Why and how do we want to revolutionise IT recruitment?
Something in the recruitment process is not right. You, as a potential candidate, are most likely judged based on your CV and a short interview. In no way does this reflect your true skills and potential. This is a common practice because companies are usually good at their specialty, not at recruiting — why would they? That’s what CodersFirst is here for! As a research scientist in this brand new and exciting startup, I am responsible for finding the best strategy to test your true potential. The greatest part is — it is all based on years and years of research. Let me introduce myself and guide you through our ideas.
I am Filip and I work at CodersFirst since August. I am also a cognitive neuroscience PhD student at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences. Since the beginning of my work at CodersFirst I have been doing research on the best recruitment strategies in the IT sector and now, together with the entire R&D Team we are ready to go into the testing phase!
What is wrong with the recruitment process?
At CodersFirst we think that the current most popular recruitment process is problematic for many reasons. Firstly, basing decisions on candidate’s CV is not right — the fact that you didn’t go to Harvard doesn’t mean you’re a bad programmer, and going to Harvard doesn’t make you a good one either. Surely academic performance and work experience are important factors that need to be considered, but there is so much more that can predict future job performance.
IT companies are usually good at their specialty, not at recruiting — why would they?
Secondly, job interviews are biased. Yes, it might not come as a surprise, but what is surprising is the research behind it. Studies show that rapport building (building a bond between interviewer and interviewee) influences recruitment process beyond what interviews (even the most structured ones) can show [1]. This is especially troubling when you consider another fact — physical appearance and self-presentation tactics are strongly correlated with interviewer ratings [2], but are not important for future job performance! This means that people with better physical appearance are rated better at an interview, but this does not have much to do with how they do on their job. At CodersFirst our ultimate goal is to change this and provide candidates with a fair and unbiased estimate of their skills.
How are we going to change this?
We are currently creating this groundbreaking recruitment process and we are basing it on cognitive psychology research. You ask what our ideas are? I am happy to tell you! As a first step, we had a long look at what REALLY predicts job performance. It turns out that, for virtually any kind of job, one of the best predictors of job performance are cognitive abilities. These are abilities that allow us to understand the world and interact with it — remembering and understanding information, solving problems and learning. A combination of these skills predicts job performance even up to 56%. We have also identified specific factors and cognitive abilities that can predict programming aptitude and programming knowledge acquisition. Now it’s up to us to verify those findings, and the research in this direction will be launched very soon.
One of the best predictors of job performance are cognitive abilities.
Interestingly, job performance can also be predicted with specific personality measures [3, 4]. Those measures describe personality on five different scales — openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and openness to experience. We found out that specific personality traits — openness, conscientiousness and extraversion — are also related to programming aptitude. Finally, job performance can be predicted with work sample tests (real-life tests in a natural working environment), job knowledge tests, and…structured interviews [5]. The last one is not a surprise, but is potentially problematic — how do we minimise the rapport building and bias? We have some ideas.
Now that we have identified five important factors influencing job performance/programming skills, we want to implement this knowledge in the CodersFirst product. The work is far from done, but we have ample recruitment experience and good theoretical basis and are now working on merging and applying the two. We will now do our own research, verify previous findings and fine-tune our recruitment process to help you find the perfect job and revolutionise the IT recruitment. How exactly do we want to do that? Watch this space for an answer!
If you have any comments, questions, remarks or simply want to talk to me — let me know!
References:
1. Swider, B. W., Barrick, M. R. & Brad, H. Initial impressions: What they are, what they are not, and how they influence structured interview outcomes. Journal of Applied Psychology 101, 625–638 (2016).
2. Barrick, M. R., Shaffer, J. A. & DeGrassi, S. W. What You See May Not Be What You Get: Relationships Among Self-Presentation Tactics and Ratings of Interview and Job Performance. Journal of Applied Psychology 94, 1394–1411 (2009).
3. Barrick, M. R. & Mount, M. K. The Big Five Personality Dimensions and Job Performance: A Meta-Analysis. Personnel Psychology 44, 1–26 (1991).
4. Tett, R. P., Jackson, D. N. & Rothstein, M. Personality Measures as Predictors of Job Performance: A Meta-Analytic Review. Personnel Psychology 44, 703–742 (1991).
5. Schmidt, F. L. & Hunter, J. E. The validity and utility of selection methods in personnel psychology: Practical and theoretical implications of 85 years of research findings. Psychological Bulletin 124, 262–274 (1998).
