Is hiring a stats game or is it one of heart?

I spoke with a job seeker today. This individual wanted a sales role.  

They were also creative and desired to see their work in an organized manner. The recruiter told them, "the score indicates you may need a little bit more stability prior to diving into a commissioned position like this." What's odd is, this individual has been working commission-only for the last several years.  

I'm a fan of predictive analytics. I think they can offer insights into how an individual, or group of individuals, might respond. But I don't believe they're the answer to recruitment in the way I'd like to see the industry evolve.

• What if, instead of uncovering how someone perceives themselves based on a list of words, we look at uncovering an individual's unconscious motivators?  
• What if we look to answer the question, does this individual have the right intuition for this type of work?
• What if we looked to answer the question, the role we're hiring for, what does the ideal candidate need to feel to thrive?

If hiring becomes paint by numbers, then our humanity becomes a number on a spreadsheet or a dot on a graph.  

If you take away one thing from this article, I hope it's a reconsideration of your hiring practices. 

What more can you do to create a human-centered hiring approach?

If you're looking for a survey that addresses the unconscious motivations of an individual, consider checking out the PRINT Survey by the Paul Hertz group.  

For me, I'd like to see hiring from the heart - the art of recruitment.  

Photo by Debby Hudson on Unsplash