AI helps you discover the right patterns without bias.
Good pattern recognition allows you to make better decisions, short-circuit lengthy processes, avoid mistakes, and better understand risks.
But it has a downside too. Just because you can see a pattern in what has gone before, it is no guarantee that those same things will be true in the future.
Pattern recognition produces particularly flawed results in the hiring process.
When you hear hoofbeats, it’s probably horses. But you never know when it might be a zebra.
We all want to hire people like us, but true innovation comes through diversity.
Recruiters know that they should strip-out any markers that trigger unconscious bias when interviewing – but unconscious bias is hard to fight. The only way to remove those markers is via technology.
AI helps you discover the right patterns without bias.
How does AI solve discrimination and bias issues in recruitment?
Every role has a unique profile and every person has their own unique personality and aptitude DNA. We use a combination of natural language processing (NLP), a branch of AI-specific to text data and machine learning to predict with 85%+ accuracy if someone is right for a role.
NLP provides methods to program computers to process and analyse large amounts of human language data. It takes many forms, but at its core, it’s about communication, but we all know words run much deeper than that. There is a context that we derive from everything someone says.
Google, Facebook, IBM Watson are technologies that also rely on NLP to comb through large amounts of text data. The end result is insights and analysis that would otherwise either be impossible or take far too long.
Busting the stereotypes with interview data
Women are more conscientious than men in their text interview.
Men make on average 4.5% more language errors than women while taking 2% more time on average than women.
Interestingly men show higher levels of English fluency using more difficult words than their female counterparts, more than 4.5% on average.
These stats fluctuate depending on the role. For example, when applying for customer service roles, women take 6% more time than men while making 5% fewer language errors (language errors include grammar and spelling errors).
Women use more words on average in their text interview than men. We don’t find this to be the case.
Who writes more depends on the role family, but we find the difference to be +/- 2% on average (effect size, a more accurate way to measure the difference in averages is less than 0.2 across all role families. This is considered small). For example, in Graduate roles, men write more and in sales and hospitality roles females write more, while answering the same interview questions.
Our data shows that more extraverted candidates are preferred at the hiring stage for sales roles.
On average a hired candidate is 7 percentile points higher in extraversion than the candidate population average. As we track new hire performance in their first 12 months and beyond, we are starting to see a different profile turning up in the better sales performers – more introverts.
In sales, your single-minded focus on targets is far more important than how you present yourself. For recruiters who think otherwise, they may be operating with bias.
Related
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5 Tips To Maximise Trust In Grad Recruiting During COVID-19
Graduate Recruiting
Article 2 of 2 |
With graduate hiring, trust in your process is even more important. You never know when a poor candidate experience might end up on Glassdoor or Whirlpool or other such sites. Given there is a lot out of our control now, what you can control is how you and your organisation choose to engage with your graduates.
1. Personalise your communications
Be 10x more humanistic in your communications than ever before, to soften the stress everyone feels right now. Use technology that humanises the application experience. Use your photo in emails, dial down the formal side of your comms, show care and empathy right up the top. These are unprecedented times that call for a whole new way of connecting.
2. Reduce the asymmetry in recruitment and give something back!
It is now table stakes that every graduate experience is one that rewards both sides – offering personalised learning for the grad and some good quality data intelligence for you the recruiter. Intelligence that looks like this https://bit.ly/2R6LuIc
3. Use assessment tools that feel more human
This means being mobile-first and using engaging and relatable assessments that everyone can do in their own time and untimed to take away the unnecessary pressure. Tools like FirstInterview https://bit.ly/39KoqFP
4. Remove bias from your processes
The right AI tool can ensure every graduate applicant has an equal and fair opportunity to be considered because:
- They don’t rely on the CV, which is a biased and inadequate reference point for the traits that matter the most, such as growth mindset, accountability, drive and grit.
- They remove irrelevant markers of job fit like your ethnicity, your gender and your age, unlike video interviewing, which bakes in biased selection.
5. Hire for values and train for skills
We have all read the research saying Gen Z will have ten jobs in our lifetime. That means the real skills that matter is grit, drive, accountability, curiosity and even humility to know you won’t always know what you are doing and how to do it!
That means uncovering these traits and values has to be a critical ingredient in your assessment tool. Doing that via human interviews is no longer acceptable given the bias we all bring to those conversations. Still, more than that, few businesses will retain a human assessment process when Ai does it better faster and cheaper. 600x faster and at least 3x cheaper. Here are the 2 metrics that should matter the most to any recruiter.
There are AI tools out there to help you with this including the ability to run a virtual group assessment to deliver the same integrity of assessment days with a lot more efficiency > WATCH VIDEO HERE.
It’s about time to look at AI for your graduate recruitment.
Get in touch here with Barb, Nick or Jess
To read the first article click here
https://sapia.ai/graduate-recruitment-during-covid-19-whats-different/
Blog
These 6 start-ups will be in the ‘spotlight’ at Spring HR Tech
The pandemic hasn’t slowed down innovation in HR tech
While the past year has brought considerable challenges to the HR function, there is one silver lining: Innovation in HR tech is abounding. Despite the disruptions of the pandemic, the HR tech market has continued to thrive—with many new entrants tailoring solutions to the unique HR needs that have arisen in recent months, says Steve Boese, chair of the HR Technology Conference, which will be held in Las Vegas in the fall.
Steve Boese
“The HR technology start-up space has been extremely vibrant for years, and the pandemic, it seems to me, has not really slowed the pace of innovation very much if at all,” Boese says. “Newer, more agile tech companies can often provide important and immediate benefits to help organizations react quickly to a changing environment.”
Boese will share several of the most innovative solutions during a Spotlight Session at this month’s Spring HR Tech, a free and virtual event. Boese and conference organizers reviewed about 75 start-ups, conducting demos and meetings with about 30 of them, to ultimately select six standout start-ups that will demo during the conference session. The session, Six Emerging HR Tech Startups to Put on Your Radar Now, will begin at 2 p.m. Friday, March 19.
“These six showcased innovation, relevancy, impact and leading-edge technology for HR organizations that we felt represented a great selection of the best in new thinking in HR tech,” Boese says.
Although the start-ups address a range of issues facing HR, their work is being uniquely driven by recent events.
“As you would expect, the impact of the events of 2020—the pandemic and the social justice movement in particular—are definitely influencing the technology developments we are seeing,” he says. “So, areas like mental health and wellbeing, diversity and inclusion and even support for offboarding employees are three specific areas that will be showcased in the session.”
The participating companies are:
Unmind: a technology solution employers can use to support their overall mental health programs and strategies
FutureFit AI: a new approach to separations, offering people a more supportive and personalized experience as they transition to their next role
Hourly by AMS: a set of tools to help both organizations and candidates navigate the hiring process for hourly roles
Sapia (Formerly PredictiveHire) : a fully digital software solution for volume recruitment
Eskalera: a platform that drives employee inclusion through training, reflection and connection
Work Shield: a tool that manages employers’ reporting, investigation and resolution of workplace harassment and discrimination issues in their entirety
To keep up to date on all things “Hiring with Ai” subscribe to our blog!
You can try out Sapia’s Chat Interview right now, or leave us your details to get a personalised demo
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Why you need to treat your candidates as you would your customers
If a new customer entered your store and was keen on buying something, you would never dream of ignoring them.
Even if they’re just browsing, you would not let them leave without trying to make a good impression on them. You’d try and win them over for next time they are looking to buy. You’d respect and thank them for thinking about you, and share knowledge with them about products you have, so that they leave better informed consumers. Maybe they’ll remember you the next time they have a purchase to make.
This same philosophy needs to apply to candidates who apply for jobs at your organisation.
Yet, everyday we don’t … and it’s damaging. It’s damaging to both brands and to the people who apply to them.
You need to treat your candidates as you do your customers. You need to treat them with respect, give them an interview experience that makes them feel comfortable, familiar and convenient, is fast, and dignifies the effort they have made in applying. Go further and give them feedback and insights about their strengths and weaknesses that they can use when looking at other jobs, it’s likely they will think of you in the future, and recommend you to their friends.
What Qantas did right
As Michael Eizenberg, Head of Qantas Group Talent, Digital & Analytics told us: “We care deeply about two things when it comes to hiring. Firstly, diversity and inclusivity, and secondly the experience of everyone who comes into contact with the Qantas brand. Our goal is to treat every candidate like we would a customer.”
Qantas metrics prove the value of treating candidates as customers.
- Application completion is at 93%, a phenomenal outcome. (Completion rate of the video interview previously used was 50%.)
- 98% of candidates report the feedback they are provided is helpful and accurate.
What to look out for
The idea of creating positive candidate experiences is not new, but the global talent shortage has empowered candidates in a way that companies are no longer the ones wielding the power.
You’re not doing the choosing. Candidates are. They are assessing you at every step of the way in a recruitment process.
We need to treat candidates not just as ‘prospective employees’, but put on the best show as “prospective employers”. We need to roll out the red carpet and listen to their needs – from the first moment they interact with us.
We’ve heard about the great resignation across the globe as people have reassessed their lives and decided they want more from their job than just a steady paycheck.
People looking for jobs not only have more choices, but they also possess more information about companies thanks to technology like Glassdoor. They will likely do research on your company before they apply.
Much like shopping has changed the way people buy things, making online comparisons and reading reviews, the internet has created a similar opportunity for job seekers who are looking for the best place to work.
Organisations need to not only consciously articulate and promote the value they offer and why people should consider working for them – they actually have to prove it through their recruitment process.
The candidate is a consumer of your “product’ (your workplace and everything you stand for), or at least you need to think of them as one.
This means making people feel valued by your company even before they work there.
You can read how Qantas’ approach to treat candidates as customers has improved the quality and retention on their candidates here.