Hiring the right person relies on distinguishing between someone that looks like a good candidate, and someone that is. Whilst pre-recorded video interviews are fast becoming a growing trend in recruitment, tying a candidate’s potential to their performance in a video clip can be a subjective process.

Introduction

The increased accessibility of remote hiring has established a fundamentally diverse, and extensive talent pool, that thrives on time-conscious decisions.

The popularity of pre-recorded interviews in this context, has surged.

Pre-recorded interviews generally focus on determining ‘emotional intelligence’ and personality through scanning with AI, or recording clips for recruitment consultants and hiring managers to review as an initial filter in the hiring process.

By contrast, 10x Solutions focus on establishing the Personality, Motivations and Competencies of all candidates through our industry leading psychometrics and accessible client platform.

In this article, we explore how remote hiring methods like video recording and psychometrics impact diverse groups, and the candidate experience.

Enabling Performance

Pre-COVID research regarding video conferencing in a test environment indicates that candidates that can see themselves whilst filming are likely to suffer low task performance, alongside feelings of discomfort.

Since the onset of COVID-19, mental health levels have declined. According to research from the mental health charity Mind, 60% of adults have had a significant impact on their mental health over lockdown.

Performance can suffer when anxiety is heightened, and as a result pre-recorded interviews are likely to misrepresent a person’s true ability and may lead to unnecessarily filtering candidates out.

Providing an accessible, and flexible assessment is one way to support candidates through the hiring process. Whilst competency-specific questions measure ability, personality and motivation-based questions aid both employers, and teams alike in understanding how best to onboard new talent.

Both 10x Talent and 10x Hire enable candidates to stop, and restart assessments whenever might be necessary. Our mobile friendly assessments put candidate experience first, and further enable test-takers to benefit from a comfortable, and flexible hiring process.

Establishing Competency

Pre-pandemic research from The University of Twente indicates that pre-recorded interviews may offer a subjective impression of a candidate’s competency.

The industry-leading suite of psychometrics offered by us at 10x Psychology empowers candidates and organizations to remain objective at every step of the hiring journey.

Our dynamic platform enables recruitment consultants and hiring managers to adapt the competencies needed for a role at the click of a button and receive an objective ranked list of those candidates that are most suitable for the position.

For talented candidates from disadvantaged backgrounds, 10x Solutions provide an unmatched opportunity to highlight their ability alongside other candidates.

Our assessments are short, culturally-neutral and work-oriented, providing candidates with a focused, enjoyable experience. For organizations, this facilitates authentically driving inclusion from the very start of the hiring process, whilst keeping recruitment short, relevant and talent-focused.

Driving Diversity

To consistently and effectively be hiring the best person for a role, recruitment must be as free from bias as possible.

Issues surrounding opinion, and aesthetic bias has been proven to skew candidate success and favor majority groups.

AI-led pre-recorded video assessments that rely on facial cues pose a significant disadvantage to individuals with disabilities. From autism to facial paralysis, a range of conditions can significantly impact an individuals propensity to express themselves through their face, and does not represent their actual ability to perform well within a role. At 10x, our psychometric training has been developed with this in mind and can help organizations and recruitment consultants fully promote diversity when hiring.

Furthermore, research from 2016 suggests that darker skin tones do more to impact a hiring success than foreign names. This indicates that anonymizing names in pre-recorded video interviews may not be enough to fully address this type of bias in recruitment.

10x Hire, and 10x Talent respectively offer the opportunity to reduce the impact of aesthetic cues on the hiring process by removing candidate demographics, and shifting the focus instead to their performance, motivations and personality.

At 10x, we understand that different businesses have different requirements, and that these may change over the hiring process.

By building in flexible key competency filters as well as developing 10x Hire to meet the needs of organizations, and 10x Talent to fulfil the needs of the recruitment industry, we aim to deliver a relevant comprehensive experience.

Candidates are automatically ranked according to their test performance, and interview guides and prompts are generated according to the key skills needed for a role on specialized platforms, to speed up and streamline the entire recruitment journey.