The opportunities and challenges of using AI to find the right candidate
Hiring process should be as close as possible to the experience of the actual job. This is why many organisations try to design interviewing protocols and written assessments that attempt to mirror on-the-job tasks.
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Anyone who’s had a hand in hiring and recruiting knows that finding the right person for the job is often difficult and expensive. Typically, organisations assess candidates using a combination of interviews and static tests, such as those that evaluate logical and verbal reasoning or behavioural traits. This process takes up significant time and resources. Moreover, studies suggest that without careful structuring and design, these hiring methods can suffer from low validity and fail to correctly distinguish between candidates who will ultimately be successful on the job and those who will not.
The consensus is that the hiring process should be as close as possible to the experience of the actual job. This is why many organisations try to design interviewing protocols and written assessments that attempt to mirror on-the-job tasks. For example, interviews for HR specialists should include scenarios that ask candidates how they would handle conflict between employees, while interviews with marketing professionals should include discussions of marketing decisions.
The problem is that asking candidates to imagine a scenario is a far cry from actually experiencing real workplace situations. Similarly, asking interviewers to roleplay a situation is unlikely to be realistic, as interviewers are not professional actors. All this limits how effective traditional hiring processes can be.
How does this work? One example comes from Athena, a company that hires and trains executive assistants for clients who are entrepreneurs or executives. Its hiring process involves culling through thousands of applicants from several countries. On top of a battery of static tests on critical thinking, written communication and computer skills, Athena recently added AI simulations customised to the on-the-job tasks that executive assistants must perform. These simulations include a chatbot that plays the part of a demanding new client, and one that exchanges emails with the candidate who’s been assigned the goal of organising an upcoming workplace event for a client. In another simulation, candidates are presented with an inbox and must decide how to respond to emails that range from a cancelled flight to a major business crisis.
[This article is republished courtesy of INSEAD Knowledge, the portal to the latest business insights and views of The Business School of the World. Copyright INSEAD 2024]