Job Candidates Seek Fair Shot At Hiring

Highlights from Criteria’s 2022 Candidate Experience Report

At a time when companies are confronting surging inflation, record-setting turnover rates, and the most competitive labor market in years, it is critical to make hiring and retention efforts top priorities. Although HR teams face a challenging economic environment, now is the time when they can set their companies apart from competitors by demonstrating that they are committed to fairness and diversity in their hiring process.

Criteria recently published our 2022 Candidate Experience Report, which provides insights based on a survey of almost 2,000 job-seekers from around the world. One of the central findings from the report is that candidates are confident in their own abilities and eager to prove themselves – as long as they have an opportunity to do so on a level playing field. These facts add to an already-strong body of evidence that it is long past time for companies to reconsider traditional hiring resources like resumes and unstructured interviews – resources that have repeatedly proven to be vulnerable to subjectivity, bias and discrimination. 

Expectations among candidates have undergone a permanent shift in recent years – they want transparency, efficiency, and above all, a fair shot. These expectations, coupled with a tight labor market that shows no sign of slackening anytime soon, should drive many companies to make long-overdue changes to their hiring process. 

Candidates Want (and Deserve) to Be Treated Fairly

When hiring managers rely on resumes and unstructured interviews to make decisions about candidates, their biases can get in the way of impartial judgments about who will be best for the job. Many companies also place inordinate emphasis on experience, which can be a poor predictor of job performance (as well as a “qualification” that is often misrepresented on resumes and in interviews). 

Our survey found that 28 percent of candidates believe the traditional hiring process puts them at a disadvantage, while 35 percent say their level of experience holds them back. Meanwhile, 94 percent of candidates think their pre-employment assessment scores demonstrate their potential to succeed – either “very well” (52 percent) or “somewhat well” (42 percent). 

Despite the common myth that candidates are reluctant to take pre-employment assessments, our research indicates that they welcome the opportunity to show hiring managers what they can do. Candidates are open to AI-based hiring as well – 52 percent of our respondents strongly agree (26 percent) or somewhat agree (26 percent) that AI-powered evaluative tools (when used ethically and appropriately) can represent them accurately. 

One of the reasons candidates embrace pre-employment assessments is the fact that they believe their performance could make up for other areas where they fall short. For example, almost three-quarters of candidates strongly agree (45 percent) or somewhat agree (29 percent) that assessments allow them to demonstrate their potential beyond their experience. These are reminders that candidates will thank you for looking beyond traditional hiring methods and giving them a chance to showcase their abilities. 

How an Objective Hiring Process Ensures Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

The candidates who stand to benefit the most from more objective and less biased hiring processes are members of marginalized groups who are often the victims of bias and discrimination. When companies deploy rigorous and objective hiring tools like pre-employment assessments, they do not just demonstrate that they are committed to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) – they also create a more predictive hiring process which drastically increases the likelihood that they’ll find the right person for the job. 

According to a landmark study on resume call-back rates, unconscious bias has introduced serious adverse impact against black candidates. When researchers changed just the names on resumes from white-sounding ones to stereotypically black-sounding names the call-back rates fell precipitously. Perhaps this is why Black candidates were much more likely than their white counterparts to strongly agree that assessments help them demonstrate their potential beyond experience – a gap of 16 percentage points. Asian candidates were almost twice as likely as white candidates to say the same. 

Diversity is not just a business imperative because, as the NBER report states, discrimination is “negatively correlated with firm profitability.” It is also essential for building a healthy company culture and attracting candidates – over three-quarters of which say a diverse workforce is an “important factor when evaluating companies and job offers.” As our report demonstrates, diverse candidates want companies to level the playing field by using objective pre-employment assessments in their hiring decisions. 

What Candidates Want from the Hiring Process

Many candidates never make it to the end of the recruitment process – a problem that is even more pressing as companies face high turnover rates and intense competition for talent. Our research found that over half of candidates say they have abandoned the recruitment process due to poor communication from a potential employer, while 36 percent have dropped out because of negative reviews about a company’s culture and almost a third have done so because the process was taking too long. 

These are the reasons companies have to focus on the elements of the recruitment and hiring process that candidates are demanding: open and clear communication, objective assessments of their abilities, and an engaging, streamlined experience from beginning to end. Companies can meet these demands with hiring resources like game-based assessments, which 51 percent of candidates say they prefer over traditional question-and-answer assessments (just 12 percent say the opposite). 

Candidates do not just prefer transparency with issues like salary, benefits, and career advancement opportunities – they also want to know how they performed. In fact, 91 percent of candidates say they want feedback on their assessment results (77 percent strongly prefer to see how they did). 

A central theme of our 2022 Candidate Experience Report is the fact that candidates are confident they can impress employers: 84 percent say they are able to demonstrate their full potential in the hiring process, 79 percent believe they will be paid enough in their new role, and 87 percent think they will be able to find a satisfying new job. Candidates are prepared to bring their best to the hiring process, in other words, and companies should do the same.

Author Bio

Josh Millet is Founder and CEO of Los Angeles-based Criteria.