As the world embraces remote working, how we recruit and conduct assessment centres has changed.
Before the onset of COVID-19, concepts like social distancing were unfamiliar to the majority of us.
However, as we navigate through over half a year in this COVID-influenced environment, it’s evident that our lifestyles, work routines, and social habits will undergo lasting transformations. As global economies start to rebound, the repercussions of these changes on organizational recruitment practices are becoming evident.
Historically, for roles in high demand, Assessment Centres or “Group Interviews” served as a cornerstone for volume recruitment.
Yet, with a growing inclination and necessity to uphold social distancing or reduce face-to-face engagements, global organizations are pivoting to fully digital assessment centers, powered by modern technology.
The top 5 tips to facilitating a winning remote Assessment Centre:
1. Adjust all assessment centre activities to remote
The first thing to consider when moving to remote assessment centres is what adjustment or changes you might need to make to the activities you run with the applicants. Group interviews (either 1:1 or 1:2) are generally unaffected, but you will need to remove group activities which involve materials (i.e. lego or straws). Group activities which tend to be most effective are:
- role-play activities
- problem-solving activities
- case studies, and
- presentations.
2. Allow for tech issues when setting up your digital assessment centre environment
While technology will be your best friend in the transition to remote assessment centres, you won’t be able to control all aspects of this. For example, assessors or applicants might have an unexpected issue with their computer or unstable internet connection. Don’t let this deter you, as the cases are rare – but be prepared for how you will respond or how you may need to adapt to minimise disruptions and keep the assessment centre on-track.
3. Schedule your digital assessment centre in detail and well in advance
Scheduling won’t be anything new to seasoned Group Interviewers. The difference now is you need to be scheduling a few additional factors to make for a smooth day, and engaging applicant experience.
Consider scheduling your day in blocks:
1 – Introduction & roll call
2 – Interviews
3 – Group activities
4 – Wash up and calibration
Tip! You will need multiple video conference links and breakout rooms prepared and scheduled for each of these.
4. Practice makes for the perfect assessment centre
Most of our customers have been doing assessment centres for years, but doing them remotely is a different game.
Your best bet is to do a ‘dry run’ with your assessors, even if only to walk through the process, schedule and technology – that way, on the day, there are no surprises!
5. Take advantage of technology that specialises in digital assessment centres
Last but by no means least, take advantage of technology to do all the heavy lifting for you. Most organisations will have a video conference or collaboration platform which works effectively with multiple ‘rooms’ and large groups. If not, we recommended Zoom, as it has one of the highest video compressions rates ensuring the best possible experience for applicants and assessors. After this, you will need an assessment centre platform, such as LiveInterview, which allows you to manage your remote assessment centres without the need for spreadsheets, hours of admin, and painful calibration discussions.
Want to know more about how we can help you make your remote assessment centres a success? Click here to get in touch.
Make your digital assessment centres easier and fairer with LiveInterview
It is for these reasons that Sapia has launched LiveInterview – the app that specialises in making group interviews:
1. Easier to organise
2. A pleasure to be there
3. Yield better results – especially considering all attendees were preselected using FirstInterview!
4. Totally fair and equitable
5. Consistent and standardised
6. Easy to administer. No record-keeping needed anymore, ever
7. Data-driven objective decision making plus it delivers a better hiring yield.
Watch the video here:
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And we’re just getting started 🚀
Take a look at the highlights of 2024
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It’s an all-in-one volume hiring platform that enables our customers to deliver a world-leading experience from application through to offer.
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Every 15 seconds, a candidate is interviewed with Sapia.ai.
This year, we’ve saved hiring managers and recruiters hours of precious time that can now be used for higher-value tasks.
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Situational Judgement Tests vs. AI Chat Interviews: A Modern Perspective on Candidate Assessment
Choosing the right tool for assessing candidates can be challenging. For years, situational judgement tests (SJTs) have been a common choice for evaluating behaviour and decision-making skills. However, they come with limitations that can make the hiring process less effective and less inclusive.
AI-enabled chat-based interviews, such as Sapia.ai, provide organisations with a modern alternative. They focus on understanding candidates as individuals and creating a hiring experience that is both fair and insightful while enabling efficient screening and selection.
This shift raises important questions: Are SJTs still a tool that should be considered for volume hiring? And what do AI assessments offer in comparison?
1. The Static Nature of SJTs
Traditional SJTs use predefined multiple-choice questions to assess behavioural tendencies and situational knowledge. While useful for screening, these static frameworks lack the flexibility to adapt based on real-world performance data or evolving role requirements.
Once created, SJTs don’t adapt to new data or evolving organisational needs. They rely on fixed scenarios and responses that may not fully reflect the dynamic realities of modern workplaces, and as a result, their relevance may diminish over time.
AI-enabled chat interviews, on the other hand, are inherently adaptive. Using machine learning, these tools can continuously refine their models based on feedback from real-world outcomes such as hiring or turnover data. This ability to evolve ensures the assessments align with organisations’ needs.
2. Richer Data Through Open-Ended Responses
One of the main critiques of SJTs is their reliance on multiple-choice responses. While structured and straightforward, these options may not capture the full scope of a candidate’s thinking, communication skills, or problem-solving ability. The approach is often limiting, reducing complex human behaviour to a few predefined choices.
AI-enabled chat interviews work more holistically and dynamically. These tools provide a more complete picture of a person by allowing candidates to answer questions in their own words. Natural language processing (NLP) analyses their responses, offering insights into personality traits, communication skills, and behavioural tendencies. This open-ended format lets candidates express themselves authentically, giving employers a deeper understanding of their potential.
3. The Candidate Experience: Stressful or Supportive?
SJTs often include time constraints and rigid formats, which can create pressure for candidates. This is especially true when candidates feel forced to choose options that don’t fully reflect how they would actually behave. The process can feel impersonal, even transactional.
In contrast, chat-based interviews are designed to be conversational and low-pressure for candidates. By removing time limits and adopting a familiar chat interface, these tools help candidates feel more at ease. They also frequently include personalised feedback, turning the assessment into a valuable experience for the candidate, not just the employer.
4. Addressing Bias and Fairness
Traditional SJTs are prone to transparency issues, as candidates can often identify and select the “best practice” answers without revealing their true tendencies. Additionally, static test designs can unintentionally embed bias; due to the nature of the timed test, SJTs have been found to disadvantage some groups.
AI chat interviews, when developed ethically within a framework like Sapia.ai’s FAIR Hiring Framework, eliminate explicit bias by relying solely on the content of a candidate’s responses. Their machine learning models are continuously validated for fairness, ensuring that hiring decisions are free from subjective judgments or irrelevant demographic factors.
5. An Assessment That Improves Over Time
Workplaces are constantly changing, and hiring tools need to keep up. SJTs’ fixed nature can make them less effective as roles evolve or organizational priorities shift. They provide a snapshot but not a dynamic view of what’s needed.
AI-enabled chat interviews are built to adapt. With feedback loops and continuous learning, they incorporate real-world hiring outcomes—like retention and performance data—into their models. This ensures that assessments stay relevant and effective over time.
Rethinking Candidate Assessment
As hiring demands grow more complex, so does the need for tools that can capture the whole person, not just their response to hypothetical scenarios. While SJTs have played an important role in hiring practices, they are increasingly being replaced by tools like AI-enabled chat interviews.
These modern approaches provide richer data, adapt to changing needs, and create a richer and more engaging experience for candidates. Perhaps most importantly, they emphasise fairness and inclusivity, aligning with the growing demand for unbiased hiring practices.
For organisations evaluating their assessment tools, the question isn’t just which method is “better.” Understanding the specific needs of your roles, teams, and candidates will help you choose tools that help you make decisions that are both informed and equitable.
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Keeping Interviews Real with Next-Gen AI Detection
It’s our firm belief that AI should empower, not overshadow, human potential. While AI tools like ChatGPT are brilliant at assisting us with day-to-day tasks and improving our work efficiency, employers are increasingly concerned that they’re holding candidates back from revealing their true, authentic selves in online interviews.
As an assessment technology provider, we are responsible for ensuring the authenticity and integrity of our platform. That’s why we’re thrilled to unveil the latest upgrade to our flagship Chat Interview: the AI-Generated Content Detector 2.0. With groundbreaking accuracy and a candidate-friendly design, this innovation reinforces our mission to build ethical AI for hiring that people love.
Artificially Generated Content (AGC) is content created by an AI tool, such as ChatGPT, Claude, or Pi. We initially rolled out the first version of our AGC detector last year and have continued to improve it as our data set has grown and these AI tools have evolved.
What’s New?
Our updated AGC Detector 2.0 achieves an impressive 98% detection rate for AI-assisted responses, with a false positive rate of just 1%. This gives organisations peace of mind that they’re getting the most authentic assessment of every candidate.
This cutting-edge system builds on Sapia.ai’s proprietary dataset of over 2 billion words, derived from more than 20 million interview question-answer pairs spanning diverse roles, industries, and regions. It’s trained on real-world data collected before and after the release of tools like ChatGPT, ensuring it remains robust and reliable even as AI tools evolve.
The Challenge of AI in Chat-based Interviews
Our data shows that around 8% of candidates use tools like GPT-4 to generate responses for three or more interview questions. While these tools may offer a quick way for candidates to complete their interview, they can inadvertently hide a person’s true personality and potential – qualities our customers are most interested in understanding through our platform. In fact, research from Sapia Labs shows that these tools have their own personality traits, which may be quite different from the candidate applying for the role.
For Candidates: Enabling Authenticity
When a response is flagged as potentially AI-generated, the system doesn’t disqualify candidates. Instead, a real-time warning pops up, allowing them to revise their answers or submit them as-is. This ensures that candidates are encouraged to present themselves authentically, reflecting their unique communication styles and sharing their genuine experiences.
For Hiring Teams: Actionable Insights
Responses flagged as AI-generated are highlighted in the candidate’s Talent Insights profile, accessible via Sapia.ai’s Talent Hub or ATS integrations. These insights give hiring teams the transparency to make informed decisions, fostering trust while accelerating hiring timelines.
Built on Unmatched AI Interview Expertise
“Our detection model’s strength lies in its foundation of real-world interview data collected from diverse roles and regions,” says Dr Buddhi Jayatilleke, Sapia.ai’s Chief Data Scientist. This depth of understanding enables the AGC Detector to maintain its industry-leading accuracy – even when candidates subtly modify AI-generated answers to appear more human.
Why This Matters
The AGC Detector 2.0 embodies Sapia.ai’s commitment to ethical AI that amplifies human potential. As our CEO Barb Hyman explains:
“The hiring landscape has fundamentally changed since ChatGPT, but our commitment remains clear: AI should amplify human potential, not penalise it. This breakthrough fosters authentic hiring conversations. Our real-time warning system helps candidates make better choices and gives enterprises confidence in their selection decisions.”
Testing and Validation of the AGC Detector 2.0
The new detector has been rigorously tested on over 25,000 interview responses generated by humans and leading AI models like GPT-4, Claude-3.5, and Llama-3. The results speak for themselves, reinforcing the reliability and fairness of this game-changing technology.
Fairness & Transparency in AI-Enabled Hiring
By detecting AI-generated content while allowing candidates to correct their responses, our AGC Detector 2.0 ensures every applicant has the chance to put their best, most authentic foot forward when applying for a role powered by Sapia.ai. For enterprises, it provides confidence in the integrity of their hiring decisions and ensures they’re connecting with real candidates at scale.