Innovations in Interviewing

“Innovative interview tools” were one of the top new trends defining the future of recruiting. Traditional interviews fail to properly assess candidates (e.g., identifying their true weaknesses and strengths, particularly when it comes to soft skills). Traditional interviews are also prone to interviewer bias and interviewers who don’t know the best questions to ask. So, what are the “innovative” tools and techniques that are filling the gap?

Job Auditions

An interview won’t show you how a job candidate actually works. To that end, a company might use a “job audition” by hiring a prospective worker through a short trial period or sponsoring events like “hackathons” that give prospects a chance to show off their chops. Short of a full job audition, you might try a “work sample test.” Google’s Senior VP of People Operations says such a test is the best predictor of future job performance.

Video Interviews

We mean more than teleconferencing here. One of the biggest challenges with interviews can be logistics: getting everyone in the same room at the same time can be prohibitively difficult, particularly if you’re recruiting non-local candidates. The ability to interview via webcam is wonderful on its own, but it can be taken even further. One-way job interviews are videos of applicants answering preset interview questions, being recorded by their own webcam, often on a timer. The simplified logistics can help streamline the recruitment process, and the videos can be re-watched or shared within the organization as needed.

Bots and Artificial Intelligence (AI)

The LinkedIn survey doesn’t mention this, but Wired reports that bots are key to Google’s recruiting success. Bots are automated AI-type programs that can handle aspects of recruiting that may be challenging or undesirable to people. For example, Google created an internal tool called qDroid that generates interview guides for hiring managers based on their selection criteria. Other recruitment bots might handle early interactions with job candidates, sometimes going so far as to conduct preliminary interviews themselves.

Innovation Strategy

Interviews are only one component of a larger process; and if traditional interviews are unreliable at identifying weaknesses and strengths or at predicting future performance, it might be appropriate to re-think where they fit into the job selection process. For example, rather than serving as the centerpiece of the candidate evaluation effort, interviews might only be a piece of a puzzle that also includes elements like soft skills assessments and work sample tests.

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