What are Recruiters Truly Looking For in a Candidate?
“Employability and Career Success: Bridging the Gap Between Theory and Reality”
Robert Hogan, Tomas Chammoro-Premuzic, and Robert B Kaiser (2013)
What are the researchers interested in?
“[Despite common belief], recruiters often ignore GPA when recommending selection and in some circumstances even recommend selecting candidates with a lower GPA”
Psychologists have defined ‘employability’ as the ability to achieve and maintain a job in a formal organization (Fugate et al., 2004; Hillar & Pollard, 1998). The term has become an eye-catching topic within the field of Industrial Psychology. Specifically, which traits and skills do employers want in an individual to allow them to have a higher chance of success in their application process. To this end, Hogan, Chamorro-Premuzic, and Kaiser set out to find distinct traits of high employable individuals.
What method did they use?
The researchers conducted a systematic review - summarizing empirical evidence on the literature surrounding what employers actually want. After a thorough review, the researchers will aim to finalize an integrative model to understand the key determinants of employability. To give a few examples of literature used:
The Secretary’s Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills (SCANS) identified broad categories of competencies business owners are looking for:
Resources - ability to identify and allocate resources (the use of digital management tools)
Interpersonal skills - the ability to work with others, even if working styles are different
Information - being able to acquire and apply information
Systems - the ability to understand complex interrelationships in an organization
Technology - being able to work with a variety of technologies (Microsoft, Python, R, etc.)
A related survey by the Bureau of National Affairs reported three common kinds of worker deficiencies:
Poor problem solving
Poor personal management
Poor interpersonal skills
There remains a gap between psychologists’ findings on what employers want and what psychologists recommend. Employers seek the importance of social skills and being rewarding to deal with, whereas, IO psychology emphasizes cognitive ability and emotional intelligence. However, for psychologists to understand this phenomenon they decided to study the former, which was what employers seek.
What did they end up finding?
What determines whether a person will be perceived as having the potential to contribute positively to an organization? Hogan and colleagues developed an integrative model in showing the determinants of employability, reducing it down to these three variables (RAW):
Rewarding - Whether the person is rewarding to deal with (to add on to this, the individual should have a good temperament and is coachable)
Able - Capable of learning and performing certain tasks in the job (this here is a no-brainer, analyzing their skills in relation to the job description)
Willingness - Driven and works hard (Passion and intrinsic motivation are huge factors that will come into play here)
Why does this matter for organizations?
Psychologists have been expanding their research to include what employers actually want in new hires instead of what research usually recommends. Researchers have found out that recruiters are less likely to choose employees based on cognitive ability but recruit based on social desirability (a likable social image). The RAW model is inherently compensatory; employees with only average ability may succeed by being productive and rewarding for their employer. The success of bright people with limited social skills can be explained by their high productivity, whilst those who are charming, bright, and lazy will succeed as they always do. This research has implications as to why there may be more employee turnover, simply because recruiters are not measuring what they should be measuring.
References
Hogan, R., Chamorro‐Premuzic, T., & Kaiser, R. B. (2013). Employability and career success: Bridging the gap between theory and reality. Industrial and Organizational Psychology, 6(1), 3-16. Chicago