Pre-Hire Assessments in Recruiting with Matt Alder

Pre-Hire Assessments in Recruiting: Matt Alder's Case for Them

Matt Alder has hosted the Recruiting Future podcast for about 12 years, by Jonathan Duarte's count, which makes him one of the longest-running podcasters in recruiting. The two first met at HR Tech in Las Vegas about three years ago, while Matt was recording interviews in a bar. Jonathan thinks that's where you learn what's really happening in HR tech. "It usually starts about 7:00," he said.

Jonathan opened with a simple question. Has there ever been a time this strange in recruiting? Matt went straight to 1999 and 2000, the dot-com boom and the birth of the job boards. The conversations sounded a lot like today's. The pace doesn't.

I think what's different this time is the whole AI thing is just moving a million times quicker. Those kind of conversations that might have taken a couple of years it's now taking a couple of months.

Matt Alder, Host, Recruiting Future

Jonathan knows that era well. He started GoJobs, a job board, in 1996. After seeing a new AI video platform recently, he told the vendor's team, "we're back to 1996 again." Matt had his own version of the speed problem. He gave a breakfast presentation a couple of weeks before the recording, and the next day something launched. If he'd had it in the talk, "it would've made so much more sense."

Most of the episode is about what TA leaders should do while the ground moves. Matt's answer keeps returning to pre-hire assessments in recruiting. He ignored assessment for his first five years of podcasting because it sat late in the process and seemed out of reach for most employers. Then he talked to academics and assessment providers about the science behind it, and he changed his mind. Jonathan mentioned that Matt recently wrote a report on assessments, which is how the topic came up.

Why "AI Interviewing" Covers Too Much Ground to Be One Category

Matt splits the problem in two. Technology is changing at one speed. Companies adopt it at a much slower one. That gap between what's possible and what people actually do is where most of the confusion lives, and there's no shortage of noise and competing narratives. "I feel sorry for anyone trying to make sense of it," he said.

His first piece of advice is to keep up with what's possible, even when it's ahead of what your company can implement right now. Read the case studies. Learn what the tools can do at the edge. AI interviewing is his example:

Everyone does AI interviewing. People talk about AI interviewing all the time. It's not really a category, 'cause within it there are loads of different things and activities going on.

Matt Alder, Host, Recruiting Future

What AI interviewing looks like at the leading edge today is very different from what it looked like six months ago, Matt said. Knowing that tells you the direction of travel.

Jonathan's comparison was Windows 3.1. You could still buy it if you didn't know anything newer existed. In a category this wide, you can buy the bottom of the barrel because you skipped the research. His advice is to find people who have talked to several vendors, instead of picking one.

Start with the problem you're solving

Matt's second filter is to know why you want the tool at all. He listed the reasons he hears:

Is it because I wanna get more signal from the candidates that we're talking to? Is it because I'm drowning in applications and need to screen something out? Is it because my ATS provider has just launched it as a service, as a product, and I'd quite fancy trying.

Matt Alder, Host, Recruiting Future

Jonathan agreed that the problem comes first. Don't chase a tool and then go looking for a problem for it to solve. Start with the problem and you also get something to benchmark against, so you can tell whether the tool works. If you're comparing vendors right now, Jeff Pole covered the audit and compliance questions to ask recruiting AI vendors on an earlier episode.

Candidate Trust and the Bad Products That Damage It

Jonathan has seen some rough AI interviews. A VP of TA posted about going through one, and he couldn't believe how bad it was. Another time, he saw a Salesforce salesperson answer an AI interviewer in gibberish, and the AI interviewer replied in the same gibberish. Jonathan's reaction: "Someone bought this."

Matt sees why. Everyone suddenly feels they should be in this category, and some of the products are terrible. That creates what he called one of the biggest challenges in the space: candidate trust.

If you've never looked at a really good AI interviewing experience, then you're likely to think, 'I don't wanna talk to a machine about this.' And I think that the industry needs to get a lot better at its own positive PR about what some of the great sort of uses of this are, and how it can improve the candidate experience.

Matt Alder, Host, Recruiting Future

The upside Matt described is concrete. A good tool can help a team find applicants who are perfect for the job and might otherwise have been screened out. He expects plenty of shakeout and PR work still to come in this space.

For data on how AI-led interviews performed at scale, see our breakdown of the 70,000-interview AI bias study.

If AI Stopped Improving Today, Hiring Would Still Change

Much of the AI coverage fixates on frontier models and whether we'll reach artificial general intelligence. Matt thinks that misses the point for recruiting:

Actually, if it didn't evolve any further than where it is now, it can still revolutionize hiring based on the technology that is available today.

Matt Alder, Host, Recruiting Future

Jonathan agreed, and he has a story behind it. Ten years ago (next month is the anniversary), he built what he calls the first conversational AI in recruiting, a chatbot on Facebook Messenger. The only hypothesis was whether candidates would use messaging to communicate in a job search. He wrote two Facebook posts, and it went viral to 103 countries in 30 days. "I think we found something," he said.

His point is that the gains are already there if you tie the pieces together. You still have to do some work to connect them, which you'd have to do anyway. If you want a map of where those pieces fit today, our guide to recruiting AI walks through the main use cases.

Why Pre-Hire Assessments in Recruiting Are Moving Up the Funnel

Matt's view of assessment changed when he learned what's behind it:

This is peer-reviewed science. It's the closest thing that we have to being able to predict how someone is gonna perform in a job.

Matt Alder, Host, Recruiting Future

It seemed crazy to him that the science was there and most of recruiting wasn't using it. For years, cost and expertise kept assessments in a narrow lane. Matt says three things have converged in the last two or three years to change that:

• The technology has improved, AI included, which makes assessments more accessible.
• Many employers have more applications than they can handle. Some of that is candidates using AI, and a lot of it is economic conditions around the world.
• Nobody is sure which skills people will need as AI changes jobs, so employers want a better read on how a hire will perform.

The research behind pre-hire assessments in recruiting supports his starting point. A 2022 meta-analysis in the Journal of Applied Psychology by Paul Sackett, Charlene Zhang, Christopher Berry and Filip Lievens revisited the validity estimates for common selection methods. In HumRRO's summary of the study, structured interviews came out on top at .42, followed by job knowledge tests at .40, work sample tests at .33 and cognitive ability at .31.

High volume hiring assessments in practice

The biggest shift Matt sees is where the assessment sits. Organizations are putting it earlier in the process.

I'm seeing a lot of organizations moving it up that recruiting funnel. In some cases in, some high volume hiring cases is like everyone does the assessment because they can.

Matt Alder, Host, Recruiting Future

One of his podcast guests used a soft skills assessment at the very start of call center recruitment, before anything else, and used the results to inform the rest of the process. Matt thinks assessments got stuck in management hiring because they used to be time-intensive and expensive, and that legacy still shapes how people use them. High volume hiring assessments would never have happened before now, he said.

Jonathan hears the same thing from clients. Ask where they use assessments and the answer is "we use it for management," and after that there's nothing. At HR Tech last year, he asked Charles Handler, a long-time leader in the assessment space and an upcoming GoHire Talks guest, why assessments aren't used on frontline workers for every role.

Matt sees the benefit for recruiters too. Assessment data better informs the conversations and interviews human recruiters have. For high volume hiring assessments, it can also help with the problem of applications that all look the same. (If you hire at volume, our high-volume recruiting automation interview covers the speed side of the same funnel.)

How to vet pre-hire assessments in recruiting

Matt's caveat is firm. There's real science here, and not every vendor uses it.

If you're looking at providers you have to make sure that they're using a scientifically valid method because I think there is the temptation for some startups out there to create their own crazy AI method of selecting people.

Matt Alder, Host, Recruiting Future

Asking the right questions matters, he said. He has seen everything in this market: proper scientifically based assessments, work sampling, and AI-run role plays that get quite sophisticated. He expects assessment to keep growing in importance because "its time has really come."

Resumes Have Had Their Day

Jonathan's view of AI resume matching is blunt. He compared it to 52-card pickup. Throw a deck on the floor and everyone who picks it up comes back with a different order. Some get the red cards first. Some get whatever comes up. "I don't know what you're paying for," he said.

Matt's explanation is that the inputs never changed:

The technology's more sophisticated, but the data it's going off hasn't changed. It's still resumes and whatever else, cover letters or LinkedIn profiles.

Matt Alder, Host, Recruiting Future

You can match that data faster, but it tells you nothing more about how someone will perform. Matt calls it a classic example of a process that needs to change.

I think the resumes have had their day now, because it seems ridiculously reductive that you have two or three pages on someone, when actually we have tools that can cope with so much more content and make sense of it.

Matt Alder, Host, Recruiting Future

The blank-sheet-of-paper test

Jonathan pushed the idea further. What if there were no resume? A candidate applies and answers a few pre-screening questions. Do you live close by? Do you have the right to work in the country? Are you 18, if the job requires it? Then they take the assessment.

Matt's answer was "why not?" He hears the argument that resumes carry basic compliance data, but you can collect that information separately. Then he offered a test any TA leader can run. Start with a blank sheet of paper. Write down the people you want and the skills you need. Then ask how you'd measure and test those skills.

If you'd never seen a resume, you'd never come up with that as the answer.

Matt Alder, Host, Recruiting Future

Nobody would invent two or three pages of typed text followed by an interview where the candidate talks you through it. Recruiting has looked the same for 200 years in a lot of ways, Matt said, and breaking out of that is hard. But "we're in very different times now."

Leonardo da Vinci's "first resume"

Matt has heard many times that Leonardo da Vinci wrote the first resume, so he looked it up earlier in the year. It was a letter. A young da Vinci wrote to someone to offer help with their war effort, listing the inventions he could bring. Right at the end, it says the Italian equivalent of "Oh yeah, and I'm a bit of a painter." Matt's read is that da Vinci tailored it to the job by putting the painting at the bottom. Jonathan's verdict: it's a cover letter and resume.

Jonathan's broader theory is that the resume is a stand-in for a referral. When no one can vouch for you, we created a document to do it, decided that document was the truth, and then trained people to read between the lines at scale. Matt tied it to constraints. Human recruiters can only read so much, so everything had to fit a format. "Remove the constraints and what happens?" he asked. "I think that's the key thing."

Jonathan is also looking at team assessments, which test whether a new person fits the team, something a resume can't tell you. Matt pointed to sports. If a team already has an all-star quarterback, it doesn't sign another one.

Recruiting Process Redesign With AI Starts in Talent Acquisition

Matt's second big piece of advice is to look hard at the recruiting process itself, and not just at the tools. Recruiting process redesign with AI means asking whether this new capability lets you do recruiting a different way.

So many organizations are just bolting this technology onto processes they've already got, which doesn't fix the process, it just makes it go quicker, which may not be a good thing if it's not a good process.

Matt Alder, Host, Recruiting Future

The question he suggests sounds simple, and he admits there's a lot to it. What's possible, and how could we recruit if we implemented it? Asking it puts you in the right head space for something complicated, fast-moving and noisy.

What to do with the time AI frees up

"We're taking all the admin tasks away" has become a common refrain about AI. Matt wants TA leaders to go one step further.

I think from a TA perspective, really thinking about what's the, what happens with the time and the resource that's freed up is really critical.

Matt Alder, Host, Recruiting Future

When he asks, not many teams can say they'll use the freed-up time to create more value for the business. The answers sound more like clearing a backlog, or something that would be nice to do. Some teams are doing this work and some aren't, and Matt thinks it's one of the most important things to consider right now.

Recruiting is where AI is changing the business most

Jonathan reframed it for HR and TA leaders:

The business department in your company that probably has the biggest AI change right now is probably recruiting.

Jonathan Duarte, Founder & CEO, GoHire

If you haven't done the strategic work on recruiting roles and processes, he asked, why are you talking about anyone else in the company? Matt agreed. He had just spoken with someone who leads AI transformation in a large corporate HR department, and their view is that HR as a whole is about to become a lot more technical. Candidates are driving part of the change. They're applying in such large numbers that many employers adopt AI because it's the only way to get through the volume.

Matt added one more layer. If AI is changing how businesses work and how they're structured, then who you hire and what skills they need changes too, and many organizations aren't thinking about it yet. For a step-by-step rollout plan, see the Recruiting AI Adoption Playbook.

Assessment Bias and Compliance: What the Law Already Expects

Matt's warning about a "crazy AI method" has a legal side. Federal rules on employment tests have been on the books for decades, and they apply to software-scored assessments as much as to paper tests.

The EEOC's fact sheet on employment tests and selection procedures explains that Title VII, the ADA and the ADEA all apply to tests. A test that disproportionately screens out a protected group has to be job-related and consistent with business necessity. The EEOC also tells employers to validate tests for the specific jobs they use them for, and notes that vendor documentation helps but the employer stays responsible.

The Uniform Guidelines on Employee Selection Procedures cover "tests and other selection procedures" and set out the four-fifths rule. A selection rate for any group below 80% of the rate for the highest group is generally treated as evidence of adverse impact. Track your pass rates by group from day one.

If an AI tool scores or ranks candidates, newer laws apply too. New York City's Local Law 144 requires a bias audit within a year before use, a published audit summary and candidate notice. A December 2025 audit by the New York State Comptroller found the city received only 2 complaints while auditors found at least 17 instances of potential non-compliance. Illinois HB 3773 bars AI with a discriminatory effect in hiring and requires notice to employees, effective January 1, 2026 (Epstein Becker Green summary). Confirm current state requirements with counsel.

Before you move pre-hire assessments in recruiting to the top of the funnel, ask the vendor these questions:

• What validation evidence do you have for roles like ours?
• Can we see adverse-impact results by group, and how often do you re-check them?
• What accommodations do you offer candidates with disabilities?
• Who on our team reviews results before anyone is advanced or turned down?

The last question matters most. An assessment informs a recruiter's judgment and doesn't replace it. GoHire works the same way: your team writes the questions, sets the criteria and makes every hiring decision.

Frequently Asked Questions About Pre-Hire Assessments in Recruiting

Keep Your Recruiters in Charge of Every Decision

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Pre-Hire Assessments in Recruiting: The GoHire Talks Interview Transcript with Matt Alder

Welcome: Matt Alder of Recruiting Future (00:00)

Jonathan Duarte: [00:00:00] Hey, welcome everyone. We have a great guest today, and you've probably heard of him more than you have heard of me even. Matt Alder from Recruiting Future, one, probably one of the oldest podcasters in the space 12 years or so. And we were fortunate enough to meet probably about three years ago at HR Tech Conference in Vegas while you were doing interviews in a bar, which I thought was one of the most fa- fantastic ways to meet people who are really talking about HR tech, 'cause there's, that's where, there, you go on the floor and you talk to people, and then you really get the real what's going on when you get all those conversations about...

It usually starts about 7:00, is where you really learn about HR tech. ... And that was actually, I was talking to Matt in the, the green room- ... and I started this podcast for that same reason. I've been fortunate enough to go to a lot of conferences over the time. And the reason I do this show is to bring some of the best people who've been through [00:01:00] years of recruiting the cycles, the good cycles, the bad cycles, the crazy stuff that we're seeing today, and they can bring a lot of insight.

So welcome, Matt. I can't wait to talk about all, all the most recent l- layers of craziness that's going on in recruiting tech.

Matt Alder: Thanks very much for having me. It's always great to be on someone else's podcast and not be the person answering the questions. And yeah it's a very crazy time at the moment, definitely.

The Closest Parallel: The Dot-Com Boom (01:00)

Jonathan Duarte: Yeah. What's, what, so as of right now, what was... Is there another time... 'cause you've been doing this long enough what was the- Any other time that you recognize that was probably one of the weirdest times in recruiting?

Matt Alder: The, the one with the biggest parallel would be around the dot com boom, '99, 2000.

Yeah 'Cause you had the dot com boom, the birth of the job boards. It was all going on and there was a lot of similar conversations to the kind of conversations that we've, that we're having now. I think what's different this [00:02:00] time is the whole AI thing is just moving a million times quicker. Th- those kind of conversations that might have taken a couple of years it's now taking a couple of months.

I think that's the nearest parallel I can, that I can think to it.

Jonathan Duarte: Yeah, it's interesting because I had started GoJobs, a job board, in '96, and I was saying to... I was actually saying to the team at Tavis if you've ever seen some of the interviewing, w- they haven't really gone into interviewing.

But I'll be writing something about this, and I'll let you... you'll see it coming out. They just released Griffin, a full streaming video platform that is just unbelievable. It is like next level. And I met with the team, I'd say six months ago at a little private dinner because I was interested in learning about the tech, and I'm like, "This could just leap forward interviews," like- to another level. And so I'll... That podca- that, [00:03:00] that's not gonna be a podcast, it's gonna be a article on my LinkedIn. It'll probably be out tomorrow. I'll tip you on that, but it is- Check it out.

I was t- saying to the team and there was a bunch of other vendors there using it for different tools, and I'm like we're back to 1996 again."

This is- Yeah ... it is, it's changing so quickly. If I write a blog post, I'm like, by the time I get it done, I'm like, I got inbox stuff that was like, "Wait I just published." You know it's like-

Matt Alder: Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. It's, But- Yeah I had a, I did a I did a presentation at breakfast a couple of weeks ago, and literally the next day something launched or happened and I was like...

Which was great, 'cause it didn't actually g- Yeah ... it, it played along with what I'd said, but I was like, "Oh, if I'd, if I had that in my presentation yesterday, it would've made so much more sense." But it's just, that's the speed at which things are happening at the moment. It's

Jonathan Duarte: pretty

Matt Alder: crazy.

Speed of Change vs. Speed of Adoption (03:00)

Jonathan Duarte: Yeah. And and in that light, while things are changing so quickly, what's been- Some of the things that TA leaders need to know about [00:04:00] it like the wa- it's, the water is shifting. The tides are moving so quick. And I almost think of like being out on a sandbar and- Yeah ... the tide's coming in, going out, going in, going out, and switching north to south to west to east.

How should a TA leader be thinking about this in this time of if the sh- sand is shifting so much and there's so much change What should they be thinking about in their tech stack, and just in the processes today?

Matt Alder: Yeah, I think it's a good it's a really good question. And I think there's two bits to it, because you've got the speed of change at which the technology is happening- and then the speed of adoption and the speed at which companies change, and they're very different things. So there's that- Yeah ... mismatch between, what's possible and what people are actually doing. I think there's a couple of, I think there's a couple of things. I think in terms of really understanding what's going on out there, there's so much noise and just confusion and competing narratives [00:05:00] and it's just a very noisy...

I feel sorry for anyone trying to make sense of it. I think the important thing though is to keep up, keep yourself up to date with what is actually possible. So looking at some of the case studies that are coming out, even if they are beyond the capability of where your company what you can implement at the moment, but just understanding what's possible with some of these tools, what you know, what the kind of innovations are.

So for example, AI interviewing. Everyone does AI interviewing. People talk about AI interviewing all the time. It's not really a category, 'cause within it there are loads of different things and activities going on, and I think it's just important to really understand what the art of the possible looks like, because that's the thing that's shifting.

And what AI interviewing might look like at the cutting edge today is very different from what it looked like six months ago. So- ... I think it's just understanding that, because that really helps the direction of travel, you know where you're heading. And then I think the other thing is, and I think this is really important, is looking at the [00:06:00] recruiting process.

So understanding actually with this new technology, with this new capability, does that mean that we can actually do this in a different way? Because I think that- ... so many organizations are just bolting this technology onto processes they've already got- Yeah ... which doesn't fix the process, it just makes it go quicker, which may not be a good thing if it's not a good process.

So I think it's thinking about- Yeah ... what is possible, and actually how could we do recruiting if we could implement that? And I think asking that sounds like a simple question, obviously there's a lot to it, is just a great way of getting yeah, getting a, getting the right head space around this because it is complicated, it is moving very quickly, and there's lots of noise out there.

AI Interviewing Is a Huge Category (06:00)

Jonathan Duarte: Yeah. And what of the... I like how you break down like the interviewing. It, the AI interviewing, there's so many blog posts I've seen. I've seen some really just crazy stuff where a VP of TA went through an interviewing, a AI interviewer, and it was- [00:07:00] I can't believe how terrible it was. Because, there's...

it's this huge category, and it's technology Yeah You could still buy Windows 3.1 if you didn't know that there was- Yeah ... something else out there. Exactly. Or you could be buying the bottom of the barrel because you didn't do the right research. And I know it's just te- terribly difficult right now, so you need to be, you know- Find people who, who've talked to the different vendors, not just- Yeah

pick one.

Matt Alder: And yeah. Yeah. I was just gonna say, and also you need to understand what problem you're solving. So- Yeah ... why do I want this? Is it because I wanna get more signal from the candidates that we're talking to? Is it because- ... I'm drowning in applications and need to screen something out?

Is it because my ATS provider has just launched it as a service, as a product, and I'd quite fancy trying- You just plugged it

Jonathan Duarte: in.

Matt Alder: Yeah ... so do you know what I mean? I think actually just really trying to understand what problem or challenge you're trying to solve is also the best place to start because there are, versions of this that do all kinds of different, all kinds of different things.

So I think that's an important thing to think about. [00:08:00]

Candidate Trust and Bad Products (08:00)

Jonathan Duarte: Yeah, I think that's, that's the rule anyways, right? What problem are you trying to solve first? Don't chase tech and trying to find a problem for it to solve. Instead, don't do it the wrong way. And then you can actually, if you're doing it that way, then you can actually benchmark if it's working or not too.

'Cause- Yeah. You know- ... some of these things I saw, like I even saw a salesperson from Salesforce responding back to an AI interviewer in just garbly gook, wording, and then the AI interviewer responded back with the same garbly gook. Yeah ... it just... And then I'm like, "Oh my God." Like-

Matt Alder: Yeah ... how could,

Jonathan Duarte: how-

Matt Alder: And I think

Jonathan Duarte: that, yeah- Someone bought this then.

Somebody bought this ...

Matt Alder: yeah. And this is the problem because every- everyone feels that they suddenly should be in this category. You've got-

Jonathan Duarte: Yeah ...

Matt Alder: some terrible products. And also I think one of the, one of the biggest challenges around this is candidate trust. Oh, yeah Because there are bad experiences out there.

There are without having, if you've never looked at a really good AI interviewing experience, then- Yeah ... you're likely to think, "I [00:09:00] don't wanna talk to a machine about this." And I think that the industry needs to get a lot better at its own positive PR about what some of the, some of the great sort of uses of this are, and how it can improve the candidate experience.

It can get people find people who've applied who are perfect for the job who might have been screened out all of those kind of things. So I think there's a lot of yeah, there's a lot of sort of shakeout and PR and all kinds of things still to happen in this space, definitely.

If AI Stopped Improving Today (09:00)

Jonathan Duarte: Yeah. And it I think it's definitely I don't think many people who've been in the tech long enough would say this, I think most people would say this, is that it is the future because the speed, the amount of info it can get, Yeah ... but there's a big gap still in many areas.

Matt Alder: Yeah, no, I agree.

Yeah.

Jonathan Duarte: Yeah.

Matt Alder: I agree. I think what I'd also say is that there's obviously, yeah, huge amounts of- Publicity and discussion about is AI gonna kill us all by 2030? The founda- it's just and sometimes I think it just really fixates on those, those kind of top models and where [00:10:00] does the progress sit and are we gonna get to artificial general super intelligence or whatever anyone wants- Yeah

wants to call it. Actually, if it didn't evolve any further than where it is now, it can still revolutionize hiring based on the technology- Oh ... that is available- Oh, yeah ... today.

Jonathan Duarte: Yeah.

Matt Alder: So I think that's also important. If this whole revolution stopped tomorrow where it was, it's still revolutionary for what we do.

The First Recruiting Chatbot on Messenger (10:00)

Jonathan Duarte: Oh, yeah, absolutely. Ab- I'm a big believer. Most people don't know this, but I built the first conversational AI in recruiting 10 years ago on a, a little... It's actually next month will be the 10th year. The first conversational chatbot on Messenger, we put it out and the idea was would c- our hypothesis was would candidates use messaging as a way to communicate in a job search?

Yeah. That was all, that's all we were testing.

Matt Alder: Yeah.

Jonathan Duarte: We, I did two Facebook [00:11:00] posts, and it went viral to 103 countries in 30 days, and I go-

Matt Alder: Wow ... "

Jonathan Duarte: I think we found something."

Matt Alder: Yeah.

Jonathan Duarte: This is the tech. It was like short answer, can we do this, that, and the other, right? So I think we're ... Like, yeah, if it stopped today huge benefits still coming if you tie them together and every- everyone, y- you still have to do- Yeah

a little work to pull them together. Yeah. Which you have to do anyways, but-

Matt Alder: Yeah ...

Why Assessments' Time Has Come (11:00)

Jonathan Duarte: and let's talk about one, one of the other things, 'cause I know your, your venture early on and your hypothesis is there's gotta be a better way too. There's gotta be a s- how can we use this tech in a way to make recruitment better?

Which was- Yeah ... my hypothesis back in 1996. Yeah ... there's gotta be a better way, right? What ... and, you wrote a p- a report recently on assessments. Tell me a little bit about assessments. What have you learned over the years, and where do you see it going? What have you learned lately that's, where you think, where do you think that direction's going as [00:12:00] well?

Matt Alder: Yeah, good question. It's really interesting actually, 'cause probably for the first sort of five years I was podcasting I ignored assessment. I didn't really look at it, and I think it's because it was something that's stuck further down the recruitment process.

Not all employers are we're using it. There's barriers to entry around cost and expertise and all that sort of stuff. Then I had a bit of a epiphany about the whole thing talking to sort of various academics and pr- assessment providers just about the science that sits behind it.

And actually, this is peer-reviewed science. It's the closest thing that we have to being able to predict how someone is gonna perform in a job, and that's kind of- ... like obviously science evolves and changes all the t- all, all the time. But it just seemed crazy to me that actually this was here- And it wasn't being used by people, by most people in recruiting.

So that always seemed a bit kind of crazy, so I started exploring that. But then really what's happened over the last sort of two or three years is kind... There's three, three things have converged. So obviously the technology's got [00:13:00] better with AI and everything.

We're living through this period where very many employers have got a bigger volume of applications that they can handle. Yep. Some of that's because candidates are using AI. A lot of that is just because of the economic conditions around the world. And also then we've got all these sort of question marks about skills.

What skills do people need? How is AI changing jobs? When I hire people, how do I know whether they're gonna be right in a changing kind of world of work? And it really assessment I think is coming to the fore now because the technology's making it more accessible. It's, I'm seeing a lot of organizations moving it up that recruiting funnel.

In some cases in, some high volume hiring cases is like everyone does the assessment because- Yeah ... because they can. And, Yeah ... it gives that kind of extra signal, that extra information for the recruiting process. And yeah, it's really interesting. I've seen everything from proper scientifically based assessments to work sampling, using AI to give people really sophisticated kind of role plays around it.

So [00:14:00] I think it, it's really interesting. It's something that I think is gonna only get bigger. I think it solves a lot of the problems that we're seeing around volume and, applications looking similar. Yeah. I think there's a caveat around it that there is proper science behind this, and I think that if you're looking at providers you have to make sure that they're using a scientifically valid method because I think there is the temptation for some startups out there to create their own crazy AI method of selecting people which it's just there, there's science behind this.

Asking the right questions is really important. So yeah. I think it's something that's only gonna grow in importance because it, its time has really come in terms of where we're sitting at the moment.

Resumes, AI Matching and 52-Card Pickup (14:00)

Jonathan Duarte: Yeah, I think I've ta- I've been talking to Charles Handler about this, Yeah.

Yeah ... who's one of the leaders- He was on my show, yeah ... in this space. Yeah. And he we met up probably 20 years ago or so and I never really understood what he was doing. And he's a, a incredibly smart guy around this space, and we were talking at HR Tech [00:15:00] last year, and I'm like there's gotta be a way...

Like, why aren't people doing this on frontline workers for every role?" I've never had- Yeah ... an assessment. Not that I've... i've been an entrepreneur, so it's not like I assess myself to see what my strengths and weaknesses are. I pretty much know them. I deal with them every day, right? So- Yeah ... but I, I think I'm gonna do a series.

I've got Charles gonna come on the podcast too. But I just think... i'm just stunned as I get closer and learn this. I think I'm in the same boat of you, as you. I've seen all this tech come and go. The AI matching I mentioned to resumes now is 50 c- 52-card pickup with a- Yeah

a deck of cards. You throw it out and two p- anyone who picks up the deck, they're coming back with a different sorting order. Some get all the red cards first. Yeah. Some just whatever order random comes up. That's pretty much what you're paying for. It just- I don't know what you're paying for.

I think that- Yeah, no,

Matt Alder: exactly. Yeah, so the technology- ... is more sophisti- [00:16:00] the technology's more sophisticated, but the data it's going off hasn't changed. It's still resumes and y- whatever else- yeah ... cover letters or LinkedIn profiles. And yeah, you can match that quicker, but it doesn't tell you anything else about how that person's gonna perform, and I think that's the...

A- and that's a classic example of actually, the process needs to change. I think the, the resumes have had their day now, because it seems ridiculously reductive that you have two or three pages on someone, when actually we have tools that can cope with so much more content and make sense of it.

So yeah, it's interesting.

Jonathan Duarte: Yeah, and I think maybe that's where we're going and may- yeah, maybe this, w- and that's why I love doing these podcasts because it can start putting the pinpoints together for me, like how are these all gonna equate? Yeah. And if we know that the job description doesn't do the role that we hoped it would, we d- we know that the resume's not doing the role, and those two are getting, trying to be matched, which we know is gonna fail.

Matt Alder: [00:17:00] Yeah.

Jonathan Duarte: If we can scientifically- Exactly ... prove that assessments would work, why are people, just because it's just not out there I would gather- Yeah ... but if people were to investigate assessments over resumes, I thi- and put more money in there to find that pipeline, that process work for them- Yeah ... my guess is they might have a winner.

So maybe that's what we're gonna see- Yeah ... the next five years, because-

Matt Alder: Yeah ...

Jonathan Duarte: the matching in and of itself never really proved out.

Matt Alder: Yeah I completely agree. I completely agree, and I've seen, some companies doing, almo- almost doing that, just really getting that kind of... and also from a, a human recruiter perspective it better informs the work that the human recruiters do and the conversations they have and the interviews they do.

So yeah, I think to me it just seems like a logical, a logical direction of travel. How long it takes is always the difficult thing to predict.

Jonathan Duarte: Oh, yeah. Especially, we're talk- we could talk about some of the things that took 15 years, and you're like w- [00:18:00] why?"

Matt Alder: Yeah.

Jonathan Duarte: Yeah,

Matt Alder: exactly.

Jonathan Duarte: Yeah. There, there's a whole bunch of dead bodies over on the side there on that one. People's careers ruined because they chose the thing at the time that was actually right but couldn't get supported- Yes ... to do it, right?

Matt Alder: Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

Assessments in Call Centers and Volume Hiring (18:00)

Jonathan Duarte: We hear about those all the time. So what's, in assessments, and I know when I've been talking to some clients about it, everyone's like we use it for management." And I'm like, "Okay." And then what else? Just, void.

So where have you seen where have you seen it being picked up? Obviously in, in Frontline I think you talked a little bit about that.

Matt Alder: Yeah. I saw, so I've had someone on the, the podcast who was using it in call center recruitment. Yep. So they were doing almost like a soft skills assessment right at the beginning- Yeah ... before anything else, and then using that- Yeah ... to inform, to, to, to do it. I think that, I think it gets used just in management because of where it's come from, because it used to be time-intensive and expensive- and not something that you could apply to everything, and I think that there's still a legacy [00:19:00] of that in how people deploy this. Yeah. Yeah. So I think that's that just speaks to how it used to be. But- Yep ... it's interesting to see people using it in in, in volume recr- recruitment, which you'd never have, would never have happened before the time that we're in now.

The Blank-Sheet-of-Paper Test (19:00)

Jonathan Duarte: Yeah, it's almost interesting 'cause you th- I g- I, a- again, that's why I do this podcast, talk to smarter people than me about that, which is what if we didn't have the resume? What if you just had an assessment?

Matt Alder: Yeah, exactly.

Jonathan Duarte: You apply for a job- Yeah ... and, it asks you pre-screening questions.

The dropouts. Do you live close by? Do... Can you... Do you have the right to work in the country? Do... Are you 18- Yeah ... if you have to be 18? Then here's your assessment.

Matt Alder: Yeah. Yeah. And I think that why not? And I think the there are certain things that it always comes back to this.

I hear this kind of argument. It's like we need resumes because it's it's basic compliance data and all that kind of stuff." But it's just you can get that information. It doesn't have to be tied [00:20:00] up with everything else. So yeah, to me, that makes perfect sense. And again, it depends on the role and the job and who is it you want to recruit and what skills do you need and why.

Yeah. And then I think if you start with that and then think actually, what's the best way to..." I think if you start with a blank bit of paper and said, this is, th- these are the people we want. These are the skills we want. This is what we wanna... These are the people we wanna recruit." And then you said, how can we measure and test these skills?" If you'd never seen a resume, you'd never come up with that as the answer.

Jonathan Duarte: Oh, yeah. That's-

Matt Alder: Which is like- Our TA- ... what we need two or three pages typed text, and then we'll be fine. And then we'll have an interview where we can, they can talk us through it.

And it's just no one would come up with that. So I think that's the- Yeah ... and that's the kind of mindset that people need to be in. I think it's very difficult because recruiting has been the same for hun- 200 years in lots of respects it's breaking through from all of that. But but I think, we're in very different times now.

Leonardo da Vinci's First Resume (20:00)

Jonathan Duarte: Yeah. That's... Wow. It... I love that analogy too, 'cause I almost think it's almost like here's some medieval process- ... that [00:21:00] we're still doing, right? Some old dating ritual or something. Yeah. And it's like-

Matt Alder: Yeah ... like- It's funny because the- ... because people often quote, I heard this quote so often.

It's like Leonardo da Vinci wrote the first resume. And it's d- and, just earlier in the year, I was like- I couldn't look this up. So I looked into it, and what he did is he sent a letter to, he sent a letter to someone when he was quite young, and it was like he wanted to take part in their war effort.

And it was just this letter detailing the kind of inventions that he could bring and what he did. And the really funny thing about it is it talks about all that, and then right at the end it says kind of the Italian equivalent of, "Oh yeah, and I'm a bit of a painter." A- and actually I'm probably quite good.

And I was like, so he's written this letter, and he's actually tailored his resume to the job because he's not, he's put the bit about being a painter on the bottom. So- Yeah ... so it's quite it's quite interesting. It's not really a resume, but it's it's, It's his

Jonathan Duarte: cover letter and resume.

Yeah. Yeah.

Matt Alder: It's, a cover letter basically. But

Jonathan Duarte: yeah, it's quite funny. Oh, my God.

Matt Alder: Yeah.

Jonathan Duarte: Oh my... That would be really, that would be really funny to take that and put [00:22:00] it together in a, through an AI matching tool and see if someone turned out, if they got in the shortlist right away, right?

Matt Alder: Yeah, exactly.

No, it's, it is really funny.

Jonathan Duarte: Wow. That's, yeah, that, that's a... It's mind-blowing. I think that's an interesting thought about the resume as some medieval solution in, in the- Yeah ... absence of a referral, right?

Matt Alder: Yeah.

Jonathan Duarte: Yeah. Exactly. That's pretty much what it that's what resumes become is-

Matt Alder: Yeah

Jonathan Duarte: with no one can tell you that you've done the job before and that you're capable, then we created something in order to do that, that was just a- Yeah ... some manifestation. And then we decided that manifestation was truth to some extent. And so we then we had to figure out, okay, read between the lines of that and do that at mass scale, and hopefully- Yeah

we train people to do that well. And- Yeah ... it's [00:23:00] still 50% right or wrong.

Matt Alder: Yeah. And it, it's for- and it's because of the constraints of the ti- the, the constraints. There, there's like human recruiters can only read a certain amount of stuff, and we have to get it in some kind of format. So yeah.

Remove the constraints and what happens? I think that's the key thing.

Team Assessments and Lessons From Sports (23:00)

Jonathan Duarte: Yeah. I've seen some tech that I'll interview this company in one of the other podcasts on this topic is they're doing team assessments-

Matt Alder: Yes.

Jonathan Duarte: I've seen that ... such that... Really interesting.

Matt Alder: Yes.

Jonathan Duarte: Yeah. So you're...

And I'm gonna have my whole team on it just run through it 'cause I want to see, if we bring on even at an advisor and say, "I'm gonna... I wanna see. I don't really care about... I know your abilities, but I wanna see- ... if you're gonna fit with the team." Like what are we missing? Yeah.

'Cause that's- Yeah ... I think especially in a startup or any small team, it's having that team structure, are they gonna work together? And- Exactly. Yeah ... if an assessment can prove that out, that almost- Yeah ... can tell you- Totally different than [00:24:00] the resume. It's you're looking for some other talent, right? And a skill set y- or, personality fit if you will, that is different from simply what you're gonna find on a resume.

Matt Alder: Yeah. And I think also, I think there's so much to learn from the world of sports as well because I've had quite a few people from the sporting world on the podcast talking about- Oh, yeah ... how they do stuff. Because they build teams, if they've got a- an all-star quarterback, they're not gonna sign another one.

Yeah ... so I think that's the thing, is just like building teams and how do you do that. So I think there's some really interesting parallels there as well, definitely.

What TA Does With Freed-Up Time (24:00)

Jonathan Duarte: Wow, very cool. So what... So we talked about assessments, talked about resumes some of the AI stuff. What else do you think s- On the mind of TA leaders now, in, in today's tech that people should be looking out for?

Matt Alder: Yeah. Good question. Related to this is the whole thing about skills, how we measure skills- yeah ... and all those sort of things. I [00:25:00] think that, I think one of the things to think about is that, the, the tools that are there that people are bringing on do, do things a lot quicker.

They create, they create this sort of capacity. We're taking all the admin tasks away appears to be a common- Yep ... a common refrain when talking about AI. Yeah. And I think from a TA perspective, really thinking about what's the, what happens with the time and the resource that's freed up is really critical.

Because not many people c- when I ask them, can really tell me actually, with this freed-up time we're doing this, which is gonna create more value for the business." Yeah. It's more like we're gonna do this 'cause we've got a backlog of that," or, "We thought it would be nice to do this." They, so I think they're actually thinking about what you can do differently to drive that value for your business with TA is a, is a critical thing at the moment.

And, you know- ... some, some teams are doing it, some teams are not doing it, and I think that it's just a, it's just a really important thing to be considering. [00:26:00]

Recruiting Is Where AI Is Changing the Business Most (26:00)

Jonathan Duarte: I think, you know what? That's interesting. I wanna reframe what you just said in a way, 'cause I, I think about it a little bit differently, but it sparks something in my mind, which is there's a lot of talk about as we say, job roles changing, which is an HR function- Yeah

right?

Matt Alder: Yeah. Yeah.

Jonathan Duarte: But m- our audience, a lot of people are, they're AI HR and talent acquisition, and in talent acquisition we have a big change happening. It's happening right now, and everyone's talking about how AI's changing the business. The business department in your company that probably has the biggest AI change right now is probably recruiting.

Yeah. And if you haven't done the strategic work on recruiting, why are you talking about anyone else in the company? Yeah. Yeah. They're the team under the HR team that is probably seeing the most change from AI. Yeah. And if you're not structuring figuring out those roles and the processes, that should be the first place you look

Matt Alder: Yeah.

[00:27:00] Yeah, no, I agree, and I think HR in general is... i've had some really interesting conversations. I spoke... I was talking yesterday to someone who leads AI transformation within- ... an HR department of a large corporate.

Jonathan Duarte: Yeah.

Matt Alder: And it's like actually HR as a whole is about to come a l- become a lot more technical because- Oh, yeah

of, all of this everything that's going on. So yeah, there's a big transformation out there, and you're right, recruiting is at the, the kind of cutting edge of this at the moment. And also a lot of it is being dictated to by the candidates because the candidates are applying in such large numbers.

Yeah ... a lot of employers are adopting AI because that's their only way of solving , solving- Yeah ... the problem to get through that. Yeah, I think it's a really interesting, it's a really interesting point.

Jonathan Duarte: But I think- Yeah, that- Yeah ... it's that r- knee- knee-jerk reaction, which is fine-

Matt Alder: Yeah

Jonathan Duarte: Because you have, now you have a bigger problem you need to solve. But if you just, if you can step back a second, like the transform- Yeah ... that's why, future of work and AI transformation teams are probably saying, "Yeah, one of the biggest processes is the recruiting." Yeah. And it's [00:28:00] just we're the tip of the the tip of the sword, if you will.

Step

Matt Alder: one. Yeah, and there's a, and there's a bigger bit around it about in terms of who you hire because if AI is changing the way that businesses work, how does that... And it's changing structures and all this sort of stuff, then who are we hiring and what skills do they have? And I think that's another big, big consideration and big topic that, that many organizations are not thinking about.

How to Reach Matt Alder (28:00)

Jonathan Duarte: Yeah that's a whole 'nother podcast too. All right, this has- Definitely, yeah. Yeah. This has been fantastic. Thank you so much Matt. Pleasure. Great insights. Really, and this is why I love doing this, just to get so many ducks in a row in my own head about, "Hey, this is a pretty interesting way to talk about this and figure it out."

So thanks again. What I'll do is I'll put all your contact info in the in, in the show notes. And if anyone wants to reach out to you, what's probably the easiest way for them to find you?

Matt Alder: You can find me on LinkedIn or go to the podcast website, which is recruitingfuture.com.

Jonathan Duarte: Yep. Probably the easiest one, [00:29:00] if, I would gather if you type in recruiting podcast, you're probably right there at the top, huh?

Matt Alder: Yeah, very much.

Jonathan Duarte: All right.

Matt Alder: Yeah,

Jonathan Duarte: absolutely.

Great, and great to have my first Scottish guest on. So- Absolutely ... great to great to cross the pond with you.

Matt Alder: Fantastic. Great to talk to you. Thank you.

Jonathan Duarte: All right, thanks.

Thanks for spending your time here with GoHire Talks and listening to our guests. My intention has always been to create incredible content to help you in your career in recruiting, marketing, business, and leadership. We appreciate all of the insights and feedback you provide. If you've got guests you'd like us to have on the show, please let us know.

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