Develop a scientific approach to recruitment

Even though science facilitates our day-to-day activities, many people question its use in some walks of life. However, it is particularly useful in various fields of business management. Among other areas, scientific concepts can be found in decision-making, corporate training, and sales development. But one of its most important applications takes place in the recruitment process.

Recruiting specialists have a lot to gain from scientific methods when looking to perform their job at the highest capacity. It helps them navigate intricate hiring procedures, which ties into your goal of growing your organizational values. After all, one of the greatest challenges of any enterprise is attracting qualified prospects, and science can go a long way to overcoming this obstacle.

Let’s get into the nuts and bolts of a scientific approach to recruitment, and determine how you can implement it in your company.

What is science-based recruitment?

Contrasting the traditional intuitive approach, scientific-based recruitment is a quantified method to hiring that relies on using data. With a wide range of scientific concepts, headhunters can identify problems in their job and come up with hypotheses to solve them.

The biggest reason why businesses opt for science in recruitment is the ability to measure hiring quality. This metric serves as a benchmark for determining the most successful approaches and tools in predicting the performance of new team members. With such robust techniques, you get statistical proof that your screening and sourcing initiatives are effectively anticipating job success.

Problems of an intuitive approach

While today’s technology-powered world provides ample opportunity to apply science to hiring, many companies still resort to intuitive recruitment. This allows them to operate in limited structures and environments with low individual accountability. Recruiters can freely devise their talent attracting approaches based on their experience, intuition, and many vague criteria (e.g., attitude). In other words, it’s an easy way out for companies that don’t want to tackle numbers and only want accountability in terms of recruiting costs.

This poses numerous risks for your business. For instance, there’s no way to gauge the efficacy of your hiring activities and predict a candidate’s performance. Consequently, your training and development sector would be wasting a lot of resources honing their skills without any significant improvement. To avoid this costly mistake, switch to a scientific approach.

Benefits of scientific methods

With a science and data-driven recruitment approach, you can achieve superior business impacts and results than with intuitive methods. To give you an idea of its value, here are the main advantages of implementing the strategy:

Greater productivity

All recruiting activities are directed toward a common goal – increasing team productivity via optimal hiring. To accomplish this objective, hiring practices must rely on criteria that can accurately predict job success. With psychometric tests and other contemporary techniques, the scientific approach is fully equipped to realize this vision.

Quick learning and sharing

Science is characterized by open data sharing among colleagues. The scientific approach to recruiting follows suit by allowing your team to continuously share results, whether positive or negative.

This transparency encourages your employees to forgo a systematic approach, where the best practices are kept secret and are not shared by individuals. In turn, the chances of repeating errors and forgetting recommended actions are much higher when key recruiters depart.

Under a scientific system, all participants are encouraged to learn from one another. As a result, everyone is familiar with the knowledge necessary to attract and retain top candidates.

Enhances consistency

Intuitive recruiters tend to wing it, relying on their gut feeling to provide results. Still, no evidence backs the assumption that this is more effective, resulting in inconsistency and potential legal problems.

On the other hand, scientific recruiters depend on proven approaches after identifying the best methods and weeding out weak practices. With everyone on the same page, recruiting performance improves while errors decrease.

How do you implement scientific recruitment?

While switching to science-based acquisition programs can be daunting, there are many ways to facilitate the transition:

Revise your existing selection methodology

Take a look at your current recruitment process and see if you can retain some elements. Your assessment centers or interviews may already be in solid shape but require some revamping. For example, a generic interview gauging teamwork skills may not be a valid representation of the abilities your candidates need to display. In that case, take a critical approach and modify the questions to meet your recruitment needs better.

Train your assessors

To cut the risk of subjectivity and human error, your assessors need to be well-trained in specific scientific methodologies you’re using. Although you can’t eradicate bias, having knowledgeable staff increases the chances of high-quality assessment.

Utilize scientifically-developed tools

Complement your hiring methods with dependable recruitment tools. For instance, you can incorporate comprehensive psychometric tests to receive predictive measurements of candidates’ behaviors and skills.

Integrate with third-party platforms and quiz the suppliers

Third-party recruitment tools help you automate and streamline the hiring process. They can generate interest, screen resumes, and even conduct interviews. Here are some of the most popular options:

• Job aggregators – These apps serve as job boards, advertising your company where you plan to hire people.
• Testing and assessment programs – These tools test your candidates’ characteristics by looking at an array of attributes, including aptitude, personality, and behavior.
• Automation and AI – You can use automation and AI platforms to screen candidates, provide virtual chats, analyze data, and perform many other valuable activities.

Don’t forget to question the supplier about the robustness of their tools. Figure out if they have all the necessary features to make the recruitment process seamless, utilizing scientific methods.

Bolster your team with top talent

Recruiting skilful candidates is just one step in growing your company. Once your new team members arrive, you’ll need to deliver continual training to make sure they remain productive.

To that end, check out Learnsure, one of the best training solutions available. Our app features a set of contemporary techniques to boost your workers’ performance, such as microlearning and behaviorism. Contact us for a demo and see how our system can work wonders for your organization.