Hiring predictors: The science behind hiring

“Predictive analytics for recruitment uses modern data and assessment science to project candidates’ fit and likelihood for success based on positive behavioural patterns among current employees”

Ask any HR recruitment professional and they will tell you that hiring predictors are difficult to get right. In fact, the majority of today’s organizations struggle to accurately identify the right person for the job. If it is already expensive to hire, the cost of bad quality of hire is even higher. Today, 95% of organizations admit to making bad hires every year, according to a research by Brandon Hall Group.

An analysis published in Psychological Bulletin concluded that statistically, a typical employment interview leads to the correct hire only 57% of the time to fill. Despite so much being done to assess and select the candidate, the odds of a right hire are only slightly better than the flipping of a coin. But employers must still make hiring decisions.

Even when there are no predictive hiring that can guarantee 100% success, some are definitely worth looking at. Examples of better predictive analytics in recruitment includes critical thinking and cognitive abilities, skills, conscientiousness (one of the five personality traits of the Big Five personality theory) and past behavior (real world examples to support their claims).

On the other hand, some of the worst predictors cited include first impressions and school grades. To make sense out of the importance of job fit or performance of hires, it is often not about the lack of skills or ability, but rather lack of “fit with job” itself, the hiring manager or the teams the person has been assigned to (as observed from our experience with our recruitment clients).

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Predictive Analytics in Recruitment: The science behind hiring

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What can a hirer do to improve the odds and build a more predictive analytics in recruitment. How can technology and data analytics help?

Google was one of the first companies to effectively utilize predictive analytics in recruitment process, collecting all the possible measurable data and test scores they could find. However, when they analysed actual job performance, they found that school grades are one of the worst predictors for hiring (according to Laszlo Bock, former SVP of People Operations). The tech giant has invested significant resources in developing analytical and predictive models that support human decision-making. In particular, one of the team’s most interesting findings is that the company experienced little benefit to conducting more than four rounds of interviews. Instead, they today make use of a hiring committee where hiring decisions are made through a team consensus.

Predictive analytics in recruitment uses modern existing data to make predictions and assessment science to project candidates’ fit and likelihood for success based on positive behavioural patterns among current employees. Instead of traditional hiring, which relies on interviews based mainly on intuition and gut feel, predictive hiring relies on data points and smart algorithms to recommend best fit candidates to recruiters and hiring managers.

But the truth is, it will always be difficult to predict fit and performance, because humans are complex and humans interacting in human systems are even more complex.

Hiring is hard, expensive, time-consuming, and inherently uncertain. And nobody is very good at doing it alone, whether you are a Google manager, a start-up founder, or a sports manager. When it comes to identifying the best talent, groups’ decisions are better than individuals’, and having data is always better than not having it at all.

Apart from identifying the best talent, it is equally important to have means to access to the talent pool (both active and passive). Researchers have long shown that referrals can surface better job candidates for candidate experience. Referred candidates are more likely to get call backs, more likely to be hired, and more likely to stay at the company. Hiring is like attending a blind date, and referral will be the introduction. They give both sides a little bit more certainty and information about fit. A study on the value of hiring through referral concludes that referrals work because they yield better fits, not because they yield smarter workers. Today referrals now account for 30-50% of all hires at large companies, according to a recent paper. Most referrals also come pre-vetted and cost less to find.

The biggest disruptor in recruitment technology today is experimentation with HRTech solutions and services. Recruiting has also become a digital experience as candidates expect convenience and mobile contact.

At IoTalents, we develop HR Tech ideas and solutions for HR professionals centred around cognitive technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), process automation, natural language processing, and predictive analytics in recruitment. We create objective, data-driven profiling tools, allowing clients to target and surface high-fit candidates. We also optimise sourcing channels through our popular and effective referral-based recruitment platform, Jobs007, to get better referrals for better recruitment process outcomes.