Latest news with #KieranSnyder
Forbes
12-05-2025
- Business
- Forbes
Vibes Hiring On The Rise: Are Skills Taking A Back Seat For Companies?
What vibes are you bringing to your career? An analysis of over 10,000 interviews by Textio found that vibes hiring is common in the workplace - where personality and soft-skills such as likability form the basis for the hiring decision. The new study reveals that a job seeker who receives an offer is 12 times more likely to be described as having a 'great personality' compared to those who didn't get the gig. 'Too many hiring teams rely on memory, gut instinct, or informal messages to capture what happened in an interview," according to Kieran Snyder, Chief Scientist Emeritus and co-founder at Textio. "Unfortunately, memory fades, gut instincts are often unreliable, and informal messages aren't a hiring system. Structured, skills-based interview assessments are a non-negotiable for any effective hiring process,' Snyder says. So, for job seekers, what's the message - more good vibes, less hard skills? And what do companies risk, or gain, when hiring for likability? Is it really necessary to invest in formalized, skills-based hiring systems - especially for small businesses? Are companies hiring based on vibes? getty Candidates receiving job offers also receive the following adjectives in the interview process: In this age of skills-based hiring, where college degrees aren't supposed to matter as much as in the past, what's the message for job seekers? Turns out, personality fit still matters - but it's not a good idea to base a career decision on just vibes. 'It's crazy how often hiring still comes down to a 'gut feeling' instead of actual skill alignment,' according to Olivia Crawford, CEO of Bettabite. "No wonder so many companies struggle with turnover or poor role fit. Hiring based on vibes might feel good at the moment, but it's not a strategy, it's a gamble. We need more tools (and willingness) to assess candidates on what actually matters long-term." Work is a place where we spend a majority of our waking hours. Devoted to a cause, product or purpose in the pursuit of a livelihood, getting along with others is part of the deal. The ability to interact (or perhaps even tolerate?) a co-worker or team member is a vital criteria. Would you hire someone with epic skills and a toxic personality? In a tight job market, it seems that soft skills like collaboration, enthusiasm and willingness to take on new responsibilities are the difference-makers in the interview process. Experts point out that skills and performance based evaluations are the strongest predictors of hiring success. And those assessments can rate soft skills as part of the process. Restaurant owner Michael Passalacqua says that he's been using a skills-based hiring tool for the last 14 years. In an industry notorious for high turnover (food service), the tool has helped him to assess the fit for new employees. "It's not a test," says Passalacqua, adding, "There's no right or wrong answer." The process doesn't take long, which is important. One challenge for candidate assessment methods is they can discourage candidates if they drag on or seem too onerous. This is particularly a disadvantage for restaurants, which often need to make hiring decisions quickly in a competitive market, according to Liz Palmieri, a talent optimization consultant, says that The Predictive Index is a great way to assess candidates in an objective and scientific way. "When we align a candidate to the job and take a look at the behaviors, it's a very objective process," she explains. Predictive Index has "over 400 validity studies proving we measure what we say we measure," Palmieri says. Assessing candidate skill levels, in an objective way, can be extremely valuable. And, in some roles, mission-critical. However, in organizations where teamwork, innovation and collaboration are foundational to the culture, relationships matter. Leaders have to trust their instincts when it comes to merging personalities inside a team. For applicants, the ability to play well with others gets you into the game. But your skills will help you to play it. And win. Assessments can evaluate for personality traits and soft skills. 'Assessments let you identify someone who has the right traits for a role,' Passalacqua says. For companies who rely on these types of assessments, that flexibility might be an advantage for those looking to change jobs or industries. After hiring, behavioral profiles can inform leaders of ways to interact with employees - understanding their preferences inside of both challenges and opportunities. The whole idea behind assessments is to create alignment between the company, the employee and the role. Feeling good is nice, but performing well is where career satisfaction really happens. Good vibes without a good fit for the role is a recipe for disaster. For job seekers today, the message is clear: a willingness to focus on soft skills (like communication, interpersonal awareness and emotional intelligence) can go a long way in the job interview. Hiring focuses on ability and aptitude, in companies that are focused on growth. Candidates need to combine vital soft skills with hard results on an assessment. That way, you'll be giving the hiring manager more than just good vibes in the job interview.
Yahoo
29-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Report Finds Glaring Difference In Feedback Job Interviewers Give About Men Vs. Women
A new report is revealing what many frustrated job seekers have long suspected: It's not what you know, but what your interviewers think about your personality that can get you the job. In a Textio report published Tuesday, job candidates who received offers were significantly more likely to be described as having a 'great personality' than those who didn't get offers — and for men and women, that often meant wildly different things. To figure this out, Textio, a talent optimization platform commonly used by human resources professionals, analyzed 10,377 internal job interview assessments done by hiring managers and recruiters across more than 3,900 job candidates, mostly in North America. What Textio found was that hiring teams for corporate roles, including marketing, legal, engineering and sales, were being swayed by a job candidate's vibes. Shortly after job interviews, hiring managers used Textio's platform to document internal feedback about a job candidate, and the type of feedback they were more likely to share was about a job candidate's charm, 'great energy' and 'friendly' personality ― not their relevant skills. Ultimately, managers were more likely to hire people they liked. Kieran Snyder, Textio co-founder and chief scientist emeritus, said the finding 'shows that our bias begins before the person's even hired. So candidates coming in, you see this real gendered impact of the way that they're described.' The kind of personality feedback women and men got after interviewing was radically different. According to the Textio report, women candidates who got job offers were more likely to be described by interviewers as 'bubbly,' 'pleasant' and 'polite.' Meanwhile, men who got job offers were described as 'level-headed,' 'confident' and 'strong.' Being pleasantly bubbly is not a bad trait to have at work, but it's not the kind of trait that will get you promoted, which is one reason why this feedback is problematic. 'Being friendly doesn't get you a leadership opportunity,' Snyder said. 'And so when we assess some groups of people — such as women, especially Black women and Latino women, for these attributes more than others ― we inherently set them up for fewer opportunities down the line.' Sociologist Lauren Rivera, a professor of management and organizations at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management, said the 'bubbly' feedback women get is an example of the 'fraught labyrinth' of how women get judged for both competence and warmth, citing the research of psychologist Alice Eagly on this topic. 'We disproportionately attune to women's warmth when judging their underlying suitability,' Rivera explained. 'We attune to the fact of 'Are they friendly? Are they approachable?' more than we do for men, and research has shown that there's a backlash for women who are perceived as violating these kind of prescriptive gender stereotypes.' The Textio data set of written interview assessments didn't contain metadata about candidate race and ethnicity, but previous research has found that women of color face what researchers call 'double jeopardy,' because they deal with both gender and racial biases at work. Black women professionals are more likely to receive subjective feedback that they are 'difficult' or 'angry,' for example. Ironically, the candidates who got relevant feedback about their skills were the candidates being rejected. Successful job candidates were being praised for their good vibes, while rejected candidates got skills-related takedowns. 'The candidates who didn't get offers, they had more feedback, actually, that was written about them, but less of it commented on their personality, and more of it commented on their skills,' Snyder said. In Snyder's view, 'it's because interviewers feel more compelled to justify a no-hire decision.' Why not hire people you like to work with? It's not bad to want to hang out with your colleagues, but that should not be the reason you hire and promote them. The Textio report is just the latest showing Americans love to hire for 'chemistry' or 'cultural fit' over relevant skills and performance. Rivera, who has conducted several studies on this topic, said that many hiring managers use shared interest in sports or mutual passion for 'Love Is Blind' as indicators of a good coworker. 'We use that liking and that similarity as a proxy for: Are they going to be collegial?' Rivera said. But 'just because you like someone in the moment, on the basis of a 20-minute conversation, doesn't mean they will actually be a respectful or helpful coworker, but we confuse those two things.' 'We're overestimating the degree to which liking is actually relevant, and overestimating the degree to which we can actually grow to like people who are different from us,' she said. And if managers keep doing this, they will not only lose out on great candidates, they will lose great performers, too. Job feedback about your personality ― even when it's about how wonderful you are to work with ― is a lose-lose for everyone involved. Snyder said high performers 'tend to get 'Great job. Keep going, good for you.' And what we've seen in prior research is that when the feedback is low-quality, even if it's positive, people are more likely to quit.' To avoid subjective judgments like 'not a good fit,' job interviewers should ideally ask each candidate about their relevant knowledge, skills and abilities they can bring to the role with the same questions, in the same order. Rivera suggested interviewers avoid icebreaker questions like, 'What do you like to do in your spare time?' to make sure candidates are not being judged on shared interests. But for now, reports like Textio's show that this kind of fair, less-biased interviewing is still not happening enough. 'We're not looking at the right place. We're not looking at their skills and behaviors,' Snyder said. 'We're looking at how they make us feel.' Why 'Culture Fit' Is A Failed Idea In American Hiring 4 Simple Fixes That Make Job Interviews More Fair, Less Biased These Coded Words Reveal Bosses' Biases Against Certain Employees
