Do Recruiting Basics Advance with New Technologies?

In this innovative world, we are often lured into adopting new practices that seek to improve how we recruit and assess people. What about video interviews and automated reference checks? Are these new technologies making what we’ve done in recruiting for decades significantly better? In other words, how are these new technologies improving on the basic concepts of recruiting? Are there ways to leverage innovation to advance the basics of recruiting? If yes, how?
It is well known that mastering the basic concepts of anything is the key to success. This can be done in sports as well as business. What we are going to review in this article is the ways in which two basic steps in the recruiting process – the structured interview and the reference check – have been improved upon significantly through new technologies.
Today your organization is probably performing reference checks as well as interviews on candidates before offering them a job. These two steps are part of the basics of recruiting. But, first let’s see if they are justified as basics. Are they justified as being the best practices to maintain in your organization as they are currently performed?
Are interviews and reference checks legitimate practices?
Interviewing is of course a step that few organizations would do without. However, there are interviews and then there are interviews. The assessment accuracy of all interviews is not the same. We know that structured interviews (validity r=0.51) are about 35 percent better than unstructured interviews (validity r=0.38), and that structured interviews are the best way to assess people. This confirms our constant usage of them and qualifies them as being good basic practices to keep. Yet, it is often hard to ensure that managers are performing structured interviews. It is also sometimes hard to truly compare candidates when they’ve been interviewed weeks apart.
Reference checking is often more challenging, for it is, indeed, in its current forms, of a lower accuracy rate than interviews (validity r=0.26). Nonetheless, about 95 percent of organizations perform them, as they bring some value to the recruiting process. Some organizations face legal issues following the reference check process, as employers are damned if they perform them, and damned if they don’t. Most often companies still perform them, but more as an administrative task and under highly controlled circumstances, which seek to prevent any wrong doing while asking questions by the recruiter or manager.
The reference check is more often combined in the background checking process. In this way, performing a traditional reference check is justified, even though the value delivered is often relatively low.
Can technology give new vigor to these two basic steps and address their weaknesses?
Are video interviews an improvement?
The Internet, in its current state, enables video transmission to take place as easily as text. A consequence of this has been the use of the Internet as a platform for interviewing candidates. Some early attempts at accomplishing this in 2000 were not successful, as the bandwidth was not sufficient.

Today, YouTube’s success has proven that any video streaming can work just as well online as it does on television. But does this mean that it delivers superior value than face-to-face interviews? Of course not, for it is always better to see someone face to face, because recruiters can assess a candidate’s presence and can ask as many follow-up questions as needed compared to pre-recorded interviews. But are video interviews better than phone interviews? Yes, because the visual aspect provides one with more clues and opportunities to “read” an individual. But the core question that remains is, does video interviews provide any advancements in the recruiting process that are simply not possible with face-to-face interviews? This is what I’ve discovered while reviewing this technology.
The core component of the pre-recorded video interview that I think adds value to the traditional interview process is the ability to compare each candidate, one after the other, on the same question. As simple as it seems, it is a core value that face-to-face interviews cannot provide. Just imagine you could have candidates sit next to each other, but they can’t hear the answers of the others. You could then ask the same question to each candidate, one after the other. This gives another impressive level of qualitative assessment to the interview process than simply relying on notes and vague impressions of each answer a couple of days following the interviews. Because of this, we think pre-recorded structured interviews would serve as a nice complement to any face-to-face interview.
If you want to know more about video interviews, look at companies such as HireVue.
Are automated reference checks a step forward in the recruiting process?
Traditional reference checking has major limitations, first because of the legal confusion that it brings and secondly in terms of truthfulness and time constraints. Speaking to references is always good, but because of the time it takes most companies to do so, and because they do it at the tail end of the recruiting process when the decision has virtually already been made, it doesn’t add much value to the hiring decision. What automated online reference checking enables, because it reduces the amount of time required of traditional reference checks, is the ability to perform the check on the finalists before the final interview. It therefore transforms the reference check more into a peer rating system, like a confidential 360 feedback. These types of assessments command a level of accuracy (validity r=0.49) as good as that which is obtained from structured interviews.
The additional value is the ability to place the legal liability more in the hands of the candidate so that the company can avoid it completely. We believe that the time it cuts and the accuracy it gives to the recruiting process provides automated online reference checks with renewed value. If you want to know more about automated reference checking, look at Checkster.
We believe that a couple of basic practices are proven to have delivered consistent value when used appropriately in the recruiting process. We think that the innovations described here boost their value to organizations. Video interviews and automated online reference checks represent a leap forward in the recruiting process in terms of time saved and increased accuracy. Because of this, they should earn their place in a revised recruiting process for organizations of the future.
Article by Yves Lermusi and courtesy of Kenndy Information Recruiting Trends providing leading edge insights and strategies for the recruiting professional

Originally posted by Candice A