Skill tests and aptitude games will be added to job interviews

As we’ve reported, artificial intelligence tools like ChatGPT are changing the hiring process, making it easier for job seekers to tailor resumes to each position and giving recruiters more insight into the true nature of candidates. It became difficult to understand his character.

Assessments aimed at predicting applicant performance have long been part of the recruitment process, particularly for management, retail and customer service roles.

However, screening assessments are now commonly performed in a variety of jobs. More than a dozen platforms offer these in the form of aptitude games, job simulations, and personality tests. All of this is done before the applicant even speaks to a real person. And it’s becoming more and more high-tech.

Josh Millet, founder and CEO of an assessment platform called Criteria Corp., walked me through one of his company’s five-minute pre-employment tests. He was divided into three games in which each he was asked 40 questions.

“This game is called Robot Inspector,” he said. “We’ll see a whole sequence of robots and what we’re going to do is answer whether we think they’re the same or different.”

The game featured two pairs of cute cartoon robot dogs. Both had googly light bulb eyes and tails that looked like vintage joysticks. However, one leg was lined with orange bolts.

“And each one lasts only six seconds,” Millet warned. “So feel free to shout out the answer!”

The robots started firing rapidly and it became difficult to spot the differences.

Note that the hypothetical job we applied for is not “robot inspector.” This game helps you evaluate engineering, accounting, nursing, or technical support applicants.

“It’s really measuring a kind of narrow skill of paying attention to detail,” Millet said.

This is one of dozens of different assessments that Criteria offers to employers looking for more than a resume and cover letter.

“The way we look at candidates has changed from being a backwards view of, ‘What does your resume say? What have you done?’ ‘Show us what you can do. ” says Lindsey Zuloaga, chief data scientist at HireVue, another assessment platform.

Use AI to evaluate applicants’ unsolicited video interviews and answer questions like “How do you deal with difficult customers or how do you respond to last-minute changes?” .

“We train the algorithm based on thousands of answers that humans have rated on a rubric, similar to what high, medium, and low answers look like,” Zuloaga said. said.

However, AI trained on historical hiring data can amplify historical biases, such as women being less likely to be hired as engineers and men less likely to be hired as nurses.

In 2021, HireVue discontinued facial analysis in video interviews due to concerns about potential inaccuracies and bias in facial and emotion recognition technology. The company said advances in natural language processing have improved the analysis of spoken language, eliminating the need for visual analysis. This tool currently only analyzes interview transcripts.

Zuloaga said HireVue’s algorithms are regularly audited and adjusted for bias, which is required for AI recruiting systems under New York City law.

“We’re really trying to fix something that’s broken,” she said. “There may be errors or imperfections in the process.”

Without more objective measures, employers may fall back on biases such as placing more emphasis on college degrees, said Audrey Mikaheil of the nonprofit Opportunity at Work.

“We ask executives, ‘Think about the top three to five skills you use in your job every day. Where did you acquire those skills?'” Mika Hale says. Ta. “And most of the time they’ll say, ‘Oh, I learned that on the job'” — not in college.

More than 60% of U.S. workers do not have a four-year degree, including an even larger share of Black and Latino workers. With proper guardrails to ensure fairness and accuracy, pre-employment assessments can open doors and increase diversity in recruitment, as long as they don’t create additional barriers, Mikaheil said. Ta.

“When we’re used to being blocked at every turn of our career journey, things we don’t fully realize the impact of can be incredibly demoralizing and demotivating. There is a gender,” Mikaheil said.

She recommends that employers keep the test simple, explain the purpose of the test, and provide feedback on how applicants can improve. Mikaheil added that evaluations should be short or applicants should be compensated for their time.