New Tools to Help in the Recruitment Process

The recruitment process is demanding, especially when there are many good candidates. Failure in this process can be expensive. Typically interviews and different psychological tests are used to help in the selection. The problem is that interviews and tests are costly. Here a new, partly automated approach is presented. The new approach was tested in the Tenure Track process at the Tampere University of Technology. The new approach consisted of two parts. Firstly, the candidates used the on-line Evolute Helix application [1]. They responded to 237 claims and gave their degree of agreement with each claim. This part produced data measuring commitment. Secondly, the gathered data, i.e. profiles of commitment, were analyzed to find clusters of similar candidates. These clusters were checked against the desired profile. These two parts were automated. The test data were based on the Tenure Track process at the Tampere University of Technology. Recruitment to universities nowadays largely follows the same principles as the normal recruitment process in companies and other organizations. Universities have started to play a global game in their recruitment and try to find the best possible candidates internationally for their universities. In this case example we show how an organizational commitment application that has been developed could help the recruitment process, in which 55 candidates were applying for two tenure track positions. The application used, Evolute Helix, was useful in the recruitment process and helped in the interviews as well as the selection of applicants for the shortlist. The shortlist consisted of six candidates, who were finally interviewed. The two winners were selected from among these candidates. Commitment can reveal many personal characteristics and also the future aspirations and motivations of applicants. The tested application can also be used afterwards, as the tenure track of the chosen person continues in the university. Automatic preprocessing is a great aid when sifting out desired candidates from multiple applicants.