The past few years have seen a radical change not only in the way individuals use technology but also in the way corporates purpose it. Technology has transformed the way we go through our routines and the same can be said of the corporate world as well. Technology has enabled corporates and firms to assess prospective as well as the current employees, to optimize their crew for better productivity and efficiency. The hiring process too is going through a structural overhaul with all the technological advancements. While the fundamentals of hiring have remained the same, technology has made the process more efficient. 

Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning have acquainted us with a welcome change that has recoupled the lost quality of human interactions practiced in legacy assessment tools. Automation allows for risk assessment from amongst a pool of distinct candidates. The biggest advantage that AI has brought to the table is the ability to hold unbiased while examining a large quantum of data, ensuring the results stay accurate, efficient and fair. Analysing data can also help recruiters learn from past experiences faster, and learn from the tiny details while recruiting, such as scheduling appointments, sending out reminders, amongst others. This ensures that recruiters can focus on preparing well with the interview questions, to judge the technical know-how as well as the emotional intelligence of interviewees. 

Recruiters now save 75% of their time as they can focus on the important bits rather than dissipating their energy on scheduling and rescheduling interviews. Given this, what are the recruiters looking for in candidates? Mere technological know-how will not do. Companies deploy a large quantum of resources while hiring and inducing the employees. Technical know-how will only help them grasp the concepts, while employers need to understand if the candidate can coalesce well in the environment. Can the prospective employee judge the situations in this regard staying in tandem with their peers' emotions and act accordingly? Are they a team player? The aptitude to fit into the company’s work atmosphere plays a key role. 

Knowing the difference

The use of aptitude and knowledge tests have been a standard practice across the industry and have become an important and integral part of the overall hiring process.

Aptitude is both technical skills as well as soft skills and gives companies an opportunity to take a more informed decision. The trend amongst recruiters currently is to choose candidates who have a healthy attitude towards their career goals over a candidate who only has the technical know-how. It is important for recruiters to understand the importance of having a balance of skill and attitude in an employee. 

There is no use of hiring a person who is a go-getter and has high professional ethics if he has no technical knowledge. It would also be useless to hire someone who has vast technical knowledge but cannot gauge the social cues or cannot communicate his thoughts in a comprehensive manner. The amount of time and money spent by companies on training their fresh recruits is no secret. These two situations are on either end of the scale and cause a huge loss to the organization.

Recruiters must focus more on finding employees with the right aptitude for the role they are being hired for. Interview questions must be curated in a way that they test the intelligence quotient as well as the emotional quotient of the candidate. While situation analysis helps recruiters understand how candidates solve problems while understanding how they handle their peers in difficult situations; testing for their verbal as well as written comprehension skills helps in analysing the communication skills of the candidate. 

Incorporating questions that are a mix of the above techniques ensure that the recruiter is able to accurately arrive at an unbiased answer to whether the candidate is a good or a bad hire. Many recruiters fail to assess the emotional intelligence and other such exigent soft skills. Traditional hiring models only consider the technological know-how, with degrees and marks as the benchmark to assess if the candidate is a good hire or not. 

While a person’s technical know-how is no less important and is the primary asset of a candidate, the paradigm shift in the hiring model sees more companies now pursuing candidates with soft skills. There has been a shift in hiring based on cultural fit over skill sets. Candidates are assessed on their problem-solving abilities, mental abilities, their ability to work within a team, communication and emotional intelligence. Companies have realised that there is a certain aptitude in each candidate and unless that aptitude matches that of the organization's needs, the hire is futile. 

A cohesive workforce is a valuable asset for any company and mapping the candidates to the job vacancies often marks the beginning of what is known as employee-relationship-management. Whilst a sound job description helps potential employees understand their roles and responsibilities, an aptitude test can help employers identify the right fits and plan their future goals.