Ioannis NikolaouAssociate Professor

Director of the MSc in HRM @ AUEB twitter@nikolaou

inikolaou.gr inikol@aueb.gr

New Trends in Recruitment – Research evidence from Greece

The traditional approach

• If it aint’ broke, don’t fix it: the old world of

talent is alive and well

– What to assess

• Talent identification (RAW)

– How to assess

– Myths vs. realities and evidence vs. instinct

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What works and what doesn’t work…Hiring high-performing employees

What doesn’t work

• The conventional-unstructured interview– Tell me about yourself– Tell me 3 strengths and 3

weaknesses – Why are you interested in this

job opening?– How much do you know

about our organization?

What works

• Cognitive ability tests• Job simulations / work samples• Situational judgement tests• Situational interviews• Personality tests• Behavioural interviewing

3Tip: Look for the evidence, not your gut feeling or your intuition…

The news kids on the blog: Talent in the digital world

• Digital Interviewing & Voice profiling• Globalization – Trends in international testing• Applicant Reactions• Social Networking Websites

– Social Media Analytics and Web Scraping• Big Data and Workplace Analytics• Gamification

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Digital Interviewing & Voice Profiling

• Video-recorded structured interviews• Benefits: increases standardization and time saving

• Limitations: impersonal

– Text analytics and Voice Mining

– Algorithmic reading of voice-generated emotions

• Micro-expressions and automated emotion reading

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Globalization - Trends in international testing

• Convergence vs. divergence and the role of cultural differences– Testing practices in hiring context across 22

countries• Different selection practices tend to generalize across

countries incl. Greece

• Ryan, A. M., Reeder, M., Golubovich, J., Grand, J., Inceoglu, I., Bartram, D., Derous, E., Nikolaou, I., & Yao, X. (2017). Culture and Testing Practices: Is the World Flat? Applied Psychology: An International Review.

• Sackett, P.R., Shen, W., Nikolaou, I. et al. (2010). Perspectives from twenty-two countries on the legal environment for selection. In J. L Farr and N. T. Tippins (Eds.) Handbook of Employee Selection (pp. 651-676). New York: Taylor & Francis.

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Applicant Reactions (1/2)

• Treat me well, or….– It is not only companies that evaluate

• An important aspect of choosing the appropriate hiring practices– The role of fairness and justice– The impact on applicants’-turned-employees

attitudes and behaviors– The impact on employer branding

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Applicant Reactions (2/2)

• The role of personal interaction interview• The important role of interviewer’s personal

characteristics, namely informativness and personableness– Young graduates’ positive reactions to new

methods (e.g. personality and ability testing)

• Nikolaou, I. (2011). Core processes and applicant reactions to the employment interview: an exploratory study in Greece. International Journal of Human Resource Management, 22(10), 2185-2201. doi:Doi 10.1080/09585192.2011.580187

• Nikolaou, I., & Judge, T. A. (2007). Fairness reactions to personnel selection techniques in Greece: The role of core self-evaluations. International Journal of Selection and Assessment, 15(2), 206-219. doi:DOI 10.1111/j.1468-2389.2007.00382.x

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Social Networking Websites

• The new kid in the block… new?– However, Job Boards are alive and well

• Approaching passive job seekers• Closely linked with applicant reactions• Important privacy concerns

• Nikolaou, I. (2014). Social Networking Web Sites in Job Search and Employee Recruitment. International Journal of Selection and Assessment, 22(2), 179-189. doi:10.1111/ijsa.12067

• Nikolaou, I., Bauer, T.N & Truxillo, D.M. (2015). Applicant Reactions to Selection Methods: An overview of recent research and suggestions for the future. In I. Nikolaou & J. K. Oostrom (Eds.) Employee Recruitment, Selection, and Assessment. Contemporary Issues for Theory and Practice (pp. 80-96). Hove, East Sussex: Routledge.

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Social Media Analytics and Web Scraping (1/2)

• FB activity related to demographic, personality, attitudinal, and cognitive ability variables– Web scrapping opportunities in hiring

• Initial findings re personality (Big5), gender, religious identity, age and intelligence

• However, do these provide any real value above/beyond existing methods?

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Social Media Analytics and Web Scraping (2/2)

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Web Scrapping and Linguistic Analysis

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Big Data and HR Analytics

• Not just HR Metrics… but using advanced statistical methods and combining HR with business data– Data Mining

• Past behavior is a good predictor of future behavior, for example:

– Using performance data, sales data, and employee survey data, to determine which employees are most successful and why, and develop pre-hire screening surveys

– Analyzing unstructured data from career-oriented social networking sites not only for recruiting purposes, but to better understand career progressions

– Predicting hiring success & high potentials 12

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Gamification (1/2)

• More Americans play games than do not, half

of all gamers are under the age of 30

• Moving from a “push” to a ”pull” model

• Assessment of soft skills, hard skills,

personality, interests, etc.

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Gamification (2/2)

• Serious games using the Situational Judgement Test Methodology– Soft Skills assessment– Highly reliable, high construct validity– Now exploring applicant perceptions of the game

and predictive validity

• Nikolaou, I. & Georgiou, K. (2017). Serious gaming and applicants’ reactions; the role of openness to experience. 32nd Annual Conference of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology, Orlando, USA

• Georgiou, K. & Nikolaou, I. (2017). Serious gaming in employees’ selection process. 32nd Annual Conference of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology, Orlando, USA

• Georgiou, K. & Nikolaou, I. (2017). Gamification in recruitment and selection. 18th congress of the European Association of Work and Organizational Psychology (EAWOP), Dublin Ireland.

The future is here, but be careful…. (1/2)

• Vast data pools and improved analytic capabilities will fundamentally disrupt the talent identification process. – Availability of many more talent signals– New analytic tools and increased computing power

However…

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The future is here, but be careful…. (2/2)

• Limited validity evidence compared to old school methods

• Privacy and anonymity concerns may limit access to individual data

• Trade-off between development costs and accuracy/validity and user experience

• Adverse impact / unfair discrimination concerns

• Chamorro-Premuzic, T., Winsborough, D., Sherman, R. A., & Hogan, R. (2016). New Talent Signals: Shiny New Objects or a Brave New World? Industrial and Organizational Psychology-Perspectives on Science and Practice, 9(3), 621-640.

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Conclusions

• We live our lives online but…

Valid, evidence-based tools and methodologies are required in order to take fair and just hiring

decisions

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Ioannis NikolaouAssociate Professor

Director of the MSc in HRM @ AUEB twitter@nikolaou

inikolaou.gr inikol@aueb.gr

New Trends in Recruitment – Research Evidence from Greece