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Droves of U.S. workers — including higher education professionals — are quitting their jobs to find higher salaries or simply to recover from COVID-19 burnout. (For the month of February, the U.S. Labor Department recorded a nearly 32% year-over-year jump in the quit rate of education services workers.)
To find professors and staff in the ‘Great Resignation,’ higher education HR professionals must ramp up their use of talent intelligence tools starting with digital reference checks. Contrary to many myths about reference checks being time-consuming, or not worth the trouble, top employers are relying on digital reference checks more than ever. Many are recruiters from universities aiming to hire candidates who:
- Exhibit great soft skills, e.g., they have the ability to communicate and interact well with staff and students, exhibit professionalism in challenging situations, are able to solve problems and adapt to changes, and exhibit a strong personal commitment to give the job their best.
- Treat others with respect and support civility in diverse environments where many differing opinions and values may be expressed.
- Are flexible and can handle changing learning environments including remote– and hybrid-based learning with the increasing use of technology tools.
Digital reference checks help higher education organizations obtain these insights quickly — for a streamlined and effective hiring process — with detailed feedback to make the best decisions.
Here’s how digital reference checking can help you choose the right candidate:
1. Free recruiters from time-consuming tasks that are simply checking a box and not really netting valuable returns.
Digital reference checks take just a few minutes for recruiters to enter a job candidate and select a job-specific survey. A study found that digital reference checks are 92 percent faster than chasing references down by phone. And, even better, the reference feedback is automatically aggregated into a detailed report that can be viewed by hiring managers or committees in a day and a half on average. That’s a huge benefit in this highly competitive job market — where time is of the essence to make a hiring decision.
2. Feedback will help you predict turnover — so you hire candidates who will stick.
The re-hire rotation can be a vicious cycle. Reference feedback has been proven to reduce first-year turnover. A data-driven feedback report that consolidates ratings from all of a candidate’s references on competencies related to the job is a key tool. In a study of 10,000 job candidates, and those dispositioned as not hired, we found employers saved an estimated $4 million in potential turnover costs.
3. You can avoid hiring a potential disrupter.
Hiring a toxic employee can set the stage for further staff turnover. Digital reference feedback provides ratings across job-specific behavioral competencies (soft skills) and comparative data can be viewed for thousands of other job candidates. And, because the process is confidential, you gain candid insights by a candidate’s supervisor and/or colleagues on their strengths and areas for improvement. This helps you pick the good apple from the bad. Some key candidate attributes to look for:
- Interfaces exceptionally well with students
- Complies with school DE&I rules and state and federal regulations
- Gets along well with other professors and staff
4. You reduce bias in hiring decisions and protect your organization from negligent hiring and discrimination claims.
Artificial intelligence tools that screen resumés are speedy. But many have come under scrutiny and could place your organization at risk. Traditional letters of reference have also been found to show bias. Digital reference checks provide a consistent process — every reference rates a candidate on the same criteria. Using surveys and a process designed by industrial and organizational psychologists helps eliminate unconscious bias when hiring. All of the data is stored and demonstrates that your institution exercised all due diligence to screen candidates equally.
5. Use reference insights to jumpstart onboarding.
Once your candidate is hired, hiring managers can use the reference feedback in reports that highlight references’ skills, strengths, and areas for improvement (gleaned from references’ ratings on specific competencies and comments on job candidates’ strengths and areas of improvement). These specific insights help you target specific training and other onboarding programs for your new hire.
6. Recruit candidates’ references too.
Digital reference checking tools also help you find new job candidates and build your passive candidate talent pool. You can ask references giving feedback if they, too, would like to be contacted when new positions come online at your organization.
Talent intelligence is key for higher education organizations to win today’s talent battle. The collection of reference feedback through scientifically developed surveys, that are job specific, can give talent teams the insights that will revolutionize their talent acquisition programs.
