on the page?
Recruiting portals (Seek, Indeed) Is all of our information up to date?
Are our visual branding touchpoints (logo, header/banner images) of sufficient quality?
Is all of our information up to date?
Third-party recommendation apps (e.g. Glassdoor, Productreview.com) What is the average star/quality rating of our reviews (mostly negative, positive, mostly positive)?
Have we made an effort to visibly address customer/employee feedback on the platform?

 

It’s important to note that the branding and visual appeal of your organization is not primarily your responsibility – maintaining it is a team effort. But portals and third-party apps are often overlooked over time, as a brand develops and organization information changes. It’s never a bad idea to champion the task of regular housekeeping, and get your best marketing minds to help.

Improving employer brand with technology

With our Ai Smart Interviewer on your team, you’ll give every single candidate an engaging, empowering experience with your brand, boosting its value from the moment they click ‘apply’.

You can have offers out to the best candidates in just 24 hours. This is an incredible value proposition for candidates who are applying for 5, 10, maybe even 20 jobs at a time and usually don’t expect to hear anything back.

Here’s how it works:

  • Every candidate interviews with our Ai over chat (and in return, gets personalised insights and tips – another tick for your employer brand and EVP)
  • Shortlisted candidates auto-progress to a non-Ai Video Interview (which, candidates rate 9/10)
  • Hiring managers review the video responses and pick the best with the help of our Talent Insights profile.

Our customers have cracked the candidate experience code, enjoying application completion rates in excess of 80%, and candidate satisfaction scores of more than 90%. Everyone gets an interview, and no one is ghosted.

Remember: There’s no space in this market to be slow.

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