A Case for Change to Modern Recruiting

Last weekend at the TA Global Gathering, myInterview CMO Eliav Rodman had the pleasure of having a discussion with Clayton Donnelly, a consulting organizational psychologist based in South Africa, on a variety of topics across the industry.

Short video here (full video at the bottom of the post):

While working as a consultant three years ago, Donnelly was approached by many of his clients about the possible integration of video interviewing into the workspace. Despite the initial buzz, most of the plans to evolve their methodology fell to the wayside.

In the last 18 months there has been a sizable uptick in interest for video interviewing technology. Donnelly speaks about how initially, in South Africa specifically, there was pushback for the use of this new technology. “The reality is that companies are skeptical”, he mentions, and continues that issues of the rural/urban dynamic as well as accessibility has led to a slow uptake in adopting these technologies. However, despite this corporate level pushback, the change that Donnelly has observed has mainly come from candidates. This desire from candidates is what is going to push employers to adjust and advance their recruitment practices, along with the push that is the COVID-19 pandemic.

“We’re seeing time and time again that candidates want to interact using technology and want their first, or many steps entering an organization through technology” says Donnelly.

The conversation then shifted to a recent presentation that Donnelly gave about candidate perceptions of digital hiring. He recently conducted a study in tandem with a client in South Africa to gain data driven insights on multiple facets of video interviewing from the candidates perspective. Donnelly and his team tackled three major questions:

1. Is internet accessibility a real challenge that South African candidates face? Will technology be a hindrance for these candidates to complete video interviews?
2. Are there significant differences in time to hire when utilizing video interviewing software?
3. Video interviewing vs. Psychometrics: Is video interviewing the future of hiring practices? Is there data that proves that one method is stronger than another?

The results that Donnelly presented were as follows. They found that 90% of candidates would do another video interview. The test that they conducted was with a test population of 80 candidates going through a graduate recruitment process. They subjected the candidates with both video interviewing as well as psychometric testing, and when asked who would come back to video interviewing they had 90% of the candidates reporting a strong affinity towards this method.

On the question of whether or not time was saved using video interviewing there was overwhelming data that proved the validity of using video interviews. Donnelly found that when giving candidates a one-way video interview early on in the screening process, coupled with the mobile access to psychometric testing they were able to reduce time to hire by 47%. This was compared to the traditional recruitment methods of CV screening, psychometric testing (without video interviews).

On the final question of whether or not the AI technology in myInterview’s product would be up to par with traditional psychometric testing they found the correlation to be 0.4. Although that number may not seem strong with the untrained eye, Donnelly assured that within the social sciences this is standard, and shows a strong level of correlation.

At the end of their study they posed the holistic question of which technologies did people prefer. On the candidates front they found that candidates equally endorsed the two methods, most preferred the option of the new technology as opposed to the traditional methods. The more important question was how would the employers react to video interviewing, as the party that shows more resistance to change. Donnelly found that employers thought video interviews were able to provide a closer look at the candidate’s personality type, and when coupled with the psychometric analytics would be able to vastly improve hiring practices.

“I do believe that the two technologies together are fantastic. I think they already pack a punch in time to hire, predicting job outcomes. I think this is a great combo” say Donnelly.

Rodman closes the discussion by asking Donnelly an optimistic question about the future, how are we supposed to take the current situation with the pandemic to help bring organizations into this new technology? Donnelly acknowledges that there always must be a catalyst for meaningful change to occur, and COVID-19 is that catalyst now. Donnelly closes out this discussion with an optimistic look into the future:

“We’ve learned so much about the ability to work remotely, and to use this technology in such a short space of time. Because as human beings we are into change, we can adapt, we can do the good stuff, but we need that case for change.”