Hiring is difficult. This shouldn’t be news to anyone who’s ever had to go to through the process firsthand. But is hiring becoming more difficult?
We recently published our second annual Pre-Employment Testing Benchmark Report based on a survey we put out earlier this year. In the survey, one thing we asked hiring professionals was about how confident they are in their hiring process? In other words, how strongly did they feel their hiring processes were driving the results that they wanted to see? Here’s what we found:
According to the results, 34% of respondents were very confident in their hiring processes; 49% were a little confident; 12% were neutral; and 5% were not very confident. These results really aren’t too bad. After all, the vast majority of respondents are feeling at least a little confident, and not a single respondent said that they were feeling not at all confident, always a positive sign.
However, something interesting appears when we compare these results to last year. We asked this same question last year for our first annual benchmark report, and the biggest change from this year to last year is what looks like a dip in confidence. In comparing the responses, 28% fewer people felt “very confident” compared to last year. Meanwhile, 23% more people felt “a little confident” than last year. This could suggest that people are tempering their confidence levels a bit – more of those very confident people are adjusting to say they are really just a little confident this year.
Does this mean hiring professionals were “overconfident” last year? Not necessarily. What may have occurred is that hiring professionals have had to face more and more challenges with hiring, and they’ve also learned more about all the different biases that make it harder for us, as human beings, to make the most objective hiring decisions. This downturn in confidence may really just be a sign that more people are seeing a lot of room for improvement in the way they conduct hiring. This is ultimately a good thing. Openness to improvement will really benefit organizations in the long run, pushing them to continually experiment with new ways to drive the best hiring outcomes.
Want more stats just like this? Get your copy of the 2019 Pre-Employment Testing Benchmark Report.
