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9 min read

Why Job Simulations Should Replace Resume Screening

Although resume screening tools have been a cornerstone of many standard recruitment strategies, deploying a job simulation is now a modern alternative.  

Like it or not, time is money. Although working smarter instead of harder is a philosophy that’s been widely adopted across many industries, hiring managers and recruitment professionals are renowned for taking this particularly seriously. 

In fact, research conducted by Gartner found that 47% of businesses will use some sort of AI in their HR processes this year. Of these companies already using HR automation tech, 57% do so with the aim of improving the employee experience.

The term might be broad, but AI is often used to power HR resume screening software. While getting a machine to scan through an application has been a popular way to automate the hiring process for a number of years, this technology is no longer as relevant or reliable as it once was. The solution? Job simulations

Why AI resume screening has fallen out of favor

Let’s say that on average a job opening receives 250 resumes. Sounds ideal, right? Unfortunately, 75% to 88% of those applicants are unqualified — so it’s no wonder the majority of talent acquisition leaders find the hardest part of recruitment to be screening the right candidates from a large applicant pool.

Enter: automated resume screening tools. By definition, AI resume screening is the process of determining whether a candidate is qualified for a role based on their education, experience, and any other relevant information captured on their resume. Hiring managers and human resources professionals are often able to add in their own unique criteria for a role that a computer should be scanning for, such as minimum qualifications, preferred qualifications, and other proxies linked to finding the ideal candidate.

Instead of spending up to 23 hours manually scanning resumes for just one hire, in theory, the best resume screening software aims to streamline the time-consuming process of sorting through resumes to find qualified candidates. In reality, HR resume screening software eliminates qualified talent, isn’t equipped to spot a lie, and may display unconscious bias. 

Candidates use these resumes — highly formulaic documents — to outline their education, employment history, skill set, and statistics to essentially boast of their achievements and to sell themselves.

Relying on AI resume screening in your recruitment process requires the system to make several dangerous assumptions, such as: 

  • If the candidate has attended a prestigious university, they will be great at the job I need them to do.
  • If the candidate has worked for Company X, they will perform well at my company.
  • If the candidate has achieved X in the past, they will be able to do Y at my company.
  • The resume is well-written, so the candidate has great communication skills.
  • The candidate is telling the truth.

Ultimately, resumes only provide background, and background isn’t enough to make a good decision when the cost of replacing a bad hire can be as much as twice the employee’s annual salary. What’s more, is that both employers and applicants are becoming increasingly aware of the pitfalls of AI resume screening thanks to a growing number of studies proving the dangers of this technology. 

The actual cost of resume screening for companies in the us and au
Although the process of resume screening can reduce the time it takes to fill a position by almost 24 hours, the algorithm in the software can also display bias and eliminate qualified candidates.

Data proves HR resume screening software eliminates qualified talent

Although resumes provide a reasonable snapshot of a candidate’s academic credentials, background, and work experience, none of these factors necessarily predict success. A candidate might look good on paper, but AI resume screening has no way to tell how they will perform on the job. 

While this process can allow fluffed-up applications to be streamlined to the next stage of the recruitment process, it can also overlook candidates who might not have the degree but have plenty of real-world experience.

Worse yet, automated resume screening tools may have simply misread their resume, as one minor spelling error, special characters, and even the document’s layout can throw the system’s algorithm. 

A recent experiment conducted by Aline Lerner, Founder and CEO at interviewing.io, showed that neither recruiters nor hiring managers can accurately assess the quality of candidates based on resumes. They were able to correctly filter candidates via resume screening at a rate of just 50% — which is about as accurate as a coin toss or randomly throwing the “unlucky” half of resumes into the trash. What’s worse is that ResumeLab found that 93% of people lie on their resumes. 

Using an algorithm, AI resume screening combines various data points and predicts the best-fit candidate for a role. If the data is compromised at any point, such as picking up information that it shouldn’t, then the outcome won’t match the desired results. 

As such, automated resume screening tools can be compromised not just by picking up false information on an application, but bias against minorities is prevalent through the resume screening process as well. Technology has made it easier for people to apply for jobs, but also easier for companies to reject them. 

Despite decades of legislation and HR professionals’ commitment to equal opportunities, research from the Human Researches Management Journal shows that ethnic minorities still need to complete 50% more applications to get invited to a job interview when compared with equally qualified ethnic majorities. If not properly monitored or fed data that shows conscious or unconscious bias, automated resume screening tools have the potential to discriminate against an applicant based on their name, where they studied, or even their address. 

In simple terms, and as it was so eloquently articulated recently on LinkedIn, resume screening is ultimately an unfair world where keywords and positioning are more important than actual job qualifications. But does that mean that there’s no AI-powered solution to streamline the hiring process? Not quite. 

Resume screening is biased and falls short in ethical candidate recruitment
Resume screening powered by artificial intelligence uses various data points to predict a candidate’s suitability for a role, but if it picks up things that it shouldn’t, the outcome won’t match the desired results.

Why an AI-powered job simulation provides a better alternative 

Companies rely on automated resume screening tools thinking that there’s no better way to find the right person for the right job, in a streamlined and efficient manner. While artificial intelligence has proven to be revolutionary for anyone working in human resources or as a hiring manager, its greatest strength is not if you choose to use it or not, but how you choose to do so. 

Let’s get practical for a moment. You wouldn’t hire a chef for your five-star restaurant without first asking them to cook a meal. You wouldn’t draft a new quarterback for your football team without first seeing them play on the field. You certainly wouldn’t hire a chef or quarterback simply because they said they were great at the role in the past — so why do companies continue to hire candidates without first testing and validating their skills? 

The fact is that hiring with confidence should matter more than hiring with efficiency.

It’s getting increasingly harder to find good staff, let alone highly skilled employees who can not just do the job, but want to stick with your company for the long term. A highly skilled employee, such as a data scientist, quite literally has the potential to take down a company within six months if they aren’t fit for the job. 

Traditional recruitment processes have been failing hiring managers for years, adding undue stress, length, and unreliability to an already tedious process.

If this experience sounds all too familiar, yet you’re finding that even the best resume screening software isn’t delivering the right people, then it’s time to make the switch to a recruitment method that takes a pragmatic approach to hiring — job simulations. 

Instead of using AI resume screening to filter applicants out, a growing number of organizations are turning to job simulations to usher top quality candidates in. Apart from the ability to see someone do the job before they get the job, job simulations are also an incredibly effective way to remove hiring bias from the recruitment journey, as the AI assesses how someone performs a task in a simulation, instead of what they write on their resume. 

Fundamentally, job simulations are gaining traction for all the right reasons as an alternative to AI resume screening. When you explain their key points of difference, such as hiring on performance instead of background, then it’s easy to understand why. 

Companies are using vervoe's job simulation to remove recruitment bias.
Job simulations remove the bias of resume screening, as the software assesses how someone actually performs a task instead of what they write on their resume.

Explore how job simulations can transform your hiring process 

Vervoe is an end-to-end solution that is proudly revolutionizing the hiring process. By empowering businesses to create assessments that are tailored to suit the specific requirements of a role, Vervoe predicts performance using job simulations that showcase the talent of every candidate.

Machine learning can be susceptible to human hiring bias being introduced through the data set. If machine learning learns from biased signals like knowing whether an applicant is male or female then the outcomes will have bias. To prevent this from occurring at Vervoe, we started with a clean dataset that we built up over a two-year period with real candidates applying for real jobs being graded by real employers, and continually refined in the subsequent years. 

Today, that data set continues to grow, and any human-induced bias from real-world data is flagged and rectified. By constantly evolving in line with technology and the needs of our clients, we’ve become the market leaders for job simulations. 

Filling a position is a costly, time-consuming, and often stressful process when using traditional hiring practices. To see people do the job before they get the job, book a demo today and let our experienced team run you through Vervoe’s full range of ready-made and tailored solutions.

Angela Wallace

Angela Wallace

"Angie Wallace is a self-proclaimed word nerd, big thinker, and retired tourism wizard who believes in the art of reinvention every five years—a ritual she considers essential for all good millennials. With a career spanning various roles in the tourism and digital marketing sectors, Angie has amassed a wealth of experience and expertise. She began her journey as a General Manager at Sailing Whitsundays, where she honed her skills in e-commerce and general management over five years. Transitioning into the digital realm, Angie took on roles such as Content Writer at Content Hive, where she specialized in copywriting and marketing, and Content Specialist at Vervoe, focusing on marketing and search engine optimization. Outside of her professional endeavors, Angie is an avid caffeine enthusiast, a connoisseur of in-flight eye masks, and a fan of garage sales and Louis Theroux documentaries. And, occasionally, she indulges in the whimsy of writing about herself in the third person."

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