Rita: Do you ever have Deja vu?
Phil: Didn’t you just ask me that?
-Groundhog Day
In the 1993 movie Groundhog Day, Bill Murray’s character, TV weatherman Phil Connors, must relive the same day over and over again. Just fiction, right? Unfortunately, many organizations find themselves undergoing the same scenario in their recruiting practices, accepting the status quo processes that advance the wrong candidates and result in high turnover and poor performance. However, in a tight labor market, hiring the right people the first time is essential. If you keep those inefficient, ineffective processes on replay, you’ll have the same hiring experiences and never get ahead.
In the movie, Phil is stuck in the same day, waking up to relive February 2 again and again. However, the calendar continues to move forward for you. Each day you operate with suboptimal recruiting practices will lead to continued challenges, lost revenue and damage to your brand. So, in honor of Groundhog Day, break the cycle of recurring recruiting problems and adopt processes that will help you hire people who can move your business forward every day.
Consider the following common recurring recruiting challenges and how to solve them.
Problem #1: A negative candidate experience drives away the best talent.
The ability to deliver a positive, transparent candidate experience is key to attracting the best talent and improving your employer brand. If you don’t provide a good experience, it’s difficult to attract top talent and build a pool of qualified candidates. What’s more, it can damage your employer brand and reputation. If your recruiting process takes too long and candidates are left in the dark, they will be more likely to drop out. Not giving candidates sufficient opportunity to demonstrate their strengths will also lead to disengagement. Applicants know their resumes present a narrow view and want a chance to show off their abilities.
Solution: Key to delivering a satisfying experience is giving candidates the opportunity to perform and demonstrate their skills. Candidates appreciate the chance to showcase what they can offer. Built around such opportunities, Modern Hire’s Virtual Job TryoutⓇ technology provides an assessment experience that includes game-like exercises and scenarios to better engage applicants by educating them about what’s required to be successful on the job. You’ll also gather valuable data from the simulation that can inform the next step in the hiring process.
Problem #2: Subjective data doesn’t tell the whole story.
Despite the emphasis so many people put on resumes as the cornerstone of candidate evaluation, the information included in these documents – which is often subjective, unstructured and random – makes objective comparison of applicants difficult. The result is a superficial overview of the candidate but no insight into how they will perform on the job. Hiring decisions become based on assumptions and hunches, rather than actual data.
Solution: Look beyond the resume. Use research-based assessment tools that give you objective data. Text-based interview assessment tools, customized for your company, quickly measure competencies and likelihood to stay on the job. They evaluate candidates based on objective, job-relevant data and demonstrated abilities, using multi-method measures. You can then discern the differences in candidates’ abilities regardless of what might be on their resume and make better informed, data-based decisions.
Problem #3: Poor quality of hire leads to increased turnover.
The costs of employee turnover can be disastrous. The US Department of Labor estimates the cost of a bad hire to be 30% of the new hire’s salary. Moreover, the time and effort that went into recruiting those new hires can never be reclaimed. The ability to predict how candidates will perform on the job through realistic job previews is key to understanding their skills and preparing them for success. It enables candidates to learn what the job is all about, helping them decide to opt out if the role isn’t right for them while allowing those hired to hit the ground running, knowing what’s expected of them.
Solution: Adopt tools that enable you to gauge how your candidates will perform if hired. Build intelligent interviews with tools like Automated Interview Creator, which uses science and AI to quickly build effective, valid interviews. Using robust job simulation assessments leads to hiring candidates who understand what the job entails and have the skills to perform effectively. The result is higher retention and productivity.
Companies that have adopted Modern Hire’s assessment tools have seen dramatic outcomes. The Walmart Retail Associate Assessment, an award-winning, custom pre-hire assessment developed in partnership with Modern Hire, efficiently and accurately predicts candidate performance and retention. “A conservative return-on-investment analysis showed savings in the hundreds of millions annually,” says Josh Allen, Walmart’s director of global selection and assessment strategy. However, this estimate only includes eliminating replacement costs from not hiring the lowest scoring candidates. “If we included estimates of lost productivity and training costs, the real impact might exceed $1 billion annually.”
Just as Phil Connors eventually broke the time loop, you too can break the cycle of recurring recruiting problems. While Phil had the luxury of repeating his days (the equivalent of more than eight years), your success is contingent on ending the cycle much sooner. By understanding the above challenges and adopting the solutions to improve, you can continually enhance the process each day instead of repeating the same recruiting mistakes over and over.