Adapt to survive: HireVue launches new assessment to identify agile talent

Organizations today are being asked to do the impossible, to predict the unpredictable for their professional level hiring. It’s really hard to hire good people based on outdated job descriptions or using job descriptions that might only represent the jobs of today and don’t represent the jobs of the future.

In addition, organizations are using resumes and applications in order to make those hiring decisions, which focus on what individuals and talent have previously done, versus what talent has the potential and capability to do. It’s a really hard job and it’s causing a much bigger problem when it comes to filling open roles and hiring for the future.

Why is agility so important for an organization?

Agility in an organization means many different things. Originally people referred to an agile software development methodology. That then shifted into the adaptable way an organization was structured and the logistics and processes within an organization. Our view of it, in today’s dynamic environment, is that your employees need to have an agile mindset to the way that they work. Not only do employees need to navigate challenging situations, they need to help find innovative solutions to new, unforeseen problems.

The difficulty with traditional hiring and traditional hiring technology is what we call a hiring trifecta. The hiring trifecta is three things that you try to achieve that should be congruent with each other. There is speed to hire, a great candidate experience, and quality of hire. It’s hard to align all three with the way hiring has historically worked.

For example, if you wanted to improve your quality of hire, you usually gave a novel assessment that was longer and not a really good candidate experience, plus it added to the time to hire. However, you can get all three by blending behavioral science and technology together – giving you the trifecta in a hiring experience.

The solution to historical hiring problems – HireVue’s Agile Mindset Assessment

The solution to these historical problems and trade-offs is HireVue’s newly released Agile Mindset Assessment. The reason for that is two-fold; it empowers organizations to focus on speed when it comes to identifying quality talent, and it allows organizations to consider quality in terms of an agile mindset – and not necessarily what individuals have done in their past. Understanding a candidate’s ability to think faster, achieve results under pressure, or adapt to dynamic conditions are traits of an agile mindset that need to be evaluated when hiring professional talent.

It is an engaging assessment that consists of video interview questions and game-based assessments, all in one step. It allows companies to evaluate candidates beyond their resume, letting them move talent quickly through the funnel in under thirty minutes, using a really optimal experience that the candidate truly enjoys. The candidate tells their story and responds to questions that are focused on an agile mindset.

It’s a game-changer when it comes to how organizations are assessing their talent. They are now able to consider the potential of the candidate, and what she has the capabilities of doing in the future, both external hires and internal employees.

What does it measure and how does it measure it?

When you think about agility in an organization there are four things you want to look for.

• Mental Agility – being comfortable with the complex
• Results Agility – ability to drive results under tough conditions
• People Agility – effective emotional intelligence and communication 
• Change Agility – fluid thinking and removing roadblocks

Priorities are always changing, projects are always changing, and often the desired outcome changes. So really, what an agile mindset allows someone to do is adapt and work within changing environments on a day, monthly and yearly basis.

Within this agility framework we measure specific competencies and behaviors, and that’s where occupational psychology comes in. We combine five video questions and three game challenges to evaluate a candidate’s level of agile mindset. Questions are asked about their experience and working within changing environments. Then in the games we look at their cognitive ability and a willingness to learn new things in the job, as well as personality constructs, for example the openness to new experiences. All of this gives us a detailed agile mindset profile that predicts if someone will be successful in a continually changing work environment.

HireVue’s assessment expertise and experience

HireVue is uniquely positioned to provide an Agile Mindset Assessment because of the combination of experience, expertise, and innovative way of combining behavioral science and technology. The science team at HireVue consists of twenty-five individuals, all with advanced degrees in areas like occupational psychology, linguistics, chemistry, physics, mathematics. They all work together to build out our artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms to score what people say in an interview, how they play the games, and the personality traits measured in gameplay. They also collaborate with the engineering team to build an application that is candidate-friendly, easy to use, and fits within the wider platform in a seamless manner.

HireVue has been around for fifteen years. We’ve done thirty two million interviews. We have eight hundred customers worldwide, and it’s because of the close working relationships with our customers that enables us to digest feedback and build such unique new solutions.

We hear from customers all the time that they need to figure out their retention issue with professional hires, or that they need to figure out how to address internal mobility concerns. At the end of the day, it’s all about how you define quality of hire and how you think about talent. It’s not external talent or internal mobility. It’s about talent and jobs. This mindset then lets you find the right person, for the right job, every time – and I think that’s so exciting. It’s a unique problem and the Agile Mindset Assessment is a unique solution for it.

For more information and to watch the full overview video or send us an enquiry, please go to Agile Mindset Assessment.