With low unemployment rates holding steady, employers are still scrambling to find workers and fill vacant positions in their organizations — and they're willing to sacrifice once-vital parts of the hiring process to achieve faster results.
Companies in the retail and service sectors including UPS, Home Depot and Gap are some of the first to drop their applicant interview requirements for
According to a 2018 study by the Harvard Business Review, 19% of new hires that received a job offer without interviews were considered fully successful, but by the time they'd reached 18 months of tenure, 46% were deemed failures. Despite those statistics, Paul Lewis, chief customer officer at job-search site Adzuna, thinks the elimination of interviews has the opportunity to
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"Everything in business is a risk and it could be [detrimental] if it's a highly-skilled job like a programmer who claims to know Java but cannot solve a simple algorithmic task, or an electrical engineer who claims to have engineering experience but fails to use 3D-modeling tools," says Lewis. "But the bottom line is that the consequences of a bad hire are very minimal."
An interview-less hiring process could look like simply creating a straight-to-the-point job ad that lays out the scope of daily duties clearly and concisely, as well as salary ranges to accelerate the hiring process. That will be followed by a form applicants can fill out, including multiple choice questions on availability and skill rather than requiring cover letters and written answers.
"Generally, jobs that are crossing out interviews on the market right now are usually entry-level, seasonal or in blue-collar fields," Lewis says. "What they all have in common is that there are few technical skill requirements to complete the job and most of these jobs don't need prior knowledge or a degree. On-the-job training is more crucial for them to learn the ropes, hence why employers in this field are most likely to benefit from this new trend as this is more cost-saving and time-saving."
Lewis says hiring would then shift to a potentially
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That would mean time-consuming aspects of hiring, like background and reference checks, would also be eliminated from the process. In turn, organizations may instead consider implementing short-term company-wide probationary periods to help mitigate the risk of investing in an employee who is the wrong fit.
According to a recent survey by Adzuna, job seekers' second biggest gripe is the lengthy interview process, and it prevents 50% of workers from exploring new opportunities in an effort to avoid stress. If employers want to eliminate interviews permanently — and successfully — they should analyze the success rate and average tenure of their new hires before and after implementation, and build their framework from there.
"If you as an employer wiped out this painful process for your employee, this means you have improved candidate experience and also indirectly enhanced their employee experience," he says. "Which is the key to retention."
