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Have you ever been exasperated by the differences in opinion between your parents, your 14 year old and yourself on basic decisions such as what to order in or which TV channel to watch?

How hard was it to reach a common ground and was everyone eventually happy?

Now amplify this disconnect at an organizational level where complex generational dynamics are at play and impact everything from work allocation to marketing approach or product design.

Not getting this equation right would have deeper implications on manager-employee relations, organizational culture and even business sustainability and growth.

Over the last few decades, the quest to understand how different generations behave as consumers, employees, leaders or citizens has taken a new turn as millennials were shaping the market, workplace and the world we lived in. The focus has now shifted to Gen Z – as people born from 1995 to 2010 – come of age.

By 2025, this group will make up a quarter of the Asia–Pacific (APAC) region’s population – the same as millennials (born 1980–1995). For the first time in history, four generations are actively participating in society and in organizations and many find themselves under-prepared.

In a post pandemic world going through the ‘Great Resignation’, the war for talent is real. It is necessitating a rehash of talent attraction and retention strategies and hitting the bull’s eye on generational dynamics and specially the approach around Gen Z is key to stay ahead of the curve.

What you need to know about Gen Z at the work in 2023

While the jury is still out on how this generation is going to behave at the workplace, we do have early trends. Most studies point towards the obvious – Gen Zs are digital nomads who are comfortable with technology and can seamlessly connect with others in both online and offline networks. Very similar to the millennials before them, Gen Z is very socially conscious and wants to be associated with organizations that have a strong Environmental, Social & Governance (ESG) agenda.

However, very interesting trends are noticed in a recently concluded study by Pulsifi where data on work values and work interest from 12,000 applicants to entry-level graduate programs in Singapore and Malaysia was analyzed.

It was noted that unlike millennials, Gen Z gives greater importance to financial and job security. Reward at the workplace is very important to them which is not a surprise given they have grown up amidst global recession.

Their quest for financial stability and reward is unlikely to automatically yield lower attrition rates. Beyond compensation, Gen Z is looking at their employers to guide them through their career discovery phase, provide them formal training, help them build softer attributes such as confidence, interpersonal skills etc. and support their entrepreneurial streak. The need for stability does however provide valuable insight into skills that organizations can help Gen Z build – resilience and adaptability to navigate the uncertain times.

Check out our whitepaper for more insights on Gen Z at the workplace

Turning opportunity into success

Although Gen Zs share many qualities with millennials, it’s wrong to think of them simply as a younger version. Gen Z has its own unique characteristic and it is important for organizations to understand who they are addressing before defining their people policies and practices. A comprehensive game plan in the war for talent would involve having the right ammunition (data), right weapons (carefully curated touch-points and platforms) and a well-trained army (managers/ leaders who are aware of themselves and appreciate diverse generations).

  • Know your people: Moving from headcount reporting to predictive analytics

If you have not already started looking at your employee lifecycle dashboards with the same analytical lens that you use on your sales or service metrics, it is high time to start doing it in 2023. Demographic composition of existing employees and how that is changing with the entry of Gen Z into the workforce should be a crucial factor informing all workforce decisions.

To zoom into and get a deeper understanding of each individual, you can leverage predictive analytics software such as Pulsifi’s platform. Our platform provides holistic profiles on each employee and as a group. Using predictive analytics, you will be able to not only understand each employee’s current interests and abilities, but also predict their potential and work outcomes.

  • Tailor your touch-points to cater to Gen Z, starting from candidate experience

Whether you are creating marketing content for prospective applicants or deciding on assessment design, the priorities and preferences of Gen Z should be a guiding principle. For instance, projecting your ESG agenda on job advertisements is likely to attract more Gen Zs to vacancies given their heavy inclination to work for organizations that contribute to society.

Investing in proven assessment tools that help applicants know themselves better would be a wise move as part of overall candidate experience which should also include clear and frequent communication that helps them avoid feelings of uncertainty or being unfairly treated.

Pulsifi would be one such platform for you to consider as it provides an individual report of each candidate’s personality assessment for self-awareness and development purposes. This delivers an enhanced candidate experience that helps candidates to discover themselves and feel assured of a fair, structured selection process. As for the hiring managers, our platform analyzes multiple sources of data to help you truly understand your people and generate personalized employee development recommendations.

Increasing popularity of graduate programs which include structured rotations and learning interventions amongst Gen Z underline the importance of creating touch-points that help them find their groove through individual experience and not by ‘being told’. Organizations investing in holistic candidate assessment tools within applicant tracking systems and structured learning and development initiatives are likely to reap greater benefits as the generational dynamics shift.

  • Create opportunities to listen and collaborate

If there is one way to understand the seemingly alien teenager on your dinner table- it is to listen without judging and to create opportunities to do things together. The workplace is no different. Studies show that as much as Baby Boomers and Gen X are apprehensive about working with millennials and even more so with Gen Z, Gen Z tends to find older generations intimidating, hard to communicate with and resistant to change. Gen Z is worried about not being heard and being underestimated at the workplace.

George Orwell had famously said – “Every generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one after it”. For leaders at the helm of organizations going through tectonic generational shifts that are creating fault lines, it is crucial to create spaces for open dialogue and opportunities for generations to learn from one another. Initiatives such as reverse mentoring, multi-generation project teams and cross generational awareness sessions are some great starting points. Attempts to build collaboration amongst generations must have people managers and organization’s leaders at the center as they would eventually be brand ambassadors of the candidate and employee experience.

The entry of Gen Z into the workforce is going to change the cultural fabric at every organization and is likely to be a dominant variable in determining who wins the war for talent. Like the generations that came before, Gen Z with its distinct values and principles will have an impact on the way we work and the future will require a much more calculated, flexible and sensible approach to recruiting, employing, developing, re-skilling and up-skilling people. Investing in the right technology platforms that provide meaningful insights and best in class candidate experiences catered to Gen Z can help you make smarter and more impactful decisions in 2023.

 

To get more insights into what Gen Z candidates look for in an organization, check out our whitepaper here.

Jan 12, 2023

Many Talent Acquisition, HR and business leaders are spending sleepless nights post-pandemic. Hiring the right talent quickly and efficiently to survive the war for talent is the need of the hour. Those who implemented an Applicant Tracking System (ATS) are busy navigating through it to find meaningful answers and those without, are managing recruiting on Excel, emails and phone-calls while looking for the right ATS.

Moment of truth – neither are likely to win the war for talent if they carry on looking for plain vanilla ATS.

In an integrated, high-paced business environment, people processes must be collaborative with insights flowing seamlessly from managers to HR teams and back. Systems must be connected and data – real time & deeply embedded. Worth exploring whether your current ATS is a standalone platform that does not enable data optimization or collaboration. It may just be the right time for you to consider tools that can complement your ATS to help you elevate your hiring process in 2023.

 

The 1-2-3 of Transforming ATS into Recruitment Management System

A great place to start would be to look at what your ATS can deliver and consider what challenges you are facing or insights you are missing that could enable you to make better hiring decisions, if you had access to them, delivers better user experience for managers, recruiters and candidates and meets the time and cost pressure of running your business.

1. Minimize routine tasks to maximize efficiency

You may want to consider investing in a video interviewing tool that allows both recruiters and hiring managers to screen candidates beyond the written word, together if they so want and multiple times without inconveniencing the candidates should there be a need to revisit. Healthcare major, Baxter implemented Pulsifi’s video interviewing solution that helped them cut shift screening time by 67%. Pulsifi also uses parsing, natural language processing and semantic understanding technologies to analyze resumes and job descriptions (JDs) to understand an individual’s skills, experience and competencies, and how much of them match the role requirements.

2. Employ psychometric assessments on top of resumes

Jury has long been out and decisively so on hiring for soft traits such as culture fit, work values and personal traits beyond just skills and experience. However, relying on the resume alone does not help recruiters make such assessments. Working with assessment providers across cognitive, personality and other psychometrics assessments could help provide a more holistic understanding of each candidate. Pulsifi’s solution combines key assessment parameters and job-related skills so results can be viewed as simple ‘fit-scores’. You can also review deeper insights and can uplift candidate experience by giving them some take-home results too!

3. Harness the power of predictive analytics to improve your hiring strategy

Data is the new oil and all technology investments you make, starting from assessment tools to AI will need a golden source. Most ATS providers out there seem to have a clear handoff to some form of HRIS right after a candidate is onboarded and that may be your biggest lost opportunity. How the new hire performs in the first two years or what kind of peer feedback did a candidate who scored high on ‘collaboration’ competency receive over the months are examples of critical aspects that many of us struggle to tie-up together. Pulsifi can work with you to unify your candidate’s performance and talent records, internal feedback and other data on this hire you just made to fine-tune the predictive analysis for your next hire.

Your way to victory in the war for talent probably has many variables but getting your weapons and armor right is key and it all starts by looking beyond the good old ATS.

Pulsifi integrates with a variety of ATS platforms, like SuccessFactors, Workday, Taleo, and more to help streamline your recruitment and provide you with holistic insights to make better decisions.

Book a demo with us here and experience the platform!

Book a live Demo

Get a first-hand experience of Pulsifi’s predictive analytics platform. 

Jan 9, 2023

Are you attracting the right talent?

We live in a different world of recruitment.

How graduate talent works, looks for jobs and wants to be hired has drastically changed in the last two years.

One thing is for sure; getting an accurate pulse on emerging graduate recruitment trends isn’t easy.

We put the legwork into identifying and summarizing those key trends for you.

After reading this article, you’ll have a huge edge in recruiting in an increasingly competitive environment.

Here are the top 3 graduate recruitment trends to take advantage of in 2023:

 

1. Artificial Intelligence (AI) in graduate recruitment

Undeniably, interest in recruitment AI and its uses has been steadily increasing since the early 2000s.

"Recruitment AI" has finally caught up to interest in “Recruitment tools” - Source: Google Trends

So does AI help? Or is it just a buzzword?

While AI was previously the stuff of science fiction, it has finally become a practical reality.

Its applications are entirely overhauling the operating model in some industries.

Graduate recruitment is no exception.

Here’s how AI can make your recruiting life easier:

  • High-volume tasks and busy work can be automated, leaving recruiters more time to focus on high impact work.
  • AI-standardized job matching means a fairer recruiting model and higher candidate quality.
  • Identify the candidate skills and traits you can help build to unlock their potential.

 

2. A shift toward values-based recruitment

Credentials and hard skills are a must.

We all know that.

However, there’s a big trend making waves in recruitment: values and behaviors deserve as much (if not more) weight as skills.

Why?

  1. Values drive behavior.
  2. Behavior builds habits.
  3. Habits train skills.
  4. Recognition of skills reinforces values.

Values are the foundation on which skills and performance build.

This cycle repeats, creating a positive feedback loop.

The more aligned a candidate’s values are with a company’s, the stronger the feedback loop becomes. Their continuous growth within your company has a halo effect on the people they interact with, helping to nurture an engaging, high-performance company culture.

So how do you evaluate values and behaviors?

Psychometric testing is a fast and accurate way to determine a candidate’s:

  • Cognitive abilities
  • Personality
  • Work behaviors, and
  • Potential to grow within their role

It’s clear why 78% of HR and recruitment professionals consider it to be a “powerful tool.”

 

3. Creating an amazing candidate experience

“Candidate experience” is every touch-point a candidate has with your company during the hiring process. It can start as early as they hear about your company and continue long past their last interaction with you.

Why candidate experience matters:

  • It’s their first impression of you and your company.
  • It influences how engaged they are and how likely they are to accept your offer.
  • It impacts your retention rates post-hire.
  • It turns into word of mouth — good or bad.

So how can you make sure it’s a fantastic candidate experience?

Here are some tips:

  • Optimize for mobile experience; as of 2022, Pulsifi observes an average of 53% of candidates accessing the platform via mobile device. Make it a seamless experience, and you won’t frustrate or alienate candidates.
  • Have a more inclusive process; show candidates that you don’t think of them as just a resume.
  • Run personality tests to show that you’re trying to get to know them.

Combining these tips makes your process feel like a personalized candidate experience.

 

How to get ahead of the trend

At Pulsifi, it’s our mission to help teams like yours find and acquire the best candidates at scale. 

Our platform uses AI and predictive analytics to help People teams focus on what they do best; find, acquire, and nurture the best talent.

Some quick examples of companies using Pulsifi:

  • Nestlé saw a 97% accurate job performance prediction for new hires
  • Baxter saves more than 65% of its time screening candidates
  • Heineken’s candidates gave their candidate experience 90% satisfaction

You can explore exactly how we helped them and the results they achieved here.

We help recruitment teams that:

  • Aren’t able to go deep to understand each candidate
  • Don’t have enough time to consider all candidates
  • Aren’t hiring the right candidates that perform and are committed

If any of that sounds familiar, feel free to book a demo here.

Book a live Demo

Get a first-hand experience of Pulsifi’s predictive analytics platform. 

Jan 3, 2023

Our CEO & Co-Founder, Jay Huang was recently featured on RecruitingDaily’s Use Case Podcast. Listen in on this interview as he highlights the use case or business case for why our clients choose Pulsifi.

Question 1:

Introduce yourself and Pulsifi

Question 2:

A single view, which is really important because you’re combining a lot of disparate systems that people have had to use before. Tell us a bit about the single view and what does that look like for your customers?

Question 3:

So on the back end of that, what’s the technology, without getting into the secret sauce? There’s got to be some logic or machine learning or AI. There’s something behind that. Tell us a little bit about that.

Question 4:

With one being a success profile and the other being a candidate profile, how frequently is it updated or recalibrated? Especially with the candidate profile, how do you keep up to date with scenarios where certain hard skills have changed or maybe their soft skills have changed?

Question 5:

Where does this sit in the organization? Share some insight with customers – where do they play with the workflow? And secondly, who’s using it? Who’s in it, using it, managing it, et cetera?

Question 6:

Why did you create Pulsifi? You could have built literally anything so why did you point all your energy and passion towards Pulsifi?

Question 7: 

Pulsifi defies a category singularly, but how do you want people to think of Pulsifi in terms of the solution itself?

Question 8:

What would others say that you do? Some say, “Well, it’s talent analytics.” or “It’s talent intelligence.” With all these new fancy terms, some people call it something completely different. So if unaided, what would you think others would call Pulsifi?

Question 9:

Do you see a path forward in terms of team dynamics? And having worked on a bunch of teams, back to the BCG, do you see it informing how teams are formed, et cetera?

Question 10:

When you show Pulsifi to folks for the first time or you get to actually be on a call and get to show them things. What’s kind of your favorite part and what’s their favorite part of the demo?

Question 11:

You can’t buy something without talking about price. It doesn’t need to be in the first four or five conversations. Eventually you’ll get there, but there’re other things that are more important. So what are some of the questions that you love to receive from practitioners, your prospects?

Question 12:

What’s being displaced here? When people bring in Pulsifi, are they getting out of Excel? Are they getting out of some broken processes or other technology? What’s being displaced?

Question 13:

What is your most recent favorite customer story without mentioning brands or names — just something where all of a sudden, a customer uses the technology in a way that you’re like, “Wow. That wasn’t on our roadmap.”

 

Aug 17, 2022
Gen Z's have taken the workforce by storm! They are in-demand and the most sought-after group of talent today. Companies are investing a lot of effort to understand this generation of workforce to improve their talent acquisition and management. Listen in on this interview where our CEO, Jay Huang, shares insights on:
    • The general hallmarks of this generation and any disparate qualities that sets them apart from previous generations.
    • Challenges employers face and how to tackle them.
    • Understanding Gen Z’s candidate experience.
    • Pulsifi's recommendations for hiring managers - from job application to screening.
Apr 28, 2022

When considering someone for a job, what do you look at? Chances are, you would scan through the candidate’s resume. What, in particular, would you focus on?

Are you confirming that the candidate has been in a similar job in the same industry? Are you looking for signs that the candidate has been doing well in that job?

You are likely looking for hard skills – expertise, experience or qualifications specific to certain jobs and/or industries. These might include functional skills like recruiting for a human resource role, or technical skills for a programmer role. Hard skills are usually not transferable across many different jobs or life situations.

Distinguishing soft traits

Now, think about your best co-worker or employee. What is it about him/her that really stands out?

Does he/she exhibit strong leadership potential? Is he/she a great team player? Does he/she communicate very effectively?

These are soft traits. Rather than being learned like hard skills, soft traits are more innate in each of us and are generally relevant across different jobs and life situations.

As you can see, a mix of both hard skills and soft traits is required for people to excel at their jobs. Some would even say that while hard skills are “hygiene factors” to undertake the job, soft traits are what distinguish great employees from the average ones.

Why are soft traits taking over?

More and more companies are exalting the value of soft traits. The need for these traits is driven by two interconnected key factors:

● Ubiquitous connectivity – With greater demand for the global workforce to be online all the time, real-time communication has become a priority. Work has become increasingly collaborative even as the workforce grows more fragmented. Fragmentation is not merely in geographical terms, but also the mix of full-time, part-time and gig workers, of different cultures.

● Shortening of business cycles – Business cycles in the digital economy have dramatically shortened. It now only takes years to build a billion-dollar company, where it previously took decades. This means the ways of doing business and the scopes of jobs are changing rapidly, possibly even 10 times faster than before.

The term VUCA (volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity) is an apt description for the current business scenario. For example, “digital recruiting” is becoming redundant because all recruiting is pretty much digital today.

Which soft traits should we be looking for in talent today? 

The answer varies based on role and organization, but here are some examples that apply to most:

Communication and teamwork: With the constant demands of the business world across a fragmented workforce, effective communication and teamwork are critical soft traits for collaboration across all jobs and organizations.

Openness to experience: People who are high in this trait are more adaptable to change, able to work with new ideas better, and respond well to diversity in the workplace.

Motivation and ability to learn: Possessing the hard skills for today’s job may be sufficient now but, being motivated and able to learn the skills for tomorrow’s job is what really matters.

Proactivity: An employee who is proactive is always thinking of what will happen next. He/she would take the initiative and not wait to be told what to do.

Grit: Working towards gruelling long term goals require a certain level of stamina and perseverance. Those who have grit are able to passionately pursue these long term goals, and those without it give up easily.

 

Taking a holistic approach to hiring

Relying on soft traits or hard skills alone may not always give you the insight you need to hire right.

For example, someone with impressive qualifications and experience may lack teamwork and thus disrupt the work culture. Likewise, looking at soft traits alone might get you the right attitude, but you may end up with a big skills gap as your business moves forward.

Both hard skills and soft traits are needed to assess the suitability of a candidate.

Wouldn’t it be awesome if you could accurately narrow down these candidates, even before you interact with them? The good news is this is already possible today!

People analytics tools like Pulsifi’s platform are able to gather information about candidates’ hard skills and soft skills to predict outcomes like behavior, attitudes, and performance to a job. These data points on candidates are obtained from multiple sources, including resumes, various pre-employment assessments and video interviews.

However, it is not just about analyzing and understanding a candidate. Different organizations and different roles have different requirements for success – through analyzing employees, Pulsifi incorporates these variations and customizes our algorithm when making these predictions. 

What kind of traits does your organization look for in a candidate?

Pulsifi's Psychometric Assessments

Understand your candidates holistically and hire better 

Learn More
Feb 8, 2022

In a world where global social upheavals and diversity awareness is fueled by technological advancements, it is no question that the world should be further along in matters concerning employee equity than it is. Yet, when it comes to ensuring workplace diversity, many business leaders still fall short when it comes to enforcing efficient diversity and inclusion efforts. 

A good place to start is to look at the way you are hiring. After all, recruitment is where organizations build the next generation of their business.

One of the most prevalent issues in the hiring process is biasness – specifically unconscious biases can stem from simple things like conducting unstructured interviews or simply selecting candidates based on gut feel.

Adopting merit- and evidence-based selection processes can be your key to effectively improving your workplace diversity and eventually productivity. 

First things first…..

What is merit- and evidence- based hiring?

Evidence-based hiring is similar to merit-based hiring practices in the sense that they both eliminate discrimination and nepotism from the process and guarantees that personal judgments, bias and other arbitrary indicators do not affect the candidate’s selection. 

Merit-based hiring is a system where you hire a candidate simply based on whether they have the necessary hard & soft skills for a particular job rather than where the candidate worked before, obtained their degree or total years of experience. With this method, managers normally assess the quality of the candidate based on their qualifications, previous experience and skills. This method alone can still leave room for biasness to play a role as managers also have to rely on their gut feel when making a hiring decision. 

Evidence-based hiring, on the other hand, is hiring candidates based on the factors that are the most predictive of job outcomes. 

How does this work? You may ask. 

To identify these predictive factors, you can compare the data of successful candidates’ performance collected during the screening process – based on assessment and interview results to their on-the-job performance one year into their role. Through this analysis, you are gathering evidence of how well a certain hiring factor predicts the job outcomes. By building a hiring process that prioritizes these predictive factors, organizations can improve their hiring outcomes.

For the purpose of this article, we’ll be focusing on evidence-based hiring. 

Why is this recruitment system significant for workplace diversity?

Bias – often a deep-rooted influence – is still prevalent to this day and will continue to hinder organizations from recognizing real potential in their talent pool, if not addressed. While this may stem from a lack of procedures, it is important to note that this is a systemic problem which starts from the initial contact job seekers have with a company. 

Shifting to a more data-driven hiring approach exposes an organization to a much larger pool of applicants who possess the skills and aptitude necessary to excel in the available positions.

A study published by the American Psychological Association, which analyzed 85 years of research, was used to rank different hiring factors based on how well they predicted job performance outcomes. The evidence of this study found that the most efficient hiring factors are work samples, cognitive ability tests and structured interviews. 

With all this at play, it is essential to build a stable foundation of workplace diversity by implementing a more ethical recruitment process.

How to implement it into your hiring processes?

To improve key metrics such as turnover, time to fill, retention and diversity, it is important to recognize the importance of combining data-driven methods and analysis with recruiters and hiring managers’ skills to assess candidates’ knowledge, skills and abilities in areas relevant to the job for which they applied.

Below are a few simple steps inspired by top multinational companies Pulsifi works with to help you start executing this initiative.

1. Define What You’re Looking for In a Talent

The critical step when implementing merit-based recruitment is to identify specific behaviors, capacities and expertise your ideal candidate should have as well as determine the potential a candidate could develop over time. Building a clear persona for each role based on facts from the start because that will help you to recognize and eliminate bias. 

You should consider your business needs and how a particular job position contributes to reaching your business goals. That way, you can better understand what to look for in a job applicant and not judge based on superficial factors such as the candidate’s background and grades.

2. Benchmark Based on Existing Top Performers

When it comes to analyzing your top performers, ensure that they are measured against the norm group to make certain that the process will be as devoid of biases as possible to enable a truly pro-diverse approach from beginning to end; another similar method would be to take all employees in a specific role to form the benchmark for said position. This is also a good time to identify any disparities between the top employees and average employees to see if your organization may unintentionally be complicit in the lack of diversity in the job market.

Once you have defined the behavioral skills and competencies that are necessary for exceptional performance, you can use this information as a benchmark for new job applicants. Evaluate the skills, experience and knowledge the most successful talents in your company have and how their abilities compare to those you need for a particular job position. Moreover, identify some of the ways in which your best employees reached their full potential to recognize promising candidates who could achieve the same outcome.

3. Gather and analyze candidate data

Drawing from industrial and organizational psychology, evidence-based selection utilizes a standardized, consistent process and relevant quantitative data to facilitate a multidimensional assessment of job candidates. 

      • Use pre-employment assessments such as psychometric and cognitive assessments – Merit-based hiring means that you should understand each individual, their soft and hard skills, and what makes them a good fit. That could help you predict their potential to perform well in a particular role. 

Psychometric assessments enable you to evaluate the abilities, values, motivation, character, creativity and integrity of a candidate. For example, our Personality Discovery test gives insight into different behavioral tendencies and characteristics that might affect work performance. 

You can also use a cognitive ability test to determine a candidate’s abilities involved in thinking (e.g., reasoning, perception, memory, verbal and mathematical ability, and problem solving). Such tests pose questions designed to estimate applicants’ potential to use mental processes to solve work-related problems or to acquire new job knowledge. 

      • Create a structured interview process  – Interviews are just as significant for evaluating hard skills and soft skills which can be achieved by asking the right questions. Ask appropriate situational and competency-based questions specific to the role and based on the candidate’s profile details to get a better understanding of their thought process, perspectives and what they need to succeed in a particular job role. 

By structuring interview questions, you eliminate bias and do your best to determine a candidate’s eligibility and cultural fit. To do this, we advise developing an interview kit that can be used as a guide for your team to conduct a focused, purposeful interview and collect valuable feedback. It can include various topics you would like to cover with the interviewee, such as background questions and role or industry-specific questions.

With Pulsifi’s interview kit feature, you can view the traits that your candidate scores exceptionally high or low in and get a list of recommended interview questions that is based on the candidate’s profile and what is critical to the role. These questions are designed to help you gain a deeper understanding of the candidate’s work styles, culture and interests.

      • Validating gut feeling – Although instincts can be biased, relying on strict logic is sometimes impossible. The way to combat this is to validate your gut feel against data, identify behavioral patterns and learn how to apply a criterion reasonably by leveraging advanced data analytics and AI technology based on people science. These technologies are designed to purely assess facts obtained through data which limits any personal biases and inconsistencies in decision-making habits due to its impartial nature. 

For example, if a hiring manager doesn’t feel like the candidate is a critical thinker and problem solver, then he/she can break these qualities into measurable or observable behaviors. The hiring manager can use an assessment or ask relevant situational questions to assess the candidate’s critical thinking skill and their ability to use a range of logical skills.

4. Review Selection Process

Before reviewing your selection process, it is important to remember that you should be sourcing from a diverse pool of candidates to begin with. One of the ways you can do this is to post job vacancies on a wider range of platforms and make sure to scan the post beforehand in case of any discriminatory requirements. 

You should continuously be reviewing the candidate screening and selection process to check whether diverse job applicants are moving through each phase successfully. In the case of finding any glitches or faults hindering recruitment, determine the cause and whether or not it could be hiring bias.

Some other methods you can implement to improve the selection process include:

      • Being aware of different State and Local Laws on workplace discriminatory practices
      • Give employees hands-on training about the Do’s and Don’ts regarding discrimination during the hiring process

Data-driven Recruitment as a Path to Inclusion

The increasing number of our well-educated younger generations are demanding a more modern and forward-thinking approach to workplaces. This welcome progress just goes to show how more industry leaders are now starting to realize that they can no longer afford to ignore untapped leadership talent and must begin overcoming these long-established cultural norms

While it is clear that organizations still have some way to go in terms of workplace diversity, the recruitment process as the starting point of inclusion is a good way to establish long-lasting, positive changes. You may be surprised to find that talent and potential comes in all shapes and sizes.

Pulsifi helps reputable organizations streamline their hiring by providing insights on candidates’ hard skills and soft traits, and our platform predicts their work outcomes with over 90% accuracy, making the selection process more effective and efficient.

Get a demo of Pulsifi’s platform and see how we can take your recruitment process to an inclusive level!

Nov 17, 2021
Look, we’ve all been there. Our employer branding is on point, our job descriptions attract crowds of talent, and our candidate pipeline is overflowing. Unfortunately, it’s filled with talent that ultimately isn’t a good fit for our hiring role. The question on our mind is, “How do I know who our best candidates are?” The answer is: you don’t. You’ll need to ask candidates strategic interview questions to know if they’ll be a great fit.

So what are strategic interview questions?

Strategic interview questions are a series of behavioral and situational questions designed to give you an unbiased, unfiltered interview with candidates. They are powerful tools for a hiring team because they help you find out precisely what you need to know about a candidate. Follow these steps to ask the best strategic interview questions and hire the right candidate:  

Step 1. Build your candidate success profile

A candidate success profile is a robust combination of core hiring criteria and character traits that define your ideal hire for a specific role. This profile is arguably the most critical part of finding and building a superstar talent pipeline since it serves as your guiding blueprint throughout the whole process. It’s also important to create success profiles for each role you’re hiring. How do you create strong candidate success profiles? The factors of a success profile consist of the hard skills and soft traits required for role success. As you can probably imagine, candidate requirements are going to vary a lot depending on the role. Here are some key profile factors to consider:
  • Skills (i.e. technical knowledge of programming languages)
  • Relevant job experience
  • Alignment to organizational values
  • Behavioral competencies
  • Leadership potential
  • Motivations
What would best indicate a candidate that will succeed in the role you’re hiring? Different roles have varying requirements, so don’t be afraid to consult your current data and stakeholders on what traits exemplify the ideal candidate. Remember, you don’t have to reinvent the wheel for each new role; reconfiguring is the way to go.  

Step 2. Craft your strategic interview questions

Now that you have a strong candidate success profile, it’s time to create the strategic interview questions that will unveil the best-fit candidates. The trick here is to “ask without asking.” This is where open-ended situational and behavioral questions help. Situational questions provide a novel hypothetical situation where a candidate will have to consider and share the steps they need to take to solve a problem. Behavioral questions are designed to help understand a candidate’s past behavior, and how that could apply in the new role. Close-ended questions, however, tend to stop at a “yes” or a “no,” without a lot of additional insight. They can be useful in questionnaires, but not as useful in an interview environment. Consider two cases with an interviewer asking a candidate a question about being people-centric:
  1. Close-ended question: “Would you say you’re a people-centric person?”
  2. Situational question: “What would you do if an angry client confronted you? How would you resolve the situation?”
  Which question is more likely to give you the more useful insight? I think we can agree that it’s the second question. Why is that the case, though? We like to make other people happy, even if done unconsciously - we try to give the “right” answer. It’s not the interviewee’s fault, and not all interviewees do it, but it creates a situation where responses are filtered. Filtered answers mean that our insights into the candidate are going to be biased or inaccurate. If the interviewer asked the general question, “Would you say you’re a people-centric person?” The candidate would have said something like, “Oh yeah, people are great. I love helping them.” Not very insightful, right? That’s why strategic questions, like the second example, are so powerful. Understanding the events around a story allows you to follow up on interesting points they make. Here’s an example of the second, situational question:
  • Interviewer: “What would you do if an angry client confronted you? How would you resolve the situation?”
  • Candidate: “Well, first, I make sure they feel heard. I want them to know that their concern is valid, and my only goal is to help resolve it. After I got them to a point where they know that I’m really listening to them, I would ask questions to try and understand what was going on. After I understood the problem the client was facing clearly, I would connect them to an appropriate solution. The solution might be technical support, an apology, or something else altogether. In a nutshell, to help connect their challenge to a solution, first, they’d need to feel heard, and, second, I need to understand what’s going on. Then it’s much clearer to resolve.”
Can you see how the situation question both answered if the candidate was people-centric, while also providing insight into their conflict resolution skills? The key is having a prepared list of great interview questions that allow you to follow up and find those valuable candidate insights.  

What are the best types of strategic interview questions?

The best questions are tailored to your candidate success profile, but the types of questions are the same, regardless of the role. Use some inspiration from the examples below, but it’s essential to make them specific to your candidates. Here’s a list of the best strategic interview question types: Behavioral Questions: For discovering the candidate’s temperament and conflict resolution skills
  • “Could you walk me through a time you made a mistake, and how you handled it?”
  • “Can you tell me about a time you encountered a hard problem and how you solved it?”
  • “Tell me about a time when you had a conflict with a peer, and how it was resolved.”
Situational Questions: For determining a candidate’s direct skills and indirect value.
  • “What would you do if you were assigned to the same project as a co-worker, but you couldn’t seem to agree on anything?”
  • “A vendor is consistently late, and it’s impacting your work. How would you handle it?”
  • “Let’s say you notice that a task request from another team isn’t very detailed but labeled as high-priority. How would you go about the task?”
While these are the best types of questions to ask, it helps to get as specific as possible. If you’d love to save the guesswork, check out our new  “Interview Kit” feature. It suggests personalized questions based on the role and the candidate’s existing profile. Then it helps easily collect valuable feedback and share it with stakeholders. If you want to see what’s been working for us, book a demo here.  

Step 3. Prepare for the interview

An often overlooked but significant part of the hiring process is communicating with stakeholders before the live interview. At this point, you know who you’re interviewing and the questions you’ll be asking them. Now, you can do a couple of things in advance to make sure it goes smoothly. First off, review your candidate notes and make sure you have most of the basic questions answered before speaking to them. That preparation will make sure your time spent will be on the most valuable questions. Next, whether you do it every day or interviewing for the first time, it’s a great practice to have a mock interview with a colleague. It will help you catch any awkward-sounding questions and help the interview flow smoothly. Finally, take a few deep breaths, and relax. You’ve got this.  

Step 4. Interview your candidates

Now it’s time to let your preparation do the work and go through your interview stages. Here’s a quick overview of the main steps:
  1. Small talk
  2. Gather information
  3. Q&A
  4. Wrap-up
  “Small talk” might not seem vitally important, but it’s a vital part of your candidate’s experience and the insights you can gain. According to a study, an 11% increase in anxiety can result in a 7% decrease in interview performance. What does that mean? Just a slight increase in anxiety can be the difference between getting and not getting hired, even if they were otherwise a great fit. Then, just follow your interview steps and watch the magic happen. Note: Keep the tone conversational and relaxed - “how we ask” is almost as important as “what we ask.”  

Step 5. Review the interview outcome

The final step is to learn from the interview and decide if the candidate should move to the next stage. Luckily, you already have your candidate success profile to guide you. Based on the interview, how similar is the candidate to your success profile? Here’s a shortlist of good questions to ask yourself:
  • Does the candidate have the skills we need?
  • Does their past work experience indicate how successful they will be in the new role?
  • Will they mesh with the company when they join?
  • Do they have the potential for a leadership role?
To streamline the process, create a scoring rubric based on what’s most important for your role and bucket candidates into three groups;
  1. Does not meet candidate requirements
  2. Does meet candidate requirements
  3. Exceeds candidate requirements
 

Conclusion

In summary, there are five critical steps for asking good strategic interview questions:
  1. Know who you’re trying to hire.
  2. Know the best questions to help identify them in your candidate pool.
  3. Take some time to review your notes, practice your questions, and relax before the interview.
  4. Help your candidate relax, and then interview them. Let the first three steps do the majority of the work.
  5. How closely does the candidate resemble your success profile?
  Remember: It’s ok if a step doesn’t go perfectly the first time. There are many things to consider, but the important thing is to keep trying and learning, and you’ll be surprised at how quickly you make progress. If you want to save hours on the above steps, check out our new Interview Kit - we’ve built it with this exact process in mind. It’s got all the tools you need, from ideal strategic questions specific to your candidate to efficiently gathering and sharing feedback with key stakeholders. If that sounds good, you can book a free demo here and see how we’re helping other hiring teams expertly navigate otherwise overwhelming talent pipelines.
Sep 15, 2021
The ideal candidate is thought to be someone who has the right skills and years of experience in a relevant field. We, however, believe a unique set of soft traits can differentiate a great hire from the rest. While our People Data Platform provides insightful pointers on each candidate by evaluating their hard skills and soft traits, it is equally important for interviewers to ask the right questions during the interview in order to accurately assess the candidate’s eligibility and cultural fit. In this case, using generic interview questions for every candidate just won’t cut it!

Introducing... our interview kit!

Our interview kit contains everything your team needs to conduct a focused, purposeful interview and collect valuable feedback.

Personalized to each role

  • After analyzing each candidate using our predictive algorithms, our platform recommends a list of questions based on the traits that are important for the role. The questions are designed to help interviewers gain a deeper understanding of their work styles, culture and interests.
  • The platform highlights the traits that the candidate scores exceptionally high or low in, so you can choose to focus your interview on the critical areas.
  • Asking questions specific to each candidate's profile provides more room for candidates to share and discuss in much more depth, allowing you to validate what is most important for each candidate to succeed in the role, and make the most out of the time allocated for the interview.
 

Convenience meets functionality

  • Before you start the interview, you’ll have all the candidate’s information such as their resume, assessment results, etc. within easy reach in their profile.
  • As you conduct your interview, you can rate the candidate on each trait and leave a comment or note on your impression of the candidate’s response to a particular question.
  • After rating the candidate on each trait, you can give an overall rating to sum up your evaluation on the candidate.
 

Collaboration made easy

  • Share the interview kit with other stakeholders in the interview panel with just one click for ease of consistency across interviews and so that they can leave their feedback or ratings accordingly. The stakeholders are not required to have an account with our platform.
  • View all feedback and ratings left by everyone in the interview panel for each candidate, consolidated onto one page for easy reference.

 

Some important things to note:

  • Try using a conversational tone in these interviews so that the candidate feels more comfortable expanding on their answers that will highlight the traits that make them a good fit for the position.
  • It is important to remember that the questions in the interview kit serve as a guide. You don’t have to follow the exact order and there’s nothing wrong with “going off script” at times as needed.
Explore how Pulsifi's platform can help you hire faster and better. Talk to us.
Sep 7, 2021