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Why not to filter your candidates using CVs, and use more effective alternatives instead!
So, you’re looking for new talent with the potential to succeed in your organisation? A candidate with the enthusiasm to make changes and drive development? Someone with a willingness to learn and master new skills?
Then why are you still looking at CVs?!
Finding your future talent
Are you looking to change up your traditional processes and find the right future talent for your organisation? Need alternatives that work to help you improve diversity and inclusion, improve attrition, and reduce the impact of the skills gap?
What you need, is to assess for potential!
Assessing for potential means assessing for people with the drive to continuously develop, challenge, and grow. It’s less important what they did before, it’s more important what they’re going to do next.
That means goodbye CVs. Forever.
The problem with CVs
According to StandOutCV, research conducted in 2020 revealed that 43% of businesses rely on CV screening alone to find candidates to interview. Yet, numerous studies show that recruiters spend just between 6-8 seconds reviewing a CV. The disconnect between the suggested importance of CVs and the flippant reviewing process is obvious.
Furthermore, with 75% of CVs sent to larger businesses rejected by automated systems before a recruiter even sees them, resulting in just 1 in 4 job seekers feeling confident in getting their CV through such systems, it is also clear that there is significant room for error. Using CVs as a method to screen candidates appears to be a likely, if not probable, avenue for missing out on the best talent.
Recruiting based on CVs is unreliable. With 25-75% of CVs rejected for the sound of a candidate’s name, 43% rejected for being written in third person, and 78% of candidates admitting they would consider misrepresenting themselves on their application, the dependability of CV screening is consistently brought into question.
On top of this, recruiters spend on average 9 hours per week manually sorting through applications, casting doubt on the efficiency of traditional processes such as CV filtering. With CVs having poor predictive validity, only marginally better than random chance, it makes the sheer amount of effort and man-hours seem futile.
Put simply, you could (and should) be using your time elsewhere.
Unlocking potential in your organisation
Assessing your talent for potential has a plethora of positive impacts on your organisation.
Where CVs are good at providing an idea of the experience a candidate has, they do not provide context into the many factors at play in their life, or an idea of the capacity a candidate has to succeed. CVs may demonstrate an apparent lack of experience, but these experiences don’t necessarily indicate an applicant’s skills and suitability.
For job seekers who don’t look ‘good on paper’, due to factors such as a lower socio-economic background preventing them from taking up unpaid work experience or lack of access, this approach opens up the opportunity to stand out and show off what they have to offer, and with a wider talent pool, you can be sure you’ve found the best fit for each position.
As an alternative to traditional practices such as the use of CVs, assessing for potential using technology and services can streamline the effectiveness, efficiency, and reliability of your recruitment process.
You say you want more diversity in your workforce? This is the way to do it. Don’t look at peoples past, look at their future. Identify high potential talent applying to your vacancies.
Amberjack’s model for potential
So, how is potential measured?
Amberjack’s model for potential is built upon four key pillars: Grit, Digital Intelligence, Applied Intellect and Creative Force. These critical indicators allow us to help you measure the whole person and find the best future talent.
Our High Potential Assessment is an interactive experience which provides an accurate view of your organisation, helping to attract the right candidates and increase face validity. The blended assessment takes just 30 minutes for a candidate to complete, transforming inconsistent and ineffective screening and selection.
By creating an efficient process with standardised questions, and providing candidates with a chance to express themselves using video recorded answers (a practice with higher predictive validity than CV filtering) you enable more consistent and comparable hiring.
So, instead of hiring the best person at writing CVs, hire the person with the highest potential to succeed.
