One of the key reasons why we believe recruiting is almost impossible to be 100% automated is the element of candidate’s personality fit to the job.
Personality fit goes beyond whether this person will naturally perform well at the role, but extends to whether he/she will get along with the hiring manager and the team, and also impacts the company’s overall culture and quality of performance.
Besides all the technical aspects of the interview process, there is always this somewhat “magical” element where the interviewer just “has a read” or “a gut feeling” for the candidate. This “magical” element, is more often than not, tied to the personality or “vibe” of the individual.
In today’s sharing, we wanted to share with you the two folds of personality fit:
Science: Psychometric Assessments Due to the often subjective interpretation of candidates’ personality fit by the hiring managers, workplace certified and validated psychometric assessments have been gaining an increasing audience base especially in organizations that strive for high caliber candidates who will perform at their best when they can simply apply their natural personality at work. The application of validated psychometric assessment in high volume recruiting will manifest this benefit even more as it will hugely increase the probability of selected candidates’ personality fit to the jobs in face of hundreds and even thousands of job applicants. This will save much of the valuable time for both HRs/Recruiters and the hiring managers for other high priority but time competing tasks at work. Despite the obvious benefits for hiring, having validated psychometric data of candidates can also help out HRs and the hiring managers to build a more diversified and inclusive workplace.
Should we simply use psychometric assessments - the Science - as the only data point for candidate selection?
Intuition: Professional Sense As professional Recruiters and HRBPs, you might have experienced scenarios where you have a “gut feeling” (positive or negative) towards a certain candidate, something that goes beyond the interview training or the bullet points listed on the candidate’s resume. Where’s that gut feeling coming from? Being in the role of HR, you are probably one of the key personals that interacts and engages with the widest demographic of the organization’s population overall. The day-to-day, one-on-one, short and deep interactions you have accumulated as valuable data points that create the foundation and constant evolution of your guage of the overall organization and specific team dynamics. Not to mention, the access of confidential financial and non-financial trajectory of the company’s future development with the HR leaders.
So the question is, which should we use?
Based on my extensive experience in the recruiting space and the global HR leadership role, I’ll recommend this: we need a combination of both and that’s called the ART of candidate selection.
The scientific aspect is best suited as a reference point or foundation for personality fit assessments. In GTP, we find the DISC model to be particularly helpful in this aspect. Before candidate sourcing, our unique approach first starts by identifying the specific DISC profile that best represents the ideal personality fit for the role of interest, then taking into account the in-house HR’s intuitive read of the organization and team dynamic.
This Art of candidate selection is not only useful for identifying best-fit candidates, but also allows the interviewing parties to have a common ground and alignment on what they are looking for - minimizing internal misalignment and disagreements, and will also save each party’s valuable time for other high priority tasks.
All in all, as we immerse ourselves into the VUCA world that values both speed and increased predictability of candidate’s personality fit to the role in no time, it is important for professionals to understand and value the combined power of science and intuition.