HireVue Customers Assessing for Potential

We’re living in a time of low consumer confidence as worries about a recession increase alongside a strong but skittish labor market. It’s as if every data point comes with a counterpoint before you can hit publish: September job numbers were up. October numbers were down. Quiet hiring is on the rise. Quiet quitting surges.

Here’s what I know for sure after pulling apart market predictions, platform data, and analyst research:

• Hiring remains strong, but as always, industry is one of the most predictive indicators.
• Persistent job vacancies have customers leaning into scalable assessments at unprecedented rates.
• Potential is the new currency and its implications for fairness are remarkable.

Q3 by the numbers

Yet again, worries about a hiring slowdown in Q3 proved unfounded, with 336,000 jobs added just in the month of September. Drilling down by sector, leisure and hospitality led with 96,000 jobs, 73,000 in government and 41,000 in healthcare.

At times, our platform data shows spikes or lulls in industries that differ from the jobs report, but this quarter is in lockstep with public data. The parallels are especially similar in assessments. From Q2 to Q3 we saw massive increases in assessment completion in these industries:

Year-over-year assessment uptake soars, and for good reason: organizations that vet skills and not resumes are poised to quickly identify high-performers in a candidate’s market, cut through a deluge of applications during a recession, or find workers from different backgrounds amidst skills shortages. They really are becoming a table stakes tool in the modern talent team’s toolbox.

Skills assessments to identify potential and overcome talent shortages

From July to September, our customers’ candidates completed 6.6 million assessments (Interview, Virtual Job Tryout® and Game-Based). We asked the business intelligence team to re-crunch the number because it was so high—but it was completely accurate. That 6.6 million figure is evidence that the 2:1 vacancy-to-candidate ratio has companies leaning into science-based, scalable selection methods.

Customer proof points

The transition away from unstructured interviews gets to the heart of Human Potential Intelligence: hiring for job-relevant criteria rather than fixating on previous experience or unrelated credentials. At HR Tech, our clients at Spectrum took to the stage to explain how they’ve embraced potential over pedigree with tremendous results. By using HireVue’s Find My Fit, which they branded Fit Finder, to assess skills and interests as criteria for hiring, they’ve seen:

• 93% of surveyed users agree their results will help inform their job search at the company
• 90% of people say jobs they wouldn’t see were recommended
• 10% withdraw rate vs 24% before Fit Finder

In addition, Fit Finder does not ask for race or gender, and yet, the team has seen improved gender diversity in traditionally male-dominated roles. Now, 11% of their field technical applicant pool is female compared to 6% before Fit Finder.

Human Potential Intelligence resonates

Our teams just returned from industry events around the world, and we were inundated with positive feedback about Human Potential Intelligence. Current and future customers alike are eager to implement Find My Fit to get to the heart of their applicants’ skills, interests and personality.

At the heart of every conversation we had at these events was the fact that Human Potential Intelligence describes the programs companies want to build. It crystallizes what teams have been trying to communicate internally and externally for the last few years: that they value learning agility and curiosity over career history.

We know that looking at job history is inherently biased, especially for candidates with disabilities who are overlooked by traditional hiring practices. In a recent conversation with journalist Steven Aquino, we discussed how Human Potential Intelligence is a paradigm shift that creates more inclusive hiring practices for neurodivergent and disabled candidates. We’re working every day to create a hiring system where everyone’s abilities are valued and they’re pointed toward roles where they can thrive.

Ready to join us on this mission to connect talent to opportunity? Request a demo today!