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AI’s Role in Diverse Hiring

It’s easy to say that we are all doing our best to foster diversity and inclusion during hiring and within the workforce. However, the question remains: are our efforts towards diverse hiring truly successful?

Our unconscious biases are notorious for seeping through, despite our every effort to avoid them. We’re not perfect; we’re human.

DE&I Initiatives Have a Questionable History

It may come as no surprise that Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DE&I) initiatives have often failed in the past.

In 2016, Frank Dobbin and Alexandra Kalev wrote in the Harvard Business Review: “Firms have long relied on diversity training to reduce bias on the job, hiring tests and performance ratings to limit it in recruitment and promotions, and grievance systems to give employees a way to challenge managers. Those tools are designed to preempt lawsuits by policing managers’ thoughts and actions.”

However, Dobbin and Kalev continue, “Laboratory studies show that this kind of force-feeding can activate bias rather than stamp it out.”

Keep in mind that DE&I initiatives were not as advanced in 2016 as they are now. With their constant evolution, we’re seeing a shift from archaic DE&I programs, such as ineffective training programs, and a move towards technology, such as ethical artificial intelligence (AI)in the recruiting process. While it is true that HR training programs can lecture on recognizing bias, the fact is that these biases are often unconscious. It’s next to impossible to avoid them.

By taking human bias out of the equation, ethical AI introduces the opportunity to identify candidates based on skillset in the initial stages of recruitment. After all, interviews can be intimidating, so it’s impossible to expect every candidate to represent themselves perfectly in the eyes of the recruiter.

How AI is Enhancing DE&I Initiatives

According to Naomi Benjamin for Forbes, “AI-based software platforms that are both data-driven and taught to ignore traditional prejudices rely on algorithms that prevent historical patterns of underrepresentation.”

AI allows recruiters to avoid unconscious biases by allowing machine learning to distinguish key skillsets during candidate assessments. Instead of focusing on the way a candidate sounds, speaks or looks, AI takes away the initial biases we all possess and allows candidates to represent their skills free of judgment.

Pair that with behavioral assessments, and you’ve begun the ascent to increasing diversity and creating a more inclusive workforce.

Ensuring AI Actually Improves Workforce Diversity

AI bias is something of a hot topic right now. Christina Animashaun at Vox notes that critics often argue, “Such systems can introduce bias, lack accountability and transparency, and aren’t guaranteed to be accurate.”

However, consciously avoiding biases and using pure data in order to build a recruiting system that fairly utilizes AI is something we’re seeing more often.

Take Knockri’s technology as an example. It objectively identifies foundational skills in a candidate’s interview response and isn’t trained on human interview ratings or performance metrics.

While AI might be a newer technology being implemented in the recruiting world, know that it is on its way to helping us address and be more conscious of our own biases. By just focusing on the content of a candidate’s response rather than how they say it, AI removes our own influences and allows us to make the best decisions in hiring top talent.

Why Diversity is Essential to Company Success

Forbes notes that ethnically diverse companies are likely to outperform their less diverse counterparts by upwards of 36 percent, and that “having diverse teams introduces varying thought processes, perspectives and ideas.” Furthermore, according to a 2018 report by McKinsey and Company, ethnically and culturally diverse organizations are 43 percent more likely to experience higher profits.

Who wouldn’t want that, right?

David Rock and Heidi Grant of the Harvard Business Review write that diverse teams are more likely to remain objective, hold better accountability among teams and stay sharper with the tasks at hand. Being part of a company with a diverse team should, in essence, mean you are constantly bouncing ideas, seeing success and learning together as you grow.

Continuing to Foster Opportunities in Your Diverse Organization

There remains the conversation of ensuring your workforce continues to feel valued and is offered the same opportunities after recruitment. As a leader, it’s critical to keep this at the forefront of your responsibilities.

While we may avoid bias in the initial stages of recruiting with the help of technology and AI, it’s also important to consider how we avoid bias in our interactions with our workforce. Focusing on how you provide transparency and opportunities for those often discriminated against, such as women, people of color, those with disabilities, LGBTQ+ employees and more, is critical for continuing to foster DE&I initiatives.

However, starting from the beginning of a candidate’s experience as they come into your organization, then recruiting with a purpose to ensure DE&I, are great stepping stones to foster opportunities.

With the help of technology, allowing your recruiting process to give marginalized groups more opportunities is a great first move towards diversity.

Sources (linked throughout the article)
https://hbr.org/2016/07/why-diversity-programs-fail
https://www.forbes.com/sites/sap/2021/06/28/how-technology-supports-workplace-diversity-equity-and-inclusion/?sh=15410f0f28b8
https://www.vox.com/recode/2019/12/12/20993665/artificial-intelligence-ai-job-screen
https://knockri.medium.com/why-your-a-i-is-biased-how-to-fix-it-76006491b482
https://www.forbes.com/sites/ellevate/2021/07/08/four-ways-your-organization-can-step-up-its-diversity-and-inclusion/
https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/organization/our-insights/delivering-through-diversity?zd_source=hrt&zd_campaign=399&zd_term=sushmanbiswas
https://hbr.org/2016/11/why-diverse-teams-are-smarter
https://www.greenhouse.io/blog/how-unconscious-bias-affects-employee-experience-and-how-to-reduce-it
https://www.forbes.com/sites/ellevate/2021/07/08/four-ways-your-organization-can-step-up-its-diversity-and-inclusion/

Ensuring Fairness in Automated Hiring: A First-of-Its-Kind Study on Machine Learning and Personality Assessment in Recorded Interviews

Machine learning tools for video interviewing platforms have been on the receiving end of sharp criticism, and not without justification. Some technology within the budding sector has demonstrated biases, making for problematic hiring practices, but tech is only as empathic as the people who build and maintain it, and our call-to-action at myInterview has always been to build new kinds of systems from the ground up to help foster diversity and uphold candidate experience.

The Questions & The Observations

To address the doubts and questions that have arisen around automated candidate review, particularly in regards to personality assessment, the need became clear for a thorough scientific study on the effectiveness and fairness of these high-potential solutions. The remote conditions of the pandemic highlighted the immense benefits of video interview solutions. It took their use to new heights, but along with the heightened potential of these tools, so too is there a heightened imperative for greater transparency into how these systems fare when compared to traditional methods of reviews conducted by trained personnel.

With this study, we set out to determine the ability of machine learning algorithms to replicate the Observe, Record, Classify and Evaluate (ORCE) system. ORCE is an assessment approach, traditionally carried out by multiple expert raters, that evaluates interview behavior against specific, predetermined job dimensions and competencies.

This methodology can measure how well candidates perform throughout an interview, gather relevant personality data and ultimately generate fair assessments for all applicants. By focusing on observable insights that are transparent and clear for all decision-makers, the steps of this methodology can mitigate the possibility of discrepancies, disregarded information or misremembered data.

A key piece of our study was the involvement of two expert raters with extensive ORCE training and experience in psychology, personality assessment and data evaluation. We asked these experts to manually review 4,512 recorded interviews and rank them according to the Big 5 Factors of Personality (Openness, Conscientiousness, Extroversion, Agreeableness, Neuroticism) based on evidence of behaviors presented through both interview content and candidate intonation.

This step of the process provided a dataset against which we could then compare the machine learning solutions. Those same 4,512 interviews, selected randomly from a range of job openings with a diverse set of applicants from the UK, Australia, USA and Mexico, were subsequently analyzed by myInterview’s Machine Learning-powered ranking algorithm.

Analyzing the Data

Our algorithm yielded an average correlation of 0.452 across the Big 5 dimensions. This represents a healthy result, albeit with room to improve, for a first-of-its-kind study. The results are promising, as frankly, the correlation rates were higher than we had expected, demonstrating that the overall accuracy of the personality assessment can already be trusted at the current levels of development. Having this benchmark and data provides context for the current state of automated hiring and sets a high bar for operational expectations across the industry.

One of our primary takeaways from this study was that these tools can not only assess personality in job candidates effectively and efficiently, but they have the ability to reduce the potential for biased input on the part of both candidates and hiring managers, as well.

That’s good news for the HR industry but even better news for job candidates hoping to be evaluated on their own merits. We firmly believe that automated personality assessments have the potential to eliminate two of the major issues that plague traditional personality assessment methods.

First, self-reporting questionnaires depend on any given candidate to have a high enough level of self-awareness and personal insight to accurately report on their behaviors. Second, reviewer biases during the interview process are difficult to mitigate. Growing public concern about machine learning perpetuating the same mistakes as human assessors is valid, but it overlooks the fact that a standardized automated process with long-term monitoring allows for methodical, data-informed system updates.

This is to say that while automated hiring tech may be born with the same level of fallibility as its human counterparts, it is also born with the possibility of even greater accuracy through the process of improvement over time

Conclusions & Confidence

Once again, tech is only as empathic as the people who build and operate it. To build a hiring platform that promotes diversity, one must keep diversity in mind while building and using every element throughout the solution, from the tagging teams who sort the data, to the developers who design the system, to the machine learning experts who monitor for problems at every step of the process.

As the hiring market swells alongside economic recovery, the rise of streamlined automated processes that can be conducted in the fairest way possible should be extremely encouraging to both job seekers and organizations looking to grow. We hope that the scientific backing of this method, as determined by the experts in our study, will allow organizations to optimize hiring and bolster company culture by adopting the latest in AI technologies while remaining confident that they are making the best, fairest hiring decisions possible.

What’s Good for Candidates is Good for Recruiters: The Long-Term Benefits of Video Interviewing

Video interviewing has come a long way since its initial advent way back when. And in 2020, video became not only a nice to-do, but a must-have to keep employees working and business moving. As we approach the other side of the pandemic experience, having witnessed the power of video interviewing firsthand, it’s clear that video offers companies a better way to hire – for recruiters and for candidates.

Here’s why.

For Recruiters

Encourages authenticity

Resumes are static documents that give recruiters little context beyond a list of qualifications and accomplishments. Video complements the resume, cover letter, and application and takes the pressure off of in-person meetings. It’s an authentic medium that lets candidates show off their personalities and background.

Promotes collaboration

Video can be used throughout the recruiting lifecycle, from introductions to formal interviews, making it possible to connect candidates with various stakeholders easily. At the same time, video helps stakeholders collaborate once videos get recorded, able to create a shortlist, add their comments, and rate submissions.

Streamlines processes

The addition of video can also help recruiters save time, particularly at the screening stage. Rather than spend hours making call downs to candidates who look good on paper, recruiters can send out automated invitations, enabling candidates to answer a few questions on their own time.

A force multiplier

Right now, many companies are still considering what their workplace model will look like in the coming months and years. Video supports recruiting in all three scenarios, offering more options and giving recruiters the ability to source candidates from anywhere.

Delivers deep analytics

Traditional interviews rely primarily on the insights and understanding of the interviewer, whereas video adds rigor to the process. Analytics can help recruiters learn more about candidates, determine which questions get the most helpful responses and encourage data-driven decision-making.

For Candidates

Less busywork, more storytelling

Being asked to tailor resumes, cover letters, and applications for each role is time-consuming. Video interviews can be short – five minutes or less – and give candidates the power to speak freely rather than fit their information into a box.

Offers guidance

The internet is full of conflicting advice about improving resumes and prepping for interviews. With video, candidates get practical guidance from the hiring organization in the form of increased communication, something the Talent Board’s research finds is a key differentiator of a positive candidate experience year after year.

Reduces the hassles

Interviewing can involve a lot more than simply showing up. Video gives candidates the opportunity to focus on answering the questions to the best of their ability, instead of whether or not the interviewer can see them sweating from across the room.

Attracts passive candidates

Similarly, traditional interviews can be challenging for those currently employed. Video builds space for passive candidates, allowing them to proceed with the job hunt on their terms, something research shows 41% of the workforce is contemplating.

Adds more structure

Like the point made earlier about analytics, traditional interviews can be less structured, with interviewers following a line of thinking rather than a series of set questions, which sometimes lead to bias. Video can encourage consistency and ensure that all candidates receive the same experience during their interviews.

And that’s just scratching the surface

Video interviewing is a better way to hire because it takes the process we’ve been using for ages and updates it for today’s world. It gives recruiters and candidates the tools they need to succeed – to get the job and get the job done.

What’s Next for Programmatic Job Advertising? A Conversation with Terry Baker of PandoLogic

There’s a lot of talk in the talent acquisition space about hiring faster and hiring better. Words like efficient and effective get tossed around repeatedly without much explanation of what, where, when, why, or how. PandoLogic has been envisioning the answers to these questions for some time, which is one reason the programmatic job advertising platform recently acquired AI recruiting provider Wade & Wendy. Together, the two companies are poised to revolutionize the faster and better narrative, said PandoLogic CEO Terry Baker in a recent conversation.

Terry, tell us why Wade & Wendy?

The conditions of the last year created a perfect storm in the labor market. Job openings are up, but job applications are down, and countless other factors compound the struggle many employers face.

That said, when it comes to finding candidates, PandoLogic already handles everything from an efficiency perspective. We automatically increase the volume of applicants: right ad, right place, right time, the right price, right talent. But up until now, programmatic job advertising hasn’t necessarily been able to account for the quality of applicants – and that’s where Wade & Wendy come in.

We’re referring to the relationship between PandoLogic’s AI-enabled programmatic advertising and Wade & Wendy’s conversational AI as “The New Power Couple” because it’s a powerful combination that the market hasn’t seen before.

How does this move support PandoLogic’s growth as an organization?

The acquisition of Wade & Wendy accelerates our roadmap in three strategic areas:

First, it represents the evolution of PandoLogic from product to platform. We’re augmenting the recruiter’s capabilities via programmatic advertising that extends the reach and widens their lead funnel while providing predictive analytics on both cost and yield. Now, we can enhance those capabilities further by automatically targeting candidates in the funnel through conversational AI and creating relationships through more personalized and automated messaging.

The second key area is developing more diverse job seeker communities that help match talent to opportunities. Wade & Wendy’s conversational AI coupled with PandoLogic makes it possible to personalize self-nomination capabilities early on. By clearly defining a quality application without the inherent bias of human intervention, we’re helping employers source for more diverse workforces.

And finally, we’re advancing the programmatic maturity model. The work we’re doing with Wade & Wendy hasn’t been done in this space before. We’re transforming the connection between efficiency and effectiveness by layering candidate quality into the process.

What does the acquisition look like at a product level?

Customers have the option to purchase Wade & Wendy and PandoLogic products independently or as a bundled offering. Focusing on the combined offering, the addition of Wade & Wendy to PandoLogic will provide customers with several benefits, including a more engaging application experience, the personalized self-nomination capabilities I mentioned earlier, the ability to see the diversity metrics of the applicant pool by source, improved screening functionality, and more.

I would encourage anyone interested in learning more about the specifics to request a demo – you really need to see us in action.

Given the amount of activity in HR Technology recently, how do you see the addition of Wade & Wendy to PandoLogic impacting the space overall?

HR tech has always been a dynamic industry, but I think there’s a universal shift in priorities that’s taken place. Employers want best-of-breed point solutions, but they also require deep platform integration. When it comes to the top of the recruitment marketing funnel, they can now have both thru PandoLogic. In addition, the conditions of the last year and a half changed how job seekers view potential employers, and that’s put talent acquisition at the precipice of a revolution.

The old problems are getting compounded by new challenges. Recruiters need to rethink their strategies and find ways to optimize their efforts, and we believe that the addition of Wade & Wendy to PandoLogic can be a key differentiator and significant expansion of their abilities. We tuck in with other HR tech, help make all the right connections, and create a flawless candidate experience.

With the job market changing so quickly, how do PandoLogic and Wade & Wendy support evolving hiring needs?

When we made the initial announcement, we talked to a number of journalists and industry analysts about what the combination of conversational AI and programmatic advertising will mean longer-term. Madeline Laurano of Aptitude Research commented, “We’re entering one of the hottest job markets in over a decade, making the need to recruit intelligently and hire quickly crucial to organizational viability.”

There’s a lot in her statement that resonates with PandoLogic and our mission as an organization. We’re working to change recruiting in real-time and help talent acquisition teams become more responsive and more adaptable to the world around them. By putting programmatic and conversational AI together, we’re reducing the complexity of job advertising and making it possible to hire faster, better, and at scale.

Big thanks to Terry for taking the time to chat with us!

If you’re interested in learning more about PandoLogic and Wade & Wendy, check out “The New Power Couple: AI-Enabled Programmatic + Conversational AI.”

Professional Sports Give Us a Look into the Future of Selection

The UEFA European Championship (soccer) is currently underway. Contenders like Spain, Germany, and Belgium have AI assistance based on performance data to help them with their starting eleven. Professional sports give us a great perspective on the future of selection.

Algorithms are Not Always a Straight Shot

As we all know, in the labor market we’re already using algorithms in selection. If done badly, they will increase bias, if done right they diminish bias.

The right way to go about this is always to use scientifically validated tests that measure traits necessary for the job and ignore the resume as the primary pre-selection document.

When we’re talking about traits necessary for work, think about stress resilience for air traffic controllers, listening skills for contact centre employees, and at least some inhibition for security guards and bouncers. As talent doesn’t run by lines of age, gender, ethnicity, or sexual orientation, when selection on relevant traits, diversity will always increase.

There is, however, a risk that using selection algorithms, even when well implemented, can lead to a monoculture. Because almost every job can be done really well in more ways than one. Some salesmen are great at building relationships while others excel in customer acquisition. Having both types of people in your sales team makes for a better team.

Team at Stake

Playing for England, Harry Kane delivers his way as a forward. Marcus Rashford, Phil Foden, Jadon Sancho, and Raheem Sterling all have their own skillset to perform. The differences between all of them are striking.

Not only physically or technically, but also in decision-making, anticipation, attention, and information-processing. Some of them match very well together, others to a lesser extent. When two strikers both excel at predicting and arising spaces, they will do so, together.

Filling those spaces by running into them at the same time isn’t what you want to see them do. When one of them anticipates and the other reacts by acting fast, they could form the crown couple. Foden acts more like the cockpit of the Three Lions’ jet fighter; Sterling is its deadly weapon.

A good team manager understands these differences and applies this in favour of the team.

Even when co-workers do very individual work there are still multiple ways to excel. Let’s take a journalist for example. You have journalists that have a specific area of expertise and can talk in-depth with the experts in the field. You also have excellent listening skills and have high information processing speed and hence can ask really good questions. Both can produce excellent articles, but if you train an algorithm to have only one profile, one type will always be selected and you will end up with a monoculture editorial staff.

Diversity On the Ball

Back to sports: Southgate’s choice between the available options is determined by specific game needs. Metrics like ‘Number of goals in last season’ or the trending ‘expected goals value’ alone won’t solve his problem. Does he prefer excellent anticipation skills or extremely fast responsiveness? Will he prevail speed of action or positioning? It’s not about selecting the eleven best-performing individuals, it’s teamwork that makes the dream work.

The fact there are more ways to excel at the same job doesn’t mean there isn’t a certain baseline of specific traits for everybody in a job. Every journalist needs a minimal skill level of listening ability and linguistic knowledge. Every striker needs an above-average information processing speed and every stock market trader needs Indycar racer-like reaction speeds.

But when you are developing AI or any algorithm for selection, it should always have more than one perfect profile. There are always more ways to excel in any job.

Let’s use the diversity in soccer, in all facets, all systems that can be played, and all the ways we can play the same system to be a guide to our own hiring.

This article was written in co-production between Bas van de Haterd, consultant on modern selection tooling and Eric Castien, founder and CEO of Brainsfirst, a tool used in professional sports and business to match talent to opportunity based on brain profiles.

Candidates are More Than Just a Resume

Resumes, CVs and biodata documents have been used to secure employment for hundreds of years (if not longer). Simple enough, right? But that’s the problem.

Resumes haven’t changed much over the years. As a result, they offer up little more than a reductionist summary of the candidate in question.

Just creating resumes can be confusing for job seekers, especially given the ongoing debates about what information to include versus omit.

Is a summary necessary? What about hobbies and interests? How long should the document be? Font type? Size?

At the same time, on the employer side, the resume review process has developed a bad reputation over the years, mainly due to some likely fictitious (or difficult to validate) statistics that get repeated in article after article.

You know, the ones that posit most recruiters only spend seven seconds on their initial screen.

Something has to give.

The underlying issue

Going back to the point made at the outset, the real problem with resumes is that they don’t do the candidate justice. Resumes ask complex, creative beings to reduce themselves down to a list of accolades and accomplishments in hopes these align with a series of bullet points listed out in the job description.

Employers do their organizations a disservice by trying to fit job seekers into little boxes. Few things in life are ever that neat or organized.

As anyone who has ever hired knows, perfect candidates do not exist.

So, why are we continuing to rely on this restrictive approach to recruiting?

Well, as you’ve no doubt heard before, “that’s the way we’ve always done it.” Perhaps the most stifling words ever uttered. But here’s the thing: the world has changed; from the technologies we use to connect with one another to the ways we interact with one another.

Everything is different, except this one document with roots that trace back to Leonardo da Vinci, if not earlier.

An overt opportunity

By recognizing that the traditional resume no longer supports modern hiring, it becomes possible to reimagine a process that enables us to see beyond the page. By acknowledging the limitations we’re putting on candidates, it becomes possible to reconsider what we’re looking to learn about job seekers.

If the point of a resume is to provide a summary of professional experience and achievements, why not allow the candidate to speak for themselves and show us who they really are, personality and all?

We have the technology to facilitate all this and more.

The hard part is breaking away from the “that’s the way we’ve always done it” mindset.

But if there’s ever been a moment in history when the world is ripe for innovation, it is now as we start to emerge from life under pandemic conditions.

We’re already starting to see it happen, too.

The New York Times recently wrote about the YOLO economy, where candidates are demanding change, spurring the call to return to the office and finding new jobs that suit their preferences.

And part of that change involves how we hire – candidates want a process that promotes better communication, which includes the chance to be heard.

Companies who don’t recognize this may lose out on top talent.

An idea for what’s next

It would be naïve to think the resume will get replaced overnight – hundreds of years of usage indicate otherwise.

That said, we have the chance to expand it, to make it more than a static document. We need to read not only between the lines but also off the page.

Hiring isn’t about how good they look on paper (or, in contemporary parlance, inside the ATS). We want to hire people, not resumes, which means we need to build a hiring strategy that helps us get to know candidates earlier on in the process.

Video is one such tool, having proved its value repeatedly over the last year and a half.

As a medium, it can fit at various stages in the recruiting process, complementing or even supplanting the resume entirely. Video resumes have existed for several years, as have video interviews.

More recently, we’ve seen the rise of video screening, a shorter, snappier use of video that frees up hours otherwise spent conducting phone calls to candidates.

That last bit is significant because it begs the question, why do those phone calls exist? And the answer is: to get the information not captured by the resume.

It’s time we stop having candidates tell us who they are and let them show us instead – which research indicates is what they want from the process.

Let’s do better and put candidates front, center and on screen.

Are We the Bad Guys?

There is a satirical movie line where a soldier from a notorious regiment realizes their presence in a foreign land is not to save or restore.

The solider does a slow turn to look at his superior and asks “…um, are we the baddies?”

There are practices and policies within the Talent Acquisition profession that go against a candidates need to see us as knights in shining armor.

Having been a practitioner for over thirty years in talent acquisition, I can tell you for certain many of us want to be the good guys.

But our behavior to candidates says otherwise.

10 Signs you are the Baddie

You Make the Candidate Interview Over and Over

It is a candidate’s market, and passive candidates are scooped up quickly. I am going to be so bold as to give you a number, and that is two. There would have to be compelling reason to make a candidate interview more than twice.

Nowadays you can get away with a third if the candidate gets to pick the availability and the meeting is via a virtual tool. Anything more is antiquated and shows an organization does not understand the market today.

We Move Slow

This is the kiss of death. I saw a recent social media post (so it must be true) that said while in a virtual interview, a candidate got a job offer from another organization and just ended the call.

Do you have candidates ghosting you? This is another sign that hiring managers do not understand the market.

We need to interview within a few days of applying online and make offers within hours of the last interview to secure interest.

We ask for Information We Never Use

Old habits die hard. Do you still ask for graduation year? Or previous employer addresses? This is needed for background check, maybe.

Save those questions for that process. If it does not have to do with the resume or EEO questions, it can wait.

We Ghost People

True story. My daughter is on the job market. Today she was ghosted for the second time on an interview. She scheduled the call based on the Recruiter’s availability.

Confirmed it. And sat by the phone for a call that never came.

That is the ultimate insult. How dare they! And do not tell me “…an emergency came up”.

There is no such thing as a talent acquisition emergency. It is a sign that a Recruiter is out of their depth and overwhelmed.

We Break Up Over Text

I teach classes for the Recruiter Academy Certification. I tell students to break up with candidates but do it with love and compassion.

Not every candidate is going to get the job. As applicants, we know this. Just tell me.

If I took the time to get up, take a shower, put on pants that I have not worn in a year, drive (again which I have not done in a year), paid for parking, and took the time to interview, YOU OWE ME A PHONE CALL.

We are Not Transparent

Am I still in the running? AM I unqualified? Did you even view my resume? These are questions that candidates want the answer to.

It takes only a few seconds to mass email at the end of the day a candidate disposition. This lack of attention can be misconstrued as ingenuine and apathy.

We Abuse Your Time

Start meetings on time, end meetings on time. The employers time is not more valuable than the applicants.

Please honor the candidate’s clock, as well as your own.

We Make Promises We Cannot Keep

I have been guilty of this. I told candidates I would follow up when I knew I could not. I told candidates they seem like a good fit when they probably were not. It was not intentional.

I just wanted to leave the call on a positive note and had not learned the art of the decline. This goes back to being transparent. Practice declines and retorts that are fair and genuine.

We Disregard Your Goals

What I really think is happening here is a failure to log a candidate’s goals and dreams. Not intentionally.

But when we consider offer acceptance rates, tying a candidate’s goals to the extended position helps for higher close rates. Use candidate goals to directly affect offer acceptance.

You Make the Hiring Manager Your god

There are three people in the hiring relationship. The candidate, the recruiter, and the hiring manager. Each person has an equal part of responsibility, expectation, and needs.

It is a relationship. All three in this trio are important.

In this market, it is important that the candidate is allowed a powerful voice.

I am NOT recruiter-bashing. I spoke to a recruiter with 202 open requisitions this week.

Recruiters are busy. It is hard to find time for pleasantries when a recruiter is buried in work. I only ask that recruiters become self-aware and that leaders protect recruiters from max capacity.

Thoughtful use of technology can aid in efficiencies to free up time and automate processes. Let us all behave like the good guys.

Happy Hunting.

Just look into a candidate’s eyes (with AI)

Are our eyes really the gateway into our soul? Or our brain?

With all the controversy on facial recognition, it seems like a topic too controversial to touch.

Luckily some people dare to be controversial. Just like with micro-expressions, we don’t know enough about it to say it could work or not.

There is plenty of evidence of bias and problems, but the scientific research that was done usually shows potential.

But because of the controversy surrounding the subject few scientists dare touch the topic, even less gets peer-reviewed and nothing gets replicated.

Cognitive ability

So I was pleasantly surprised when this article came on my path. This research shows that your pupil size (the little black thing inside of your iris) can be a sign of higher cognitive ability.

And just to be clear, they are not talking IQ here, that’s just one type of cognitive ability.

We found that a larger baseline pupil size was correlated with greater fluid intelligence, attention control and, to a lesser degree, working memory capacity—indicating a fascinating relationship between the brain and eye.

As the researchers say, it’s very early days. It might just be a correlation.

It might be a biased data set, but there might also be something there.

Personality

This newest research comes on top of the research in 2018 that showed that by tracking eye movement during random tasks, like E-mailing, scientists were able to predict the Big Five personality traits with pretty darn good accuracy.

So again, just by looking at someone’s eyes, in this case, the eye movement, it seems possible to predict something about that person and about that person’s personality.

More research

Both pieces of research are cool in themselves, but not by a long shot conclusive enough to start using it.

We need much, much more research to see what is and isn’t possible.

Unfortunately, the current climate on facial recognition in hiring and laws that are being passed specifically on this topic might prevent us from actually building better tools that help recruit on actual quality.

Wouldn’t it be cool if a video interview would give you data about a person? Actual, real data on that person’s cognitive ability and personality traits?

Then a recruiter wouldn’t need to guess if that Texas is a redneck or if that Californian is a hippie? Or a recruiter wouldn’t need to be turned off because of the accent someone had and relate that to intelligence, as research has shown humans do time and time again.

And most of all, wouldn’t this be a great candidate experience? Not filling out yet another questionnaire. Not having to play all kinds of games to get someone’s ability and traits.

Isn’t this a better candidate experience if it turns out to be viable and bias-free?

Stop Searching, Start Matching with MojoRank

Recruiters talk a lot about creating efficiency in the hiring process, but few have mastered what that looks like in practice. We wouldn’t be here if you had.

A quick analysis of how we spend our time can reveal a few glaringly obvious areas of improvement. Searching for candidates is one of them.

There’s ample evidence that suggests this step can take up at least 30 hours per week, leaving little room for anything else.

By helping you stop searching and start matching, MojoRank seeks to optimize sourcing efforts and connect the right candidates with the right jobs faster.

Here’s how:

Smarter matching:

Integrated with your tech stack, the AI-enabled MojoRank works to instantly match jobs with candidates across different sources. That means a visual overview that features the best candidates at the top of your screen, showing you who fits your open reqs.

Candidate prioritization:

You can dig into the jobs in progress and review the number of matches plus the number of hot matches, i.e., the people you need to call first. Helping you prioritize candidates through a color-coded categorization of hot, warm or cold, the platform makes it possible to focus your time – say it with me – more efficiently.

Streamlined sorting:

Taking prioritization a step further, MojoRank makes it possible to sort candidates by direct apply, active and passive, to help expand your sourcing pool without creating additional work.

Intel and shortlisting:

Hover over a candidate’s profile to see basic info. Like social links, their resume, application history and any notes associated with them. This also displays similar candidates who might fit the job. So you can create a shortlist to advance back through your ATS.

Think of how many hours you could save, consolidating all those sources into one view. That puts the folks you need to be talking to front and center. How’s that for efficiency?

Learn more by requesting a demo.

Anxious about going into the office? Here’s what it could mean…

With a return to in-person work in the office, a lot of us are feeling immense anxiety. Let’s try to break down the root of where that anxiety may be coming from to see what we can learn from it.

From there, we can help you uncover why you’re feeling the way you are and of course, what to do about it.

Are you dreading the commute? Are you anxious about being in the office all day?

What it could mean:

For many of us, remote work has become something we have come to love and thrive in.

It is possible this new way of living is just up your alley, and that’s okay!

What to do about it:

Consider if you’d be happy doing a hybrid of in-person and remote work (and what balance you’re okay with), or if you’d prefer to work fully remotely. (which is okay!)

Then, explore whether it is feasible to bring this up to your manager. The time is NOW to voice opinions and concerns about this to see what is feasible as things are changing.

It is possible your company has already put up a new rigid policy and/or won’t budge on your preferences, in which case, you want to consider how strong this feeling and desire is for remote work, and consider finding a purely remote role.

Are you dreading seeing your colleagues? Are you dreading revisiting the company culture?

What it could mean:

The environment and culture of a team or company are an underrated element in our overall job fulfillment.

Aligning with the values and personality of the company and those around you can make or break how you feel day-to-day.

What to do about it:

Decide if your team is the killer here, or if it is the company at large. If it’s just the team or manager, is there another team/manager with a better culture you would be happy joining?

Unfortunately, culture is a really difficult thing to change. So if you’re not vibing or thriving in your company’s environment, it may be time to explore finding a new company and culture fit where you can be yourself.

Are you dreading the work you need to be doing? Are you feeling generally unfulfilled?

What it could mean:

Consider three separate parts to any work experience: role, industry, and environment.

Ask yourself: is it the day-to-day responsibilities that I’m not aligned with and/or is it the company mission that doesn’t intrigue me?

You want to find a role where you align with the style of the work, feel challenged, and care about the work’s impact. With the company, you want to believe in the mission, purpose, and output of what that company does, who it helps, and why.

Either the role, industry, and/or environment, could be levers for you to uncover which area needs room for improvement.

What to do about it:

If you need some clarity on the best fit role or industry for you, pursue career exploration. Career exploration is a process that is distinct from and a precursor to the job search, including a series of steps of practical learning and self-reflection in order to compare, contrast, and clarify which career path you are confident in pursuing (role, industry, and environment).

Then, you can determine if you can make a move internally or if you want to job search to find a new role elsewhere. Give yourself the opportunity to uncover what path is a great fit for you, and find support to ease the search.

Recognize that it is feasible to find a path that aligns and challenges you. 30% of U.S. employees are engaged at work, so let’s look to them to figure out how they found and pursued a path that aligned so well with them.

Listen to yourself.

The important thing to realize is to always listen to yourself. If you’re having any feelings, understand where they are really coming from, how strong that feeling is, and if it’s having an effect on you, explore potential solutions. You deserve nothing less.

Often, in careers, we brush aside our feelings or delay acting on them, only to realize weeks, months, or years later that we’re miserable.

Remember that you can explore support from peers, mentors, or coaches to at least sort through how you feel and consider ideas or next steps you’d feel confident and comfortable with, before taking any action.

Pushing past the Strategic Sweet Spot: Incorporating Your Customer’s Perspective

Mastering the Process

Total quality management (TQM) was in vogue during my undergraduate years and early career in industrial engineering. The U.S. was catching up to the Japanese in manufacturing production as their Toyotas outperformed our Fords.

Your company couldn’t deliver a competitive product without an optimized manufacturing process. Strategy followed suit as companies invested in new capabilities. The race to data-driven everything was on.

My career began at Raytheon’s Waltham plant, where I supported manufacturing lines for U.S. Navy radar and communications systems. Remember the aircraft carrier in the original production of Top Gun? Can you see the radars moving to track the action?

My production line manufactured the wiring harnesses to power those systems. After Raytheon, I supported F-16 fighter aircraft production. That mile-long factory was a sight to behold.

Industrial engineering has its roots in process design, and correspondingly, quality control. Years of problem-solving and an MBA prepared me for strategy consulting. Essentially, strategic analysis is a lot like sleuthing a production line issue. The goal to build quality into strategy design so production runs seamlessly.

We often point to strategy execution as the point of failure when the design process requires an overhaul. It is, after all, in design when we test assumptions, grab our tried-and-true analysis tools, and make the big decisions, data-driven, of course.

I’ve spent the last twenty years leading empathy-based and data-driven strategy engagements for organizations driven by purpose. The research and analysis have been rigorous, from demographic profiles to population projections and customer journey maps.

Our goal? To build alignment and vouchsafe the decisions to be made.

Turning the Sweet Spot Inside Out

As a strategist, my job is to master the most effective tools. Strategy isn’t a race for efficiency; instead, it requires a focus on effectiveness and “doing things right.” After using various tools, I landed on The Strategic Sweet Spot in Harvard Business Review’s Can You Say What Your Strategy Is? by David Collis and Michael G. Rukstad.

The Strategic Sweet Spot positions a company to answer this question, “How can we meet customer’s needs in ways that rivals can’t or don’t?” That question is the jumping-off point to discover a competitive advantage rooted in the customer value proposition.

The Strategic Sweet Spot uses a classic Venn Diagram to point the user to the sliver of overlap between your company and your customer, the section your competitor can’t touch. The assumption? Your vantage point matters most. And then, unexpectedly, a discovery in 2018.

That assumption was wrong. Mastery of The Strategic Sweet Spot led me to turn it inside out. The catalyst? A customer mindset, the holistic appreciation for your customer, their head, and their heart.

Embracing a Customer Mindset

When setting strategy, we typically prioritize quantitative data analysis and undervalue the human perspective. Often, executives delegate ownership of the customer to the marketing department, emphasizing journey maps and experiences to drive brand engagement.

What if the assumptions behind that decision are irrelevant? What if our beliefs and opinions—as executives, boards, and employees—are less important than we’d assumed all along? What if our customer belongs at the center of our strategy, their voice the one that matters most?

My eureka led me to this realization. Your strategy process needs to reflect the latest thinking. Just as TQM evolved, so too strategy must evolve for a future relevance. Two inputs culminated in my eureka experience in 2018.

First, I’d mastered the Strategic Sweet Spot. Second, I was open to seeing beyond the Venn Diagram to imagine what might be. I realized the following.

Your company’s view of the competitive landscape isn’t nearly as important as your customer’s view of the choices available to them.
Customers care about what matters to them and what matters the most.
Customers search for options constantly, especially in the post-pandemic world.

Your customer seeks an emotional connection. They expect to connect with a differentiated brand, product, and service that speaks to them. They crave unique and unexpected offerings.

Let’s bring empathy, understanding, and data together to identify what matters the most. The result? A composite customer persona derived from robust qualitative and quantitative data. An iterative process tests and confirms the insights.

An effective strategy process is rooted in a customer mindset. That perspective brings together two crucial strategy concepts—customer value proposition and competitive advantage—attuned to the realities of today.

You understand what matters to your customer and what matters most. You are also clear about what makes you distinctive, your competitive advantage. That unique nexus is the source of differentiation and the cornerstone of your differentiation strategy.

Delivering a Differentiation Advantage

Without a compelling uniqueness, your company risks being essentially equivalent, or worse, misunderstood, by savvy customers. Confused or disinterested customers will pursue other options.

It’s easier than ever to lose a customer to an unknown competitor that is a scroll, click, or keyword search away, thanks to the power of smartphones.

I leave you with these suggestions to accelerate strategic success.

Build quality into strategy design through an iterative, human-centered process. That approach allows you to test and retest assumptions as you gauge interest in the big ideas.
Elevate the voice of your customer when setting strategy. Embrace a customer mindset to reveal what matters most, and use those crucial insights to connect value proposition to differentiation advantage.
Creativity, passion, and energy during strategy setting will carry you through to execution. The more you can rally your team around customer mindset and the opportunities for differentiation, the better. After all, your team wants to engage with exciting and unique work, a sense of purpose their goal.

Let me close with this final suggestion. Connect your company’s purpose and differentiation strategy to create sought-after alignment.

Your customers and team will thank you for it. Let me know how it goes. I’m rooting for you.

The Age of the Real Employer Brand

Companies are coming out with their remote identity. Morgan Stanley says no to remote, or you will need to take a serious pay cut. Deloitte believes employees can work from where ever they want, and KPMG in the UK wants employees at least 2 days a week in the office.

All kinds of different research shows, on average, that Gen Z is more likely to go back to the office than Gen X and Baby Boomers, since building those relationships early on in your career is easiest done offline.

The one thing though everybody agrees on — getting the culture piece right in a remote or hybrid environment will be the biggest challenge.

So is this the time to start living our Employer Brand?

Company Culture

How do you keep your company culture alive in a remote or hybrid environment? How do you keep people engaged if they don’t show up to your building every day? How do you pass your corporate values to new hires?

Wait. Pass your values on to them?

Isn’t ‘not fitting the culture’ the number one reason for rejecting a perfectly suited candidate? And now you’re telling me we need to pass the culture on?

What is our employer brand worth if we cannot select based on our corporate values?

Hire on Value Fit

Every employer branding presentation I have seen in the past couple of decades, at every event I visited, started with “We did workshops in the organisation to learn the true values of our organisation.“

They usually end up with a pretty generic video that if you know the values you understand how they are in there.

In the ‘age of remote work’, this post-pandemic world — where we will be in the office a lot less — at least for most companies, shouldn’t we start living our Employer Brand? Our corporate values?

Shouldn’t we hire based on values fit — so our culture is embedded in the people not working at the office?

Why don’t we take Employer Branding to the next level and define the values like they really are? Not as a hollow term, but an answer to how do we deal with certain situations?

How do we expect a manager to react to a data breach or an employee mistake? Or how do we expect an employee to fix his or her mistake?

In assessments, we call these ‘situational judgment tests.’ You get a situation and you get three or four perfectly reasonable answers that show a totally different culture.

To give you an example of culture-defining situations here’s one.

You get a call from your clients, the product is down. How do you react?

A) You gather your team right away and figure out what’s going on.

B) You look at what’s going on and try to fix it yourself.

C) You call your manager to decide if this is your issue or if the team needs to get involved

For all three answers, I have a client that will say that’s the perfect answer. It’s a very telling example of culture.

The new employer brand

The new employer brand is about the genuine values of the organisation. Measurable values that you can select on. Let’s stop rejecting people on cultural fit and start hiring or rejecting them on value fit.

Let’s get people in the door that share your corporate values and build a strong culture from there. In a remote or hybrid environment that’s the only way.

Americans Left Out with Lack of Leave

“Two or three months’ vacation after the hard and nervous strain to which one is subjected…are necessary in order to enable one to continue his work…with energy and effectiveness.” -President William Taft, 1910.

Apparently, Americans weren’t keen on the idea of a nice, long vacation and no law was passed. Other industrialized countries took notice of this “memo” and instituted guaranteed paid vacation time, such as Sweden and Germany, mandating seven weeks of paid vacation per year.

Now, 111 years later, we still have no guaranteed paid vacation days. Nor any federally mandated paid parental or sick leave.

That’s abysmal compared to all other developed countries.

That’s why the data science team at Resume-Now asked 950+ Americans about how much leave they took and if they were aware of the paid leave available in other countries.

Here’s a quick overview of the disturbing findings from the study:

27% of working mothers had only 5-6 weeks maternity leave
59% of women avoided calling in sick when having pregnancy symptoms
26% of employees had just 2-5 days of paid sick leave
18% of survey-takers had 6-9 days of vacation
61% of respondents didn’t know the average parental leave in Europe is 26 weeks

Vacation Leaves Something to be Desired

Sunbathing with family, taking a solo museum tour, or hiking with a buddy in the woods…no matter what’s your pleasure, we all need a respite from the grind.

But, are we getting enough time for these pleasurable activities?

It’s typical to get more than 20 days of vacation in Europe.

The average number of paid vacation days for those working in the private sector for at least a year is 10 days, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. We wanted to find out if our respondents had the same.

And, it turns out, our sampling reflected those stats. A whopping 45% had between 10-15 days of vacation. Shockingly, 15% had just 1-5 days. This shows that we’re seriously overworked.

Time to relax for fun is one thing, but time to relax in order to recuperate is quite another. We wanted to find out if our survey takers had enough time to tend to themselves when feeling under the weather.

A Lack-of-Vacation Loophole

Those who are vacation-deprived have a clever solution: calling in sick when feeling peachy.

If you have enough paid sick leave in the bank, it stands to reason that employees who are running out of vacation days milk their sick leave. Those in the study reflected this stealthy solution.

An impressive 41% reported falsely calling in sick between 1-5 times per year. And who can blame them?

When it comes to vacation leave, the United States falls far behind many other developed nations, and a work-life balance really doesn’t exist.

Wellness is not a top priority, which is also reflected in the shortfall of sick leave time.

Sickening Amount of Sick Leave

It’s an unfortunate fact that at least 20 million Americans go to work sick because they do not have any paid sick leave. This approach is not popular in other parts of the world. At least 145 countries provide paid sick days for short- or long-term illnesses, with 127 providing a week or more annually.

In the United States, on the other hand, there are currently no federal legal requirements that require employers to provide paid sick leave for their staff.

In the study, it was clear that the respondents were severely lacking in sick time.

A sickening reality: 26% had only 2-5 days of paid sick leave available. A quarter had just 6-10 days. And, sadly, 2 out of 10 had no paid sick leave at all.

It stands to reason that many American workers are going to work sick to avoid losing pay. Not a good look during a pandemic.

They’re faced with the unfortunate choice of working sick or not getting paid, with 33% of them agreeing that the amount of sick time they had was adequate.

It’s obvious that we’re not getting enough time to recuperate when feeling under the weather.

No Paid Maternity Leave

It’s frankly an embarrassment. Other industrialized countries often have up to a year of paid maternity leave. The United States has none.

Although the Family Medical Leave Act ensures that employers with 50 or more workers must allow parents 12 weeks of job-protected leave per year to care for a newborn, that leave is unpaid. And many moms have to take off sick and vacation days to take advantage of this.

Only 56 percent of employees are eligible for FMLA based on an FMLA survey. Too many moms—and dads—do not have enough time to bond and care for their little bundles of joy.

The results from the Resume-Now survey confirmed the disturbing truth: Moms and dads had very limited time to spend with their newborn.

Nearly 3 out of 10 dads were only able to take 2 weeks or less of leave.

Of the moms, 27% took 5-6 weeks off. A shocking 20% took only 3-4 weeks. It shouldn’t be possible that a mom was not able to take any time off after giving birth, but 3% of moms reported taking no maternity leave.

The amount of time off these parents were able to take is minuscule as compared with most developed nations.

A devastating reality is that many moms simply didn’t have enough sick and/or vacation time left to take as much time as they needed. A full 32% of moms said they couldn’t take that time because they had no time left and needed the money.

And 19% were afraid of losing their job. As one mom said,

“I was supposed to be grateful that my company wouldn’t fire me for taking 12 weeks of unpaid leave. It’s a joke.”

Ignorance is Not Bliss

The satisfaction levels of survey-takers were baffling. Americans seem to be satisfied with the amount of sick leave, vacation, and parental leave they have. Nearly 7 out of 10 said their vacation days were adequate, 33% were satisfied with their sick leave, and 42% felt their parental leave time was enough.

And perhaps it comes back to that not-getting-the-memo idea.

Perhaps if U.S. workers were made more aware of the leave available in other industrialized countries, they’d be a little less…satisfied.

In response to several “Did you know?” questions, most respondents were unaware of the policies of other developed nations.

“Did you know that the average amount of parental leave in Europe is twenty-six weeks?”

61% said no.

“Did you know that there is no federal minimum for paid vacation or paid public holidays in the U.S.?”

47% said no.

“Did you know that most countries in Europe give their employees 20 or more paid vacation days?”

54% said no.

“Did you know that the U.S., Suriname, Papua New Guinea, and a handful of island nations in the Pacific Ocean are the only countries that don’t require employers to provide paid time off for new mothers?”

63% said no.

It’s not that all Americans feel that the situation is fine and dandy. There were voices among respondents saying that the situation regarding vacation, maternity leave and sick leave should improve and be brought into line with European standards:

“I think that America is a live-to-work and not a work-to-live society and this is reflected in the low number of paid days off most workers receive.”

“I think the US should offer time equivalent to European nations.”

Work to Live or Live to Work?

Although we are a world leader in many areas, America lags well behind other countries when it comes to paid leave.

Not only is there a lack of paid leave, but Americans are kept in the dark about how common it is to have plentiful leave in other countries.

Maybe it’s high time for the United States to also become a leader in terms of social satisfaction and innovation in the field of work-life balance and institute paid leave policies that support the hardworking people who make this a great country?

So far, these only seem to be illusory dreams—dreams of a President over 100 years ago that failed to take hold.

How Can Job Rejections Strengthen Your Job Search?

Job search is a beast. It is a phase in our lives that is harder than most of us want to admit. It takes immense emotional strength, resilience, persistence, and even creativity to succeed in the endeavor of pursuing a new job, especially one that you end up enjoying.

Luckily, through my years of career coaching, I’m here to tell you how your job rejections can actually be a source of learning so you can strengthen your job search strategy and outcomes.

Think of job searching like a funnel. Depending on the point in the process where you’re seeing less optimal results, it can actually tell you a lot about how to improve.

Are you uncovering enough open opportunities?

Your first “job” in job searching is to uncover active, open roles. If you’re not finding out about any open roles, it is possible you’re relying too heavily on the online job boards.

Don’t sleep on the fact that 70-80% of jobs are landed through networking and that a large portion of open roles are not always posted online.

Be sure to find the right guidance, coaching or mentorship to understand how to network effectively and strategically to identify open roles.

Are you struggling to land first-round interviews?

It is possible that either:

You are relying too heavily on the online job boards.

Networking can be a way to ‘get your foot in the door’ whereby an informational chat can lead to an internal referral and a first-round interview.

This allows you to be recognized as a candidate and not just an online application.

You may be applying to roles that are not the best fit for you.

If you’re applying online and your resume is being referred internally but you still don’t see any first-round bites, reflect on the level of role, the type of role, whether you need some upskilling, and how well your materials and personal branding aligns with your direction.

Are you landing interviews but not final rounds?

Usually, these early screening rounds are a core assessment for your fit for the role. This could be a telltale sign that you’re applying to too great a variety of roles and that you’re not sure which is the best fit for you.

Or that you’re not clear enough in your explanation as to why they should be sure you would excel in that role. Consider pursuing career exploration to clarify your best fit role.

Are you landing final round interviews but not landing offers?

Succeeding in Interview Projects & Presentations:

If you’re being given case studies, projects, challenges, presentations, etc. and you aren’t moving past these, consider whether the role you’re applying for is something you’re naturally aligned with and feel strong at doing.

Do you have a strong understanding of what the role requires and entails?
Can you present how you would handle this work in a way that proves that either you have handled similar challenges in prior roles or that your strengths, tendencies and inclinations make you a natural candidate who would excel at handling those specific types of challenges?
Do you need to pursue a course or certification to strengthen and develop relevant skills? Or are you pursuing a path that isn’t the best fit for you?

Interview Practice:

Another consideration at this stage could be how you show up in interviews, i.e. answering questions in a way that is succinct and structured, choosing relevant stories to tell, having an energized tone and demeanor, having professional body language, building rapport with the interviewer, and more.

Interview practice is extremely underrated as a beneficial tool to help you succeed once you show up for that interview.

Find Culture Fit:

Remember that interviews are about assessing your skills and potential but also your culture fit. Try to proactively identify companies that align with your values and personality.

Try to make your interview as comfortable, natural, enjoyable, conversational, and fun as possible.

Prove your genuine interest in the role and company through your energy, but also let them get to know you as a person. Smile!

Do you believe you?:

At every stage, consider whether your story makes sense for why you want this role and why you genuinely believe you would excel and thrive in the role.

If you don’t understand the role’s expectations or genuinely believe that you would excel in it, why should anyone else? Career exploration can clarify the right direction.

What feedback are you hearing or feeling?

You should always ask for feedback from interviewers but even if they don’t share it with you, your self-awareness and reflections are more than sufficient for you to know what you can do better next time.

After every interview, allow yourself to reflect on what you did well and what you can improve (i.e. how you target roles and companies, how you prepare, how you communicate, etc).

Know that things are sometimes outside of your control.

If you’re genuinely applying to the right types of roles and companies, you have the skills to thrive in that role, the companies are a culture fit for you, and you are clearly and convincingly articulating why you are the best fit — Then just know that as long as you genuinely believe you are on the right path, you will find the right fit in a matter of time.

But if any of these pieces feel out of place, remember to reflect and act on whichever area of your approach can be improved in order to more efficiently land a fitting role.

Should a Degree Be a Deciding Factor in Hiring?

A college degree is valuable in a competitive job market. But, it should not be the deciding factor when you make a hiring decision.

To understand why, let’s answer some of the biggest questions surrounding evaluating job candidates based on their education.

Is it Common for Job Candidates to Have a College Degree?

Research indicates about 36% of the U.S. population has completed at least four years of college. And in 2019, approximately 3.9 million U.S. students graduated with at least an associate’s degree.

One of the biggest reasons people pursue a college degree: to stand out from the competition in a fierce job market.

The National Center for Education Statistics notes the employment rate was higher for those with a college degree than those with only a high diploma in 2019. As many job seekers explore ways to land the top roles, they may be increasingly likely to earn a college degree in the years to come.

What Are the Pros and Cons of Hiring a Candidate Who Has a College Degree?

Research shows employers believe candidates with a college degree are often more “job-ready” than their counterparts. These candidates fine-tune their hard and soft skills in school so they can hit the ground running on day one at a new company.

There is also high demand for job candidates who hold a college degree at companies of all sizes and across all industries. This creates plenty of competition for businesses that want to attract quality candidates to myriad roles.

Additionally, it may inadvertently force a company to miss out on hiring an exceptional candidate, because he or she does not have a college degree.

However, the right hire generally fits within a company’s culture, is open to learning, and has the drive to succeed regardless of their educational background.

So, even if a candidate has a college degree, there is no guarantee he or she will thrive with a business.

Why Look Beyond a College Degree to Identify Top Talent?

Putting too much emphasis on a college degree can lead to an unconscious bias during the hiring process. It can put your business into a perilous position where it immediately removes outstanding job candidates for consideration from a variety of roles.

In this instance, your company won’t have a chance to meet with candidates who possess appropriate qualifications outside of your educational requirements. This can ultimately lead to poor hires who put major dents in your bottom line.

There are sometimes biases relating to the quality of a job candidate’s college degree as well. For instance, a company may ignore a candidate who holds a degree from an online university, but this is a mistake, as nearly all online degrees today are properly accredited and well respected.

If your business does still filter out online degree holders, you’re missing out on yet another vast talent pool.

Considering job candidates without a college degree helps you expand your talent pool, too. It empowers you to build a talent pool of diverse candidates who can help your company reach its potential.

Let’s not forget about the value of on-the-job training, either.

If a job candidate without a college degree has the right skills and background, he or she can learn the ins and outs of how to perform different tasks at your company. The result: this candidate can become a valuable contributor to your business.

How Can You Determine If a Job Candidate Is the Right Choice for Your Business?

Don’t wait to hire top talent for your team. Here are four tips you can use to help you look beyond a job candidate’s educational background and determine if he or she is the right choice for your company:

Use Artificial Intelligence (AI): AI can be a valuable recruitment tool if you know how to use it properly. You should not use AI to remove candidates for consideration from roles if they do not have a college degree.

At the same time, you should not rely exclusively on AI to vet candidates for roles. Instead, deploy AI recruitment technology in conjunction with your everyday hiring process. This can help you speed up the process of evaluating and hiring the best candidates.

Digitize Your Hiring Process: Not only is digitizing recruiting a means to sustainable business practices, setting up digital filters to instantly remove job candidates from consideration for roles that don’t align with your requirements allows you to streamline your processes.

These filters can help you identify terrific candidates who may or may not hold a college degree.

Improve Your Brand: Prioritize your brand strategy. Ensure job candidates know what to expect from your company and what your business is all about. This boosts the likelihood that top talent will consistently pursue roles at your company.

Be Agile: Work diligently to hire top talent as quickly as possible. The longer you wait to add an amazing professional to your team, the more likely it becomes that they may join one of your rivals.

The Bottom Line

The best companies do everything in their power to identify, attract, and retain top talent. Do your part to engage with job candidates of all educational levels, and your business is well-equipped to hire the best professionals.