If your business is growing enough to bring on full-time employees, hiring can be an exciting prospect. You will be able to search for the best people to develop your vision and take things to the next level.
However, after a while, hiring can become a slog. You need to carefully craft a job description and know how to advertise it so that it gets noticed by the right people. If you are lucky enough to get many qualified candidates, there are many rounds of interviews and tough decisions.
Then despite your time and effort, your lease may or may not work. Their actual skills may not match the promise of their resume. Or your hire’s personality may not be a good fit for work culture you established Or maybe the new employee decided it wasn’t the right role for them after all. The hiring cycle begins again.
After a few rounds of hiring, the process tends to lose its luster. Technology has tried to help find employees that best fit a business’s needs; it comes in the form of personality tests. These tests have been used for years by companies, and is not always useful in the acquisition process. But in general, hiring technology hasn’t advanced much since then—at least, not in any massive way.
New hiring tech tools are starting to emerge, however. Two Stories—a performance analytics innovator—is looking for better ways to match employers with candidates. The new procurement solution is called Performance Story.
Using a powerful combination of behavioral analysis and skill analysis, Performance Story uses the latest findings in machine learning and behavioral science to assess what each role requires and predict a candidate’s fit. When used properly, this tool can change the way businesses hire.
Creating a Story Instead of a Profile
The Performance Story, as its name suggests, provides a comprehensive picture of an employee rather than a list of characteristics. This is a huge development that better reflects the complexity of people. The Performance Story eschews candidates on their abilities and whether or not they are extroverted–which never gives a complete picture.
Performance Story looks at a job seeker’s talent profile to evaluate their predictive job fit and what their potential is. Those profile gaps can be filled after the candidate completes the Two Story behavioral analysis. These assessments use non-obvious questions to get to the root of a person’s attitudes, values, intelligence and habits. They can also provide insight into how well they handle criticism and confrontation.
Traditional personality tests tend to have clear and leading questions. Candidates may be tempted to answer in a way they think will get them the job instead of answering honestly. So if an employer is looking at a resume with vague language and a flawed personality report, it’s harder to predict job fit.
Knowing what makes someone tick can also help employers communicate expectations on both sides. Maybe a candidate has a history of leaving jobs after about two years, already lower than the US average. It is possible that even the candidate does not know why that pattern appeared. The Performance Story can play a large part in providing an explanation and remedy.
Candidate Story Analysis
Performance analytics can show that the person in question needs a clear development path to stay engaged for the long term. The Performance Story generates a list of key questions to ask interviewees to confirm or adjust candidate profiles. In this case, it may not be useful to ask the interviewee about a time they overcame difficulty at work. It would be more insightful to ask if they have had a progression path in their previous jobs.
If they haven’t had a clear career path with their previous employers, this can provide a win-win solution. The prospective employer will need to review and assess the performance analytics to see what advancements are possible for that person or position within the business’s five-year projection. If advancements can be made, it needs to be clearly communicated what the employee needs to do to achieve them.
Additionally, the interviewee has career progression laid out by previous employers, then others behind the pattern of job hopping. If a candidate’s short tenure tendency is not something employers can easily adjust to job changes, they may not be a good fit.
If Employees Succeed, Everyone Succeeds
One of the key aspects of the Performance Story is asking a very simple question for candidates. What type of placement will give each person the best chance of success? And this goes beyond the basic duties of the job itself.
For example, let’s say a business named Pencil Supply is growing and needs to hire an HR and benefits coordinator. Performance Story’s AI systems can isolate the key characteristics of successful HR coordinators and factor in variables related to Pencil Supply’s internal nuances. While it may seem counterintuitive, that process can actually open up the hiring pool to a larger number of applicants.
In the case of Pencil Supply, perhaps they used to require applicants to have a master’s degree or an MBA. The Performance Story may reveal that the most successful HR leaders have the most bachelor’s degrees and, above all, a certain personality trait. That valuable information could inspire Pencil Supply to lower the education requirement and get more applicants into the system.
Another game-changing facet of Performance Story is its predictive capabilities. The powerful combination of behavioral analytics and AI projections will first examine performance analytics on how a candidate might perform in a particular position. Next, it provides information to the employer about how they can customize their processes to get the best output from their new hire. From job responsibilities to career paths to educational opportunities, employers will know what will keep an employee on board and engaged.
An employee’s success in the workplace is rarely one-sided. If an employer has predictive analytics on their side to keep a workforce engaged for the long term, they can reduce turnover. When employers emphasize the success of their individual workers, the company as a whole should see the benefits.
Using Science, Not Guesswork
There are all kinds of obscure ways in which employers or hiring managers make hiring decisions. These may be based on feelings, first impressions, or the candidate as the sister-in-law of the local mayor. Those methods may be better than grabbing a random resume and extending an offer, but data and analysis can change the game. Using an approach that offers performance analytics, behavioral analysis, and AI predictive capabilities can make hiring more efficient and facilitate a better job/candidate fit.
So if you want to maintain a long hiring cycle and high turnover rate, keep doing what you’re doing. For better results and fewer headaches, change the way you hire.
Featured Image Credit: by RODNAE Productions; Pexels; Thank you!
