When we meet someone for the first time, we make a series of rapid and subconscious judgments based on the other person’s appearance, body language and behaviour, and our own biases.
It’s often said that some interviewers will make a decision about whether or not to hire someone in the first few minutes and spend the rest of the interview trying to prove themselves right. We wouldn’t recommend this interview technique, but it’s certainly the case that when we’re meeting someone for the first time, gut feel plays a role.
Unfortunately, not only is gut feel a questionable indicator of someone’s suitability for a job, it’s also pretty useless when you’re not talking to someone in person and face-to-face. Video calls are great, but a lot of non-verbal communication is lost. The sense of connection isn’t quite the same, which makes gut feel particularly unreliable.
This crisis will change how we work and live, in ways that are not yet clear. It will almost certainly have a lasting impact on how we interview. Companies who want to keep growing without making hiring decisions that they regret will need to replace gut feel interviews with more rigorous assessments that are better suited to remote work.
Hiring at a distance makes informal interviewing risky
There is a reason why a lot of interviewers rely on gut feel when screening candidates. For all of its shortcomings, it gives us a sense of confidence. When we meet someone, look them in the eye, shake their hand and introduce ourselves, we form a direct and instant connection that no video call could ever match.
Over the course of the conversation, without either person realising it, you pick up on thousands of minute non-verbal cues and behaviours. These nuances will help both of you make a decision about whether the other is a good fit.
“You could end up making hiring decisions based on limited information that you later regret.”
During this crisis, and potentially beyond it, this will no longer be possible. This could pose serious problems for hiring companies. It could limit your ability to grow or to build the specific skill sets that you need. Or you could end up making hiring decisions based on limited information that you later regret.
Establishing confidence remotely requires more structure and rigour
Companies that want to avoid these things need to find new ways to assess candidates and establish confidence that they’ve found the right person for the job.
When interviewing candidates remotely, it’s even more important to have specific questions planned that will help you unpack and explore their character and personality. Rambling chats aren’t going to give you the level of confidence that you need to make a hiring decision without meeting them in person. Recruiting at a distance makes forward planning and sticking to the script essential.
Conducting interviews by video also requires you to pay very close attention to the content of the person’s answers. Ultimately, the content of the answers is all you have. Previously, we may have used body language as a way of establishing trust. If someone keeps fidgeting and rubbing the back of their neck, they may not seem trustworthy. Without these cues, you have to rely purely on the plausibility of what they’re saying, so it’s important to be a stickler for details and really dig into what candidates are saying.
Tools – like ours – can provide reassurance
Along with a more structured and methodical approach, there are a number of different tools that you can use to assess someone’s personality and capability. These tools and techniques are designed to get right to the core of a candidate’s personality, preferences and technical skills.
They can give you a more systematic and quantitative way of making hiring decisions, which becomes really useful when you’re not able to meet someone in person. What you lack in physical interaction, you can make up for in data.
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They can also save you a lot of time. One of the drawbacks of remote hiring is that the number of interviews tends to increase. Testing allows you to make a decision without hours and hours of video calls.
Identifi Me – powered by Psycruit – is the tool you need to ensure you hire with confidence when working remotely. Here’s everything it offers.
Situational judgment tests
These tests present candidates with a scenario that they might encounter in their work and ask them to choose the best and worst available outcomes from a set of options.
A common example of this in customer service is to ask a candidate how they would respond if a customer was rude to them. The answers to these questions can help you get a sense of the candidate’s response to challenging situations and their decision-making processes.
Situational judgment tests can be designed to screen candidates for key traits or behaviours that suit the role or the culture of the hiring company. Another advantage of the situational judgment tests is that they can give the candidate an idea of the kinds of situations that they may have to deal with, which can help to manage expectations.
Personality profiling
Unsurprisingly, personality tests are less concerned with how we respond to situations and more concerned with our personality, values and behaviour. They are particularly useful for understanding whether someone would be a good cultural fit, and what kind of colleagues they would work best with.
Technical ability and aptitude tests
These tests can help you measure someone’s ability to do the job. The tasks which are set will vary by role, but they generally fall into four categories: numerical, verbal, visual and mechanical. They are particularly useful for leadership or technical roles, where very specific skills and knowledge are required.
Adapting to this new way of interviewing candidates requires a mindset shift. To establish confidence in candidates without meeting them in person, interviews need to change from being interactions to more formalised assessments.
“You need to be absolutely clear on what you want to know.”
You need to be absolutely clear on what you want to know and how you’re going to get that information. This is likely to require more planning, more rigour and the use of technical, situational and personality-based testing.
We can provide online psychometric assessments to help you explore a candidate’s character, personality, preferences and skills with personalised and structured competency based questions. Identifi Me will also help you understand how that person will fit into your organisation and specific teams.
We can work with you to design bespoke competency-based assessments that will help meet your hiring needs today and in the future, without having to without meeting candidates face-to-face.
Get in touch now to find out just how Identifi products can help you navigate the new world of virtual recruitment.
