Serving as the CEO of OutMatch, a SaaS-based talent intelligence platform, Greg Moran manages strategy, culture, and execution, and leads a team of over 120 employees to drive overall performance and company growth. In this edition of HR Talk, Greg discusses how analytics and talent assessmentOpens a new window tools can help CHROs for hiring candidates that can work remotely.
He also puts the spotlight on the candidate screening tools that will play a pivotal role for preparing recruitment strategies of tomorrow. Greg answers how HR leaders can get the most out of their pre-employment assessments tools and be in sync with the organizations talent acquisitionOpens a new window strategy to effectively navigate the post COVID-19 workplaceOpens a new window .
Key takeaways from our interview on talent assessment tools for working remotely:
- Top tips for CHROs to identify leadership skills for using talent assessment tools
- Best practices for HR managers to identify candidates for remote work
- Key trends to follow in talent assessment space in 2020 and post pandemic
Heres the edited transcript from our exclusive interview with Greg Moran:
1. Which are the top 5 leadership skills that are needed to effectively navigate the post COVID-19 workplace? How can analytics and talent assessment tools help CHROs to identify these skills for leadership roles?
Leadership and employee management, to many of us, is a process one that becomes even more amplified during a crisis. In todays world, there are a whole new set of skills that leaders must have as they navigate the unknown. These include:
- Communication: In a crisis, the need for clear, concise, and timely communication is more important than ever. There are new policies to communicate, along with state-of-the-business announcements, town halls, and team check-ins. Leaders must be ready to engage the right people at the right time and inspire action.
- Resilience: Navigating crisis isnt a pleasant experience, but leaders who respond with composure, optimism, and hardiness will gain the trust and support of their people. No matter what adversity they face, theyre able to think quickly and decisively, remain energetic, and persevere through challenges.
- Innovation: Outside of crisis, innovation can take shape through ideas or experiments that help the business stay sharp or get ahead. But in crisis, innovation becomes about survival. Leaders must be able to embrace challenges and change calmly while thinking outside the box to drive the business forward.
- Structure: In a crisis, structure, normalcy, and routine are the first things to go. Leaders must re-establish structure by adapting strategies and processes to the current and changing needs of the business. Structure doesnt mean being rigid or inflexible. It means anticipating problems and addressing them quickly.
- Influence: In times of uncertainty, leaders must still be able to make decisions with confidence. They may not have all the answers, but they proactively gather input from diverse sources so that they understand how all groups are impacted. This is how they build influence, get buy-in, and drive change.
- Support: Above all, support is what people need most from their leaders during crisis. Leaders must provide clear direction, positive connections, and decisive judgement.
2. Is digital hiring a temporary solution in a post COVID-19 world? Which are the top 3 candidate screening tools that will play a pivotal role for preparing recruitment strategies of tomorrow?
Digital hiring is not just a short-term patch for COVID-19, but rather a long-term hiring solution that will completely alter how companies approach hiring, interviewing, and onboarding. We will see a fundamental shift towards digital, remote-ready, AI recruitment and candidate screening tools, which will drive enhanced efficiency, effectiveness, and long-term employee happiness.
One thing to think about in todays unpredictable COVID-19 world, especially where job functions and roles may be different than before, is precision. If you are going to use an assessment to match the right person to the right role at the right time, then you need the right profile. This is where machine learning comes in, taking in continuous streams of information, analyzing the data, and improving on its performance. This approach ensures the assessment is an accurate predictor of success, even in super-agile environments like today and more so, that each candidate is seen as a person, not just a score.
3. How can HR leaders get the most out of their pre-employment assessments tools and be in sync with the organizations talent acquisition strategy?
It seems only logical that HR would be among the first to adopt pre-employment assessment tools and video interviewing capabilities. By getting the right tools in place now, companies can make the post-COVID-19 transition easier, especially as hiring slows in some industries and picks up in others. Those organizations that take the time to employ digital hiring tactics today will be better positioned, more organized, and in sync for tomorrow, when the hiring resurgence occurs.
4. How can pre-employment assessment tools help HR managers to identify candidates for remote work? What are the long-term benefits of hiring remote employees using a candidate assessment tool?
There are multiple first-hand benefits that pre-hire assessments can have on a companys long-term success, including helping recruiters and hiring managers understand quickly which candidates will be successful in remote roles. Further, digital hiring provides the added flexibility needed for managers to make faster, more informed hiring decisions. HR and hiring managers can look to these six competencies to identify successful remote employees:
1. Adaptability: Open to new ideas and ways of doing business as well as adopting to change willingly.
2. Resilience: Responds to challenges with composure, optimism, and hardiness; perseveres and exhibits healthy stress management strategies.
3. Learning Agility: Learns quickly, applies newly learned information and skills to innovate and adapt, and uses feedback to improve.
4. Communicating effectively: Expresses thoughts and ideas in a clear and effective manner.
5. Relationship management: Builds and maintains meaningful and positive connections with others inside or outside of the organization.
6. Teamwork and Collaboration: Cooperates with others through mutual trust and accountability to accomplish shared objectives.
5. In your opinion, can candidate screening and hiring tools help HR leaders measure and change their hiring practices in a post Coronavirus world?
The hiring process can be long and labor intensive and some companies face the added complexity of hiring virtually for the first time. Unemployment is at an all-time high, and Americans are applying for a finite number of jobs. Companies can turn to digital hiring to find the right candidates, and ultimately, make quicker and more effective hiring decisions. Candidate screenings and tools also allow companies to focus not only on the hard skills necessary for a role, but more so on the underlying, enduring characteristics of each applicant. For example, which characteristics are most important in each role, and how will these characteristics have changed in a post- COVID world? It will be more challenging than ever to understand if someone is a good cultural fit.
Learn More: Snapchat as a Recruitment ToolOpens a new window
6. Can you give us a sneak-peek into the upcoming strategies on candidate assessment that hiring managers must embrace today?
HRs digital transformation is happening today, and leaders must embrace it or risk falling behind.
In HR, many operations had already gone digital (e.g. applicant tracking, learning management, payroll, benefits.). The focus at the onset of 2020 was digitizing the experience, but as we look ahead, the focus will shift towards a greater reliance on technology to deliver these experiences.
Recruiting teams have been sourcing, reviewing resumes, and assessing candidates online for years. But most arent equipped for digital interviewing or digital onboarding. To effectively hire in a future where remote work is the norm, recruiting efforts are lean, and teams are assembled by skill set and compatibility, not physical location, companies need a complete digital hiring process, not a partial one. Just as important is the ability to connect all stakeholders, including candidates, interviewers, and hiring managers in one seamless experience from start to finish.
7. Whats trending in the candidate assessment space for 2020 and post COVID-19?
Digital hiring will be a make or break trend in 2020, allowing companies to reinvent their hiring practices, and adjust to the changes that COVID-19 has brought to the forefront. Benefits of digital hiring include:
- Increase candidate engagement: In todays tight job market, you need to identify the best candidates and recruit them before your competitors. With digital hiring, candidates can respond to an interview quickly, because there is no need to take time off from their current job or travel in.
- Save recruitment costs: Video interviewing helps drive efficiency, which reduces time to fill and productivity loss. On top of that, a better screening process will improve interview-to-hire ratio and overall quality of hire.
For example, BPO company, MSX International, saw a 20% improvement in time-to-hire by using virtual hiring, enabling recruiters to fill time-sensitive job roles 2 days faster than they could before. Global pharmaceutical company Apotex saw a 73% increase in efficiency by working with OutMatch to use video interviewing to recruit top engineering grads.
- Reduce bias: Every candidate applying for a position is given the same questions, the same time to think, and the same time to answer. This makes apples-to-apples comparison easy and provides much-needed structure in place of unguided conversations that often veer off course. Hiring teams then score responses against pre-define criteria, which keeps evaluations fair and gives all interviewees an equal shot.
Thank you, Greg, for sharing your thoughts on why hiring managers need talent assessment tools to effectively navigate the post COVID-19 workplace. We hope to talk to you again, soon.
About Greg MoranOpens a new window
Greg Moran has more than 20 years of human capital management, sales, and leadership experience. He is also the author of Building the Talent Edge: A Field Managers Guide to Recruiting the Best (Spring 2005) and Hire, Fire and The Walking Dead (June 2006, W Business Books). Previously, Greg served as Founder and VP of Sales for PeopleAnswers America, a leading provider of behavioral assessment software to mid-market and large companies in North America.
About OutMatchOpens a new window
Building a high-performing company requires matching the right people with the right roles. But, hiring is often subjective, lacks clarity, and doesnt help companies understand the impact of a new hire. OutMatch fixes these problems. Using industry-leading assessment technology and expertise, OutMatch delivers the predictive data thats missing from the hiring process. With clear, measurable insight into candidates and new hires, managers make better hiring decisions, and organizations are finally able to measure the impact of hiring on the company.
About HR Talk
HR Talk is an interview series that features top people and talent leaders from HR tech and Fortune 500 companies who are redefining the future of work. Join us as we talk to these HR tech and people analytics experts to get in-depth insights, and some pro-tips on how HR tech can best work for you and your people.
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