Hi there.
Recruitment methods have been studied since the 1920s,
in today's bite I will give you an overview of the three
most widely used recruitment methods.
We'll also explore how good these methods are at predicting
whether or not a candidate will be a good fit,
based on the latest research.
Let's dive straight in.
The number one method in our top three most commonly used
recruitment methods is the IQ test, also known as
the general mental ability, or GMA test.
IQ testing is, arguably, the most well validated concept
in social sciences.
Whether we like it or not, your IQ is the best predictor
of your academic success, learning abilities,
and how successful you are in your work.
Because IQ is not specifically related to job knowledge,
it can be used to hire for any position, whether in IT,
or marketing, whether senior, or entry level.
The interesting thing about IQ is that it indicates
two things when it comes to work.
First, it predicts how quickly a candidate can learn a job.
This means that candidates with a higher IQ score will have
a shorter time to productivity,
a metric that measures how long it takes a new hire
to contribute to an organization.
Second, IQ predicts how successful a candidate will be
in their job.
Of course, IQ isn't everything.
According to a meta-analysis by Schmidt and Hunter,
GMA can predict up to 26% of the job performance
of a candidate, which means that the remaining 74%
is still open for interpretation.
Although GMAs are commonly seen as an effective tool,
there are a number of studies which have also questioned
how useful they are based on job role, industry,
and fairness of the tests themself.
Overall, even though GMAs are still a great tool
for predicting future success, decisions shouldn't be made
on these results alone.
Instead, they should always be combined with other
recruitment methods to balance the potential disadvantages.
The second most commonly used recruitment method is that of
unstructured employment interviews.
There's no doubt that you're probably already using
interviews in your hiring process,
but did you know that the way you structure your interviews
can have a major impact on how effective they are?
Many companies, especially young startups and SMEs,
have little time to come up with a structured
interview process.
Instead, they leave it up to hiring managers to come up with
their own questions and means of assessment,
but if you're using unstructured interviews now,
it's time to stop and rethink your strategy.
This is because according to a meta-analysis
by Schmidt and Hunter, unstructured interviews
predict roughly 14% of a new hire's performance,
while a structured interview predicts 26%.
This means that you would need around two
unstructured interviews in order to be as confident about
someone's skills, compared to one structured interview.
Unstructured interviews lead to hiring decisions based on
gut instinct, rather than a fair and equal comparison.
A number of studies have found that when interviews are
unstructured, it's more likely that certain candidates
can be favored, based on the bias of the interviewer.
Unconscious bias is more common than you may think,
and can greatly damage your recruitment efforts.
Instead, having a set list of questions
that every candidate must answer improves the chances of
a fair assessment.
This leads to, last but not least,
our third recruiting method,
the structured employment interview.
Combining structured interviews with a GMA test
was the second highest predictor of future performance in
Schmidt and Hunter's meta-analysis,
precisely because structured interviews mean that
applicants are assessed and scored based on
the same questions.
They're considered significantly more valid in terms of
predicting future success.
Studies show that comparing candidates based on
the same criteria lowers the chances of a biased interview,
even better.
Taking the time to research the right questions
for your interview process will help you make
better hiring decisions.
Always striving to make their processes data-driven,
tech giant Google, even analyzes the data behind its past
interview questions.
Recently, the company decided to drop it's infamous
brain teasers after finding that the answers didn't provide
any insights into future job success.
That's it for today's bite, in which you've learned about
the perks of the three most used recruitment methods.
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