It’s so satisfying when we meet someone who gives off good vibes. It’s a phenomenon the Beach Boys felt so strongly about, that they could only describe the feelings as “excitation,” and honestly, it’s a little tough to know what exactly the vibes even were. (Lyrically, there’s room for that song to grow, IMO.)
But vibes—even the good ones—don’t belong in the interview process. They can even make it hard for interviewers to offer up candidate feedback that's useful, skills- and experience-based that won't come back to haunt them as legal landmines down the road.
Recruiting and feedback HR tech company Textio this week at Transform in Las Vegas introduced a new AI-powered module to make the hiring process more objective and skills-focused, and take that vibe-check out of the interview process.
Hiring decisions can often rely on candidate personality and likability, rather than skills and qualifications, because hiring teams don’t always know how to assess candidates effectively, according to the company. Often, feedback is based on gut feelings and general vibes.
Textio’s new interview feedback tool is designed to help companies conduct structured, compliant assessments of candidates to reduce the use of subjective judgments in feedback conversations or forms.
“The good news is that staying compliant in interview feedback actually keeps you on the right side of making great hiring decisions,” Textio CEO Jensen Harris told HR Brew.
Harris noted that in addition to protecting against potential risk of discrimination or bias, structured interviewing and feedback processes can also help ensure companies are pursuing the right talent for the right open role.
“We’re trying to solve with Textio’s interview feedback module a couple of problems,” he said. “One is that we actually get interviewers to write the feedback, because it’s so easy. Ensure that the feedback that is written is clear skills-based, not based on vibes, but based on what was seen and what was evaluated during the interview, and assure that the process of doing that is aligned to the requirements of the role you’re looking for, so that if you do hire that person, then that can translate directly into them starting to get the feedback that they need to thrive at your company.”
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Textio’s new AI-powered tool helps structure the hiring process and outline skills-based evaluations for candidates, and centralize the assessment and feedback processes across organizations. Interviewers can leverage generative AI tools to help surface up objective report-backs that capture the candidates skills and experiences related to the role.
The benefits go beyond legal protection. Fairer, more objective interview criteria and an easier AI-assisted process to derive those insights, create better hires, and help companies employ beyond that personality hire.
Harris told HR Brew that the new offering fits with Textio’s existing suite of recruiting tools helping organizations attract diverse talent through optimized and inclusive language as well as its performance and employee feedback offerings leveraging AI to provide structured, bias-conscious assessments to those already hired.
“I wouldn’t feel good sitting here saying just, ‘Hey, we build something to help companies not get sued,’” he said. “The good thing is it actually benefits everyone. It actually does benefit the future employee, because they get a value based on a fair set of criteria. They get evaluated based on what they’ve done, not who they are, and it helps make better hiring decisions.”