According to Rebekah Iliff in a recent article released by Inc. Magazine, companies that are hiring during the pandemic are experiencing a crash course in the importance of job fit. Even with tremendous advances in technologies, notably AI, a significant number of hiring processes are missing assessments that accurately predict talent for specific roles. “Despite the fact that the current workforce is the most educated and dynamic workforce in history, HR managers can’t find the right people for jobs.”
Job fit is the compatibility between an employee and the jobs or tasks they will perform. This might seem like an obvious concept until you start defining compatibility. With the dramatic increase in remote hiring, managers who previously applied the “I know it when I see it” standard are now struggling with decisions. Even under the best of circumstances, extending job offers based primarily on someone’s “gut” impression actually puts a group in jeopardy of what Industrial / Organizational Psychologists refer to as “unconscious bias.”
To help keep your hiring on track – during and after the pandemic – let’s take a deeper look at job fit. There are two key elements to job fit that must be considered if the goal is to hire and retain the right person. They are:
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Ability to do the job
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Willingness to do the job
The primary reason organizations miss the mark on job fit is that one or both of these two essential components are missing from their assessment process.
How well does your current process match applicants to the two key components of job fit?
Ability. Of all assessment tools, simulations provide the most accurate measure of a candidate’s ability to perform a specific job. By placing an applicant in the job through a simulated experience, you can quickly and accurately discern if the person has the right skills and abilities to excel in the role. In fact, the U.S. Office of Personnel Management ranks job simulations as the #1 predictor of future job performance. With the current push for remote hiring ramping up, simulations are ideal tools for pinpointing the right talent and getting them up and running quickly.
Willingness. Additional tools help employers determine which candidates prefer a certain type of work and are likely to engage and grow with the company. Prior to the arrival of the Coronavirus, retention measures were viewed largely as a solution to turnover, which remains true. Turnover, and in this case, vacant openings, are costly. The sooner the right person is hired and productive, the better.
In the pandemic-affected marketplace, there is an urgency to get operations moving, so the default might be to “use what we’ve got.” Employment Technologies understands this dilemma, and can help you quickly transition to a remote process that will help you through the current crisis and beyond. We are a tight team, most having served together for more than 20 years. Our collective expertise equips us to ask the right questions, so product identification and implementation goes quickly and smoothly without disrupting your already hectic workday.
If you’re challenged with filling openings with the right candidates for your company, is it possible you might be overlooking a scientific approach to job fit?
The stress of implementing remote hiring protocols on top of your other responsibilities is real. Can we start with helping you identify whether or not your hiring process is evaluating both sides of job fit?
To schedule a no-obligation consult on finding and keeping the best talent, click here or call 888.332.0648 today.
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