Simpler Smarter and Swifter Talent Selection

The disruptive events of the past three years - Record levels of disengagement, Great Resignation, Quiet Quitting, Tight Labor Markets, Mass Layoffs, Remote Work, and DE&I, complicate and lengthen the hiring cycle which is under pressure to navigate and perform quickly in this white water environment.

While placing people in the right jobs has always been critical, today’s working environment has elevated that importance to new heights. Today’s global workforce continues to report disturbingly low levels of engagement in the workplace. In fact, Gallup’s 2022 State of the Workplace report found that only 21% of employees report feeling engaged at work with 60% of people emotionally detached at work and 19% downright miserable.??

And as we all know quite well, the less engaged an organization’s workforce is, the more likely it is for turnover rates to rise. And—at a macro level, turnover in the US remains very high with the Bureau of Labor Statistics reporting that 4.2 Million people quit their jobs in Nov. 2022 in the United States alone… yikes.

?Now, beyond this amazing amount of people quitting their jobs, the labor market—for the most part—is quite strong, continuing to favor workers with December delivering 223,000 new jobs and a trending down unemployment rate at 3.5%. Now—obviously we’re seeing some industries in a different position, like Big Tech, so January—just like these past couple years—is continuing to introduce volatility into hiring and selection. All of this is to say that, today—making good hiring decisions is critical.?

And, at the risk of sounding obvious, this elevated level of importance within this work environment I just described is putting hiring managers in a really tricky position… They need to fill job openings quickly while still making sure their applicants have the right experience, abilities, habits, and interests to do the job well. And I’m going to guess every single one of you hiring managers reading this article, at some point in the last year, has experienced that struggle. ?

Success in this environment—and frankly in any economic environment—boils down to a concept called…

Job Fit… which is pretty much what it sounds like… It’s when a person’s characteristics [how they think, how they behave, their interests] fit those required to be successful in a specific job. It connects people with job roles and environments where they can thrive, contribute, succeed, and perform at their best.

And when you and your organization gets good at achieving job fit, you’ll reduce unnecessary costs, increase engagement, reduce turnover, minimize biases that stand in the way of delivering equitable workplaces, and… of course, you’ll boost the bottom line.

The key is creating consistent hiring processes that rely on objective, scientifically reliable data to help compliment experience, gut feel, and instinct—ultimately leading to better decisions more often.?

So, today is all about taking that first step toward mastering the art of job fit—so that you can start thinking about your own hiring processes and how you might improve them for better results. Specifically, we’ll look at the cost of a bad hire and how to avoid it; at how unconscious biases can creep into the hiring decision and talk about ways to reduce it’s impact. From there, we’ll look at the value of data and how appropriate use of data can improve your hiring process as well as your results. And finally, how you can use this same data in the hiring process to predict future success and scale high performance.

Alright… let’s explore just how costly it is to make the wrong hiring decision, but also how tricky it can be to make the right one.

Today, companies make bad hiring decisions more often than any of us care to admit… with the cost of those bad decisions are a lot higher than many of us care to acknowledge. What you’re seeing right here is what we refer to as the downward spiral—or snowball effect—of a poorly crafted hiring process. And, I’m not going to belabor this because we all have been in positions where we’ve experienced this, but at a high-level, a bad hiring process that produces poor hiring decisions and significantly cripples your organization’s ability to perform.?

1) A bad hire costs quite a bit of money—30% of the first year’s salary or more.

2) A bad hire is less productive—specifically only half as productive as a good fit

3) Of course, when someone isn’t a good fit for the job, they’re more likely to actively disengage—contributing to the near $500B in lost productivity

4) And as we all know… disengagement is contagious, and can wreak havoc on your culture, impacting relationships and even an organization’s reputation

5)?Ultimately driving your turnover rate up, causing more traffic through the system, and expanding your costs even further

If you’ve ever experienced this downward spiral, you know what I’m talking about. You’ve felt it. And you understand how this costly cycle creates a negative compounding effect on organizations.?

But you also know that… no one sets out to make a bad hiring decision. It’s just that it can be a guessing game if you are relying on the traditional tools of a resume and interview. ?

With a resume, it gives you a glimpse of someone’s background and experience—and you’re really only getting the highlight reel.

Similarly, the interview can only go so far toward revealing a person’s ability to perform in the role. It’s information about the past—not helping you predict future success.

And frankly, some people are just better at interviewing than others with Career Builder reporting that 1 in every 5 interviewers admit they do not have the skills needed to interview effectively. In these instances, many decisions are made on gut feel, opening up hiring managers up to unconscious bias. In fact… 60% of all hiring managers making their decisions this way, with their mind made up on a candidate within 15 minutes of an interview.??

In the end… these hiring decisions are like your investment portfolio. They cost big dollars and promise big returns—IF you’ve done your homework.

So… if making poor hiring decisions can be incredibly costly for your organization, and the traditional tools designed to HELP hiring managers make good decisions often fall short… what are you supposed to do? How do you help hiring managers across your organization build their confidence and make better hiring choices?

It’s a good question with a simple answer. The alternative is to use data that builds upon instinct to help you and your hiring managers gain valuable insight beyond the resume and interview.

But before we get into the alternative, the research team at PXT Select asked over 5,000 hiring managers in 2022 to pick a single word that described a good hiring process.

Here’s what respondents called out as the top two words that described a good hiring process… Fair and Structured

And while this sounds like an attainable aspiration, the survey also revealed that many hiring managers believe their own hiring processes fall short of these ideals.?

More specifically, 66% reported that they rely on instinct more often than data when making their own hiring decisions. The problem with that "over reliance" on instinct is that it often crowds out other—more objective and valuable—insights that can lead to better outcomes.

And why is that? Why is it so easy for so many of us to lean on our instincts at the expense of more objective and valuable insights?

Well… you remember what we talked about a few minutes ago, right? That tension between speed and quality within the hiring decision? Well, as we said earlier, many hiring managers are feeling this huge amount of urgency to hire quickly. They have more openings, the people they do have are burning out, and they still need to perform.

In this situation, most of these hiring managers are opening up the door to their unconscious biases, which not only cost your organization money, but stand in the way of your ability to create diverse, inclusive, and equitable workplaces.?

So, with so many of you are investing in your DE&I practices, we want to take a minute to understand how we can reduce these biases in the hiring decision.?

Unconscious bias is generally defined as the unconscious favoritism toward or prejudice against something or someone that influences one’s actions or perceptions.

This natural process, where our brains try to expedite information processing by pulling references from past experiences and prior information, can result in biased judgments.?This is what?happens when people make talent decisions under the pressure of speed, and these judgements can negatively impact those decisions.?

The problem is, if speed is the driving factor in hiring decisions, it’s easy to rely on past experiences and beliefs to arrive at an instinctive decision, which usually means overlooking vital information. Whatever proactive measures an organization may want to put in place for creating a diverse and equitable workforce may end up being sidelined.

What remains are reactive, speed-driven practices. Instinct is one of those speed-driven practices. Say what you want about its shortcomings, but instinct or intuition certainly can be speedy. Still, it’s a ticket to making automatic associations based on characteristics that may have nothing to do with hiring factors that matter most.

In research from Old Dominion University, Florida State, and Clemson, researchers looked at how hiring decisions play out in real life situations. Many interviewers said that they made rapid decisions about a candidate’s suitability.

4.9% decided within the first minute, and 25.5% decided within the first five minutes.?Overall, almost 60% of decisions were made within the first 15 minutes, less than halfway through the scheduled interview time.

While interviewers are having these rapid and subjective responses to their candidates there is a key factor at play… their own unconscious bias.

Now, it’s also important to understand that unconscious bias is a normal process. It’s neither inherently negative nor positive; it is just a way for our brains to synthesize the complexities of the world in easier-to-interpret patterns and associations that can help us in our decision-making process.?

The fact that unconscious bias is called “unconscious” is important here. These are biases that are elusive, hidden so well in a person’s automatic actions that they’re not easy to recognize, much less do something about it. These biases can impact just about any situation, but for the purposes of this conversation, we’re talking about how unconscious biases get in the way of hiring diverse, qualified candidates.

We will get into recognizing the types a little later for now let’s define unconscious bias further with a short exercise.

I’m going to ask a question and I want you to grab the picture image in your mind; the first thing that comes to mind and enter your response into the chat.??

If I ask you to picture a successful fortune 500 executive, what words immediately come to mind? What specific attributes, behaviors, physical characteristics do they have??

Chances are, this question triggered images and memories from news articles, your own experience, and even movies and TV shows.?When we conduct this exercise, we hear attributes like strong, male, assertive, educated, white, experienced, toxic, ambitious, etc.

These thoughts happen quickly and automatically. They are part of our human condition. And, while we can reframe them and add context to them, we can’t completely eliminate them.

To minimize the occurrence of bias judgements and therefore its impact in our interactions with others, we need to be able to identify what unconscious bias “looks like”.?And the most common types happen to be the easiest to recognize because they come from observable traits like gender, race and age.

?Gender bias: Is the tendency to prefer or feel more comfortable with a specific gender.?For example, some people tend to feel a stronger connection when talking with someone of the same gender vs. someone different from them.

?Racial bias: Refers to the stereotyping of certain races or cultural backgrounds. In our previous example, the “connection” or “good feeling” during an interaction, can also happen when we “connect” with someone of our same race or cultural background. Of course the opposite also holds true when preconceived notions exist about a particular race or culture that leads the interviewer to make an inappropriate conclusion about that candidate’s ability to do a specific job.?

?Age bias: describes the stereotyping of an individual based on their age. We see this most often with an older population where they may have the right experience but in the rapidly changing world we live in, many can associate an older age with someone who is set in their ways and not willing to learn or adapt.

More complex forms of unconscious bias that are not easily recognizable but equally common are:

?Confirmation bias, or the tendency to interpret information as validation of preexisting beliefs, happens often with internal selection processes.?For example, think about a candidate that you have worked with in the past or of whom you received great feedback about. If this person is applying for a new role, you might go into the meeting with an opinion about them. During the interview, your brain will default to confirming your beliefs about this person instead of objective evaluation.

?Affinity bias describes the tendency to favor individuals that mirror our beliefs, appearance, experience, interests, and background.?For example, if you attend the same college or university and you interview someone that just graduated from the same alma mater, your brain may be triggered to assume they will perform as you do. While this offers a nice way to connect as humans, sometimes these details can drive our perception of a candidate, causing us to overlook other characteristics that are more relevant to the evaluation.

?Halo (or horns) effect refers to our tendency to attribute a person’s overall character as positive or negative based solely on one specific trait. In short, when an overall impression of a person influences how we feel and think about their character. For example, the thought: "He is nice!," impacts our evaluations of that person's specific traits also relating it to: "He is also smart!".?

But not all data is created equal. If you want to compliment instinct AND mitigate unconscious bias, you have to ensure the data you’re using is objective and reliable. Assessment programs, like PXT Select?, will offer your organization scientifically validated data that can improve your results, but before we take a closer look at this data, you’ll want to keep a few things in mind…?

1) While self-reported assessments don’t measure unconscious bias, they do offer a fair and unbiased approach to gauge how a candidate’s thinking style, behavioral traits, and interests may be relevant in the workplace, helping the hiring manager control biases around demographics like age, race, or gender.

2) Next, conducting the assessment doesn’t ensure fairness in the process in and of itself. You must make sure all the people involved in the hiring process are following the recommendations on how to appropriately USE the assessment.

3) Beyond this, make sure the provider you select meets all the legal requirements pertaining to equitable access to employment. All providers are obligated to provide information supporting fairness and equity for all candidates.

4) And last, but certainly not least, pay attention to the potential for adverse impact by checking for adverse impact studies published by the provider. This is a check in place to ensure the assessment doesn’t unfairly exclude any demographic group from professional opportunities.?

So, let’s take a closer look so all of you can start tapping into the value of data within your hiring processes.?

The first thing to consider when you start to incorporate more data into your hiring process is that the data alone is not going to drive improvement. Instead, you need to create more consistency within your process so that all the parties involved in evaluating and hiring candidates can effectively apply the data to their decisions. To get started, we recommend:

1. Aligning on job requirements

2. Assessing all candidates and following a structured interview process, and

3. Effectively onboarding new hires

It’s straightforward, but when these three elements are present in your hiring process, you are empowering your hiring managers to make apples-to-apples comparisons across all the candidates involved.

And when there’s consistency, there’s more confidence.?And confidence is what hiring managers need right now because only 3 out of 10 feel very confident in their organization’s ability to consistently hire the right people.??

An effective approach that leverages assessment data within a consistent process is called “The Job Fit Approach”—which we referenced at the beginning to today’s conversation. This is a data driven approach that compliments the resume and interview to ensure congruence between your candidates thinking style, behavioral traits, and interest so they are placed into positions where they’ll most likely to do well. It uses assessment data to determine:

1) If the candidate can do the job

2) How well the candidate will do the job and

3) Whether they’ll enjoy the job

When we say “data” we’re--of course—talking about the?usual stuff like job skills, experience, and education. But then there is also scientifically validated assessment data that can help hiring managers evaluate candidates at a deeper level.

1 First, there is Thinking style data; which refers to how a candidate analyzes and communicates information.

2. There is Behavioral trait data; which describes a set of 9 behavioral tendencies that can be reflected as strengths or opportunities.

3. Finally, there is Interest data—which simply describes the different ways a candidate may find fulfillment or motivation at work.

And a quick tip before we go deeper is this… None of this data should come along with judgment attached. It’s not good or bad—it’s simply more information for you to use when evaluating whether a candidate might be a good fit for the job at hand.?

Thinking Style refers to data about a candidates cognitive ability—how they might analyze and communicate information in the workplace. Data within this category requires testing the candidate’s core learning concepts, base knowledge of vocabulary and numerical concepts, and how the candidate can apply that knowledge in the workplace.

Verbal Skill is all about the words the person chooses to communicate with—how suitable and effective they are. Verbal Reasoning is how the person uses those words to create relationships between concepts, how they reason, and how they draw conclusions. Thinking style also includes data that describes Numerical Ability—or how a candidate fares at numerical calculation—also known as MATH! Finally, Numeric Reasoning, which measures how someone applies their understanding of numbers to solve problems.

These concepts have quite a bit more bearing on job performance than people realize because this is baseline information—letters and numbers. It’s part of how all of us gather and analyze information from the time we’re little to adulthood. And, it’s how we cope with the situations our lives present us with. It’s a good predicter of future success because it explains how a person might apply what they know to different concepts.

?The next category of data is Behavioral Traits—which is not “good behavior” or “bad behavior”. It’s a set of preferences and tendencies that describe a person’s strengths and developmental opportunities. It’s also a great data set to help determine behavior in the workplace. Each behavior is presented as a continuum that can be used to compare the candidate to the desired behaviors for a particular role.

With PXT Select?, there are quite a few behavioral continua offered, so here is a brief overview:

1.First, there’s Pace right here, and I like this one because it describes a person’s tendencies toward steadiness vs. urgency. Both can be valuable behaviors in a job, but depending on the job, someone who is a bit more methodical and steadier is likely to be more thoughtful and careful while someone who tends toward urgency will get things done quickly—often multi-tasking along the way.

2.Another example is this one right here, Conformity. The two ends of this spectrum are strong willed vs. compliant. A strong-willed person might prefer to do things their own way while a more compliant person might tend toward following the rules and/or processes in place.

3.One more example is Judgment—which assesses how much people trust their own feelings vs. a more factual, analytical style of judgment

With all of these, you can see how different jobs might call for different behaviors to achieve peak performance. It’s a matter of getting really clear on the “ideal” behavior for the job, then comparing candidate’s self-assessment against those behaviors to help evaluate fit.

?The last category here is data that describes a candidate’s interests. And the thing with understanding interests is this, people are usually more satisfied and motivated when the job they are doing day in and day out matches their interests. Here are six different ways you might characterize a candidate’s interest.

1.First, there’s interest in being Creative—how interested is someone in imaginative or artistic expression—or generating ideas?

2.You can measure Enterprising interest to understand how much someone enjoys leadership, presenting ideas, or persuading others.

3.There’s Financial or Administrative interest—someone who enjoys the details and processes in place that guide workers to better outcomes.

4.We have interest in People Service—how much does the candidate enjoy helping others, or compromising when needed.

5.Mechanical interest describes how much a person enjoys building or repairing things, working with their hands or outdoor activities.

6.Technical interest is someone who enjoys interpreting complex or abstract problems and solving them.?

Through these different examples, we hope you’re starting to see how valuable this kind of data—which used within a scientifically reliable and valid assessment—can be to the overall improvement of your organization’s hiring practices.

This completes Part One of Hiring Successfully.

> Final Part Two Hiring Successfully