Should we automate the hiring process?

In a word: No.?

Well, that's a short article. Let's go see what's on telly!

Oh, you're still here? Well, okay, I'll go into a litle more detail.

We humans love to categorise things.?We love to pigeon-hole things, as that allows us to jump to conclusions about them much faster.?

Really useful when watching the jungle, waiting for the panther to strike.?We don't care to evaluate exactly how long the panther's claws are...we simply want to avoid being eaten.

Not particularly useful when trying to judge a person joining an organisation.

This sort of categorisation happens all your life. You're a "star". You're a "dad". You're religious, and so on.?

Yes, you might be one those things, or you might be all of them, but not many speak to how you'll work in the office.

You can see something similar in the exams back in school.?The grade you get on your test can affect the rest of your whole life.?What if you were ill??Had a bad day??Got freaked out, even though you knew your stuff? Broke up with a long-term partner??Lost a parent??You're liable to score rather poorly if any of those things happened to you, simply because you couldn't concentrate.

I would forever be the guy who just barely passed my "English" course, no matter what I then went on to become, right?

The score is easy to measure, but pointless in real life.

We do the same thing when trying to automate the hiring process. To my way of thinking, if you give me a person who matches against all these traits:

• Demonstrate Curiosity
• Speak Up
• Show Empathy and Collaborate
• Own their own mistakes, and help solve those of others
• Cover gaps between my job and theirs
• Enable the people around them to be better
• Consider our customers a priority
• Understand that anyone they speak to is a customer, in some fashion
• Demonstrate an ability to learn and adhere to current best practices

...and I'll give you someone who's got a real chance of growing into a star at my company.

Hackerrank, Skeeled, and all the others simply cannot accurately measure those things.?In fact, they don't even try in most cases. They simply try to reduce a person to a number that can be compared to another person.

The managers who believe in them are being misled, and doing far too many interviews just to try to find the unicorn trying to join.

Don't use them, don't bother writing customised questions, don't waste your teams' time as your team are not psychology specialists who understand how to ask questions to reveal the traits above.

If you're using one of these tools in your recruitment process, reconsider.?Especially when talent is thin on the ground, why lose them simply because a computer put them into a given cubby hole?