The death of the resume has long been predicted. It is widely acknowledged that they are ineffective and prone to promoting bias, but alternative approaches have yet to achieve universal adoption. However, with many employers moving towards skills and competency-based hiring and technology continuing to drive rapid change in recruiting, are the days of the resume finally numbered?

My guest this week is Maya Huber, Co-Founder and CEO of the competencies-based sourcing platform TaTiO. Maya has a PHD in Job Analysis and some fascinating insights into practical ways of moving on from the resume and making hiring more efficient, inclusive and effective.

In the interview, we discuss:

• The ineffectiveness of resumes

• The danger of assessing just on words and stories

• Skills-based hiring versus competency-based hiring

• Testing performance in its context

• Reducing the administrative burden for recruiters

• Job simulation

• Job analysis

• The hiring outcomes of competency-based assessment

• What should companies expect from the future of work?

Listen to this podcast in Apple Podcasts.

Transcript:

0 (0s):
This episode is sponsored by Seek Out the number one in talent intelligence and diversity Recruiting software for enterprise companies.

0 (28s):
Hi there This is Matt Alder Welcome to Episode 485 of the Recruiting Future Podcast The. death of the resume has long been predicted. It’s widely acknowledged that they’re ineffective and prone to promoting bias, but alternative approaches have yet to achieve universal adoption. However, with many employers moving towards skills and competency based hiring and technology continuing to drive rapid change in recruiting are the days of the resume. Finally numbered. My guest this week is Maya Huber, co-founder and CEO of the competencies based sourcing platform.

0 (1m 9s):
TaTiO. Maya has a PHD in Job, Analysis, and some fascinating insights into practical ways of moving on from the resume and making hiring more efficient, inclusive, and effective. Hi Maya and welcome to the podcast.

3 (1m 27s):
Hi, I’m excited to be here. How are you?

0 (1m 29s):
I’m very well, thank you. And it is a pleasure to have you on the show. Please, could you introduce yourself and tell us what you do?

3 (1m 37s):
Sure. So my name is Maya Uber. I’m the c e o and co-founder of TaTiO. TaTiO is sourcing technology. We connect companies and job seekers based on competencies alone.

0 (1m 50s):
And tell us a little bit about your background. How did you get to do what you do now?

3 (1m 56s):
So this is a great story actually. We are two women co-founders. My colleague name is more, and we come from HR So. we spend 15 years on practice and also re research. I the PHD in that space makes expertise, the future of work and Job analysis. So, we spend 15 years providing service to companies and to job seekers. Some career Consulting and outsourcing placement companies. Actually, we’ve got really frustrated by the fact that after so many years still, the only way for a person to apply to a job is Resumes or application form.

3 (2m 37s):
And of course on the other side, for companies to evaluate candidates only based onwards. Yeah,

0 (2m 43s):
I mean, in fact that I find particularly frustrating when we’ve got all this sort of technology and new thinking and innovation. Why is that so ineffective? Talk us through your, your, your, your take around

3 (2m 57s):
It. Sure. So first of all, I guess everybody knows that it’s not effective by the fact that people represent themselves with words. You cannot really rely or 100% rely on the stories because stories not necessarily mean something. And I think I’m a good example, but you know, there are other people like me that, as I said, 15 years of experience in in, in working with companies. I was a manager, I a PHD, but when I try to get into the IT industry, no one considered my Resumes to be qualified.

3 (3m 37s):
And no one understood why I’m, I am considering to be or applying to be head of product or product manager. So what my resume could not tell is the fact that through the years I was create, I created and developed a lot of solutions, a lot of product in my space. So the fact that people tell their stories, words when If, you look at their K credentials, the, the logos of, you know, what they’ve done, it’s basically it’s bias. So that’s the reason it’s not effective. I think what’s was more interesting for me to discover, it’s not just about the effect The ineffectiveness of resumes and the fact that pe that companies commonly go through hundreds of hundreds of applications and resume to interview four people and to hire one.

3 (4m 35s):
This is Glassdoor data by the way, but commonly those four people In the interview, not necessarily are the people that will stay. So there’s turnover, et cetera. But it’s not only that Resumes miss a lot of people that are relevant for the, for the work and do not apply. And it’s people like me who will never apply, you know, based on their resume because I knew that no one will hire me. But also people that do not know what the work the job require ne necessarily know. So they do not know how to adjust their resume in order for them to, to prove their skills.

0 (5m 12s):
So how can we improve, I suppose, both ineffectiveness and fairness? What’s the alternative? Because Resumes have obviously been with us for a really long time. People have been talking about them being ineffective for, for as long as I can remember. What’s the alternative to this?

3 (5m 33s):
So for me, I think it’s about time that we will we’ll be able to identify the right employees and for the employees to make a better decision making about where to apply based on competencies. There’s, there’s a huge discussion, discussion the past decade, I guess, about skill based hiring. I think competencies is taking it to the next level because when you ask people about their skills, it’s still, first of all, it’s most of those tools are questionnaire, but you ask people to tell you about those skills. You do not test their skills. Competencies is testing people with the testing a performance within it, its context.

3 (6m 17s):
So for me, competencies based hiring where candidates can, and again, at the first step of Hiring, not of course also during the Hiring process, but for the first step, first application form should be based on competencies to make, to, to create an opportunity for people to first put their skills upfront and then to be judged by their stories. So, we need to, to do a reverse engineering on the process. And by doing that, it’s you, you are right. It’s about creating a more objective and transparent and equal opportunity for people to apply. But also the burden of recruiters to interview so many people, to sort, so many candidates will be reduced because they will interview only relevant candidates.

0 (7m 10s):
So how does that work in practice? Because I think that it’ll probably be quite hard to find anyone who, who disagrees with that. How’s it work in practice? How can employers actually recruit like this?

3 (7m 25s):
So what we are trying to do is to have job seekers or candidates have them engage into job experiences. Literally smart simulation test that simulate the core task of the job and analyze the candidate performance prior to their application. Our, what the technology enabled us to do is to simulate any job and to keep it general, but yet predictable. So a company do not require to adjust the simulation to their needs. They what the only thing they need to do is to review our candidates that went through the simulation already.

3 (8m 12s):
So what I was excited about is the fact that, you know, there’s a lot of database around, around the world, Europe and US and Asia, about the required competencies or the required main core task for each job out there. There are researchers done that comes from the government. So we are doing is taking this data that for now just sit there and use this data with our technology to, to, to use this unique database as an, as an opportunity to evaluate candidates as well.

0 (8m 48s):
Tell us a bit more about the Job simulation part of that. How does that work? Could you give us an example?

3 (8m 55s):
Sure. So our simulation are really strange. First of all, I’ll say before our simulation that we are, we operate mainly in Evergreen volume hiring position. Now this is our, our go-to market for the upcoming two years. The reason we are doing that is because there’s a bigger pain on those interested industry industries. Sorry, I have to find qualified candidates because of the, the shortage in the workforce. So I will give you an example. First of all, as I, as I tried to say before, we are, we try to keep it as straightforward as possible and we test the job, the, the main task of a job within its context.

3 (9m 40s):
So let’s say, let’s take sales. Okay. As a junior sales representative on simulation will enter a database of qualified leads like a sales rep. It will need to qualify those leads. And then you ha you will have sales pitch and you’ll need to close three deals within 20 minutes while talking to prospective clients. If, you are a pick on a warehouse. The simulation is five minutes, seven minutes on your mobile and what the current date you require to do. You have warehouse environment and you need to collect items, write into problem to, to boxes, and to solve problems that occur.

3 (10m 25s):
We analyze the candidates performance online. So there’s a 150 data points we collect from everything he was doing on the platform. We pushing bottom the speed, the accuracy, what he was saying, the tone, he was using every data that we can collect. And we also make sure that the candidate is alone, no one helps them. And we provide, first of all with the candidates. We provide them with a report that describe their competencies and share some data about strength and weaknesses about their performance. They can do it again, they can practice, but this is first of all data that they can use smartly to have a better understanding, rather they’re qualified for a job or not.

3 (11m 10s):
If they do, if they cross the bar with a specific grade and they are, they find to be a good match to a company, general requirements in terms of location, salary, working hours, et cetera, it’ll consider to be a qualified candidate for a specific company. And on the company crm it will appear as new candidate. They can interview

0 (11m 36s):
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0 (12m 23s):
What the outcome from employers in terms of, you know, employers who hire based on competency based assessment, what kind of outcomes can they expect?

3 (12m 33s):
So the immediate response we get is that our candidates are more engaged. The fact that they went through a process simulation before applying, that means that those people are more committed and more engaged into work. So, you know, it’s, it’s more, it requires more than just clicking on your resume or filling your data on an application form. So they’re more engaged. We see faster time to hire at least 50% commonly what we see, they reduce the amount of steps that requires in order to, for them to hire. So from, we have a company that’s from six steps for implication to hire.

3 (13m 17s):
They, they, they came up with just two. So imagine the effort, the time, and what I love about it is recruiters sharing that they have more time interviewing people and not, but interviewing relevant people, not people who are not relevant. So there are deep, there are deep interviews and that’s the reason the Hiring stay and keep for a longer period of time. So, we have a 20% better retention rate as well. And there’s another factor we hear that we, companies say that they’re, they see a more diverse workforce coming from us.

0 (13m 55s):
So there’s a big disruption there. In terms of how recruitings worked in the past, you know, many employers, many Hiring managers still very, very used to or expecting to use Resumes to hire. What kind of mindset shift do employers need to go to, to adopt this way of working?

3 (14m 18s):
Oh wow. First of all, you, you’re absolutely right. This is what we meet So. we, from one hand we hear recruiters and talent managers. You know that they have enough that there is, there is a need for a different paradigm, a different, a different tool and a different solution. But also, as you said, they know sometimes it is the devil, you know, that you prefer walking with him. So in terms of mind, the mind shift, I can tell you first of all practically companies need to, to understand that our candidate, the candidates are more qualified. So, so they could not treat them like candidates that come from a job board. They need to engage with them fast, faster.

3 (14m 59s):
They need to, to provide a more engaging Hiring process for them. Our candidates are, look at it as a private and technology staffing company where they, the kinds went through a lot and they know more about the job once applying. So the, the relationships changed a bit. So this is one so working more effectively. And second is to put competencies upfront and not ask people about their credential. It’s a tough thing. So, we see companies that they start with competencies, but then they ask for resume.

3 (15m 41s):
We have also processes of, of recruiters are totally under that, totally understand the process of competencies, but then the Hiring managers ask for Resumes. But you know, for me, as every change that was out there in the, in the our last decade, that technology brought, what we candidly hear is a great, there is a need because there is a big pain right now after Covid and the market for, for the market was is. So it changed so much that from that conservation companies understand that they need to engage in a different state of mind.

0 (16m 20s):
As a final question, you, you mentioned there the post covid change and the disruption in the marketplace. You also said right at the beginning of the conversation that you, you’ve done a PHD in Job analysis and the future of work. So tell us about the future of work. What should companies expect and how, how should they be preparing?

3 (16m 40s):
First of all, things that I learned during my PHD that, you know, my my professor mentioned about in the articles talked about 10 years from now are happening today after covid. So Covid actually just made rapid changes from the job seeker aspect and the how they approach work. And from the company side, I think we, there’s a couple of things that are constantly, we see them already first that it’s a job world, it’s a candidate world. So companies are struggling for their, for candidate’s attention.

3 (17m 20s):
And I think companies and, and you know, the decade now will need to be more aware of how to engage candidates in the process and how to make sure that the gauging process starts from, from application. Not only when a person is already on board the company. So this is one the se the second thing we see is there are candidates are more aware about, from one one hand I’m more aware about the workforce and the opportunities. So they change, there’s more openness to change careers, to change jobs, but at the same time they also aware of what’s happening in the market and the bio chief.

3 (18m 7s):
So If, you know, if the in the past candidates or employees were in this, you know, their zone, not really know what happened in the market, having their own thoughts and, and after perspective of they will stay forever a job and nothing will be changed. Now the change is the, the more stable thing about the workforce thing will be changing all the time. And one last thing about, again, we see more and more companies talking about competencies based hiring rather than skills. This is also a new, a new shift. And I I you, I guess, and I heard you talk about it a lot, wellbeing high bit work, those subject are still on and will be here for the, for a couple of years more

0 (18m 58s):
Maya. Thank you very much for talking to me.

3 (19m 0s):
Thank you so much. It was great. I appreciate you having me.

0 (19m 4s):
Maya, thanks to Maya, you can subscribe to this podcast in Apple Podcasts on Spotify or via your podcasting app of choice. Please also follow the show on Instagram. You can find us by searching for Recruiting Future. You can search all the past episodes at Recruiting Future dot com on that site. You can also subscribe to our monthly newsletter, Recruiting Future Feast and get the inside track about everything that’s coming up on the show. Thanks very much for listening. I’ll be back next time and I hope you’ll join me.

The post Ep 485: What Will Replace Resumes? appeared first on The Recruiting Future Podcast.