Imagine it’s a Monday morning, countless new CVs, and a long week of interviews ahead. Surely many of us, recruiters, can relate. Don’t get us wrong, a full inbox and a lot of interest from applicants is always better than the opposite, and we are grateful for that.
But we also recognize that relying heavily on resumes and interviews can be time-consuming and may not give us the full picture of a candidate’s abilities. To shake things up, we decided to go beyond the Tell me about your previous experience question and look for specific attitudes and behaviors, too.
What does that mean? Ultimately, we turned to aptitude games, in the form of different puzzles, as a valuable tool in our hiring process. These puzzles assess cognitive abilities and problem-solving skills, offering an engaging way to evaluate potential employees. They help us better determine the right fit for the role and navigate questions around culture fit. In this blog post, we’ll share how they affected our hiring process and why they work for us.
Aptitude games are designed to evaluate a candidate’s attitudes and abilities, but they can also include exercises on learned skills, with a focus on areas like logical reasoning, critical thinking, clarity in communication, or time management.
Unlike traditional interviews, we found aptitude games to be more engaging and enjoyable for candidates while delivering valuable insights to us. These games can take many forms, from puzzle-solving to simulations that mimic real-world job scenarios.
One major perk we’ve found with aptitude games is their ability to measure a candidate’s abilities objectively. We learned firsthand that interviews can be influenced by unconscious biases, whereas the approach of aptitude games leads us to use standardized evaluation methods, thus reducing potential bias.
Aptitude games allow us to look at candidates from a different perspective and evaluate, among other things, their ability to succeed not only in their role but also in their ability to integrate and thrive in Revolgy’s culture and environment. Research shows that cognitive abilities assessed through games can strongly predict job performance, leading to better hiring decisions and improved organizational performance.
Our approach is based on a set of puzzles and real-life scenarios with standardized evaluation methods, which makes them highly scalable. This has allowed us to approach hiring with greater efficiency. The data generated from these games can be easily analyzed, providing instant feedback on each candidate’s performance.
Previously, our hiring process consisted of five steps. Now, we’ve streamlined it into two rounds of interviews, thanks to the new approach brought by aptitude games.
The first interview with an HR representative focuses on general attitudes and behaviors, such as problem-solving, lateral thinking, verbal reasoning, initiative, listening skills, non-verbal communication, and time management. This allows us to gauge cultural fit and aspects of role-specific knowledge.
In the second interview, we assess candidates’ role-specific knowledge in greater depth by including real-life problem-solving scenarios mirroring future job responsibilities. Candidates also have the opportunity to meet their potential team leader and colleagues and cover any additional topics they want.
Our adoption of objective, engaging, and efficient methods of evaluating candidates has definitely changed our talent acquisition process, and we are starting to see how it has changed for the better. If this approach sounds intriguing, we recommend you welcome it as a breath of fresh air and try it for your own hiring if you haven’t yet. More insights from us are coming, so stay tuned!
Read next: Why we ditched traditional hiring interviews