Sourcing and finding the right candidates has never been easy. Yet, it’s never been as challenging as it is now. The number one obstacle standing in the way of solving this problem?
CV.
How subjective hiring methods lead to bad placements
Focus on irrelevant insights
The CV is often used to filter out candidates based on criteria that are not very predictive of job performance, i.e. education (correlation with job performance is only 0.10) and experience (correlation with job performance is only 0.16).*
Moreover, it results in the inability to assess potential since it focuses on a candidate’s past experiences and achievements but does not provide a clear indication of their potential for growth and development.
CV-based screening is also extremely prone to unconscious bias, so even if you as an external recruiter manage to move past biased screening, there is no guarantee that your clients will. Remember that time you found the perfect candidate for your client, but then you got your candidate rejected based on 1 specific point on their CV?
As a Recruitment Consultant at New Monday, Leonie van der Molen says:
Since we are an agency, most of the time we do not have a direct choice in how DE&I is of importance. We do come across a lot of companies that speak about the importance of DE&I. Sadly, there are also clients that will not talk to or hire the person because of a certain ethnicity…
Inefficient & Time-consuming
Firstly, relying solely on CVs to evaluate candidates can be inefficient because they are hardly directly comparable to one another:
- CVs are typically presented in different formats and styles
- It can be challenging to determine which qualifications and experiences are most relevant to the job at hand
- Information represented in CVs is primarily based on subjective insights
As a result, it can be difficult to make informed & objective decisions about which candidate is the best fit for a particular role.
Secondly reviewing CVs is a time-consuming process. Not having enough candidates in the pipeline is one issue, yet what happens when you need to review the CVs of 1000 candidates for a single role?
This process is particularly challenging if you do not have a standardized process for evaluating candidates, which leads to inconsistent decision-making and potentially missing out on talented candidates. In some cases, this process may even result in losing out on a candidate who may have been a great fit for the role, but who was not evaluated properly due to the volume of CVs that needed to be reviewed.
Long story short
What you find on a resume is information about someone’s track record. Yet, what you cannot be sure about based on a resume, is how smart someone actually is, how someone behaves at work, and what someone’s personality is.
Instead, implement skill-based matching
As the job market becomes more competitive and diverse, traditional-resume based hiring is no longer sufficient to identify the best candidates.
That is precisely why skill-based matching is becoming increasingly popular as an alternative to CVs, as it provides a more comprehensive and objective evaluation of a candidate’s abilities. Here’s why:
- Competency and skill-based hiring looks beyond just a candidate’s experience and education and instead places focus on their ability to perform in their future job, such as cognitive ability which is more predictive of job performance.*
- By focusing on skill-based matching, you can tap into a larger and more diverse pool of candidates.
- It reduces bias in the recruitment process.
- Improves hiring efficiency by letting you make better placements more efficiently and faster.
Plus, skill-based hiring has plenty of other benefits
Organizations that embed a skills-based approach are…
- 198% MORE LIKELY TO HAVE A REPUTATION AS A GREAT PLACE TO GROW AND DEVELOP.
- 63% more likely to achieve results than those who have not adopted skills-based practices.
- 73% more likely to have a more positive workforce experience.
- 93% more likely to retain high performers.
Source: Deloitte analysis of Deloitte Skills-Based Organization Survey, May-June 2022
The talent you’re looking for is in front of you, don’t ignore it
When a new vacancy opens up, we run to source new candidates again and again.
But what if the talent you’re looking for is already right in front of you? It is time to take a step back and reflect. Sometimes, the best candidate for the job is already there. All you have to do is not overlook them…
