The Art & Science of Hiring: A two-dimensional approach to recruitment

Hiring is one of the crucial cornerstones of building any business. With every recruitment, it is the structure of your business that gets fine-tuned, altered, or adaptive. And, what exactly decides the success of recruiting? Is it the mere hunch of an experienced recruiter - the art of intuitive recognition of the right candidate? Or, is it a scrupulous processing system that filters the best and seals off any loopholes?

While weighing the technical nature of a heterogeneous process against the intuitive discernment of finding new people, the argument continues: Is hiring an art or science?

Hiring it Right

Finding the ideal candidate is a creative, as well as a technical process that blends human networking, advertising and partnering with meticulous hiring strategies and filtering processes like sourcing and screening.

Hiring is an art in the sense that one needs to identify the need for a replacement, fill a gap or create a new job profile to accelerate an organization’s momentum. It takes human instinct and experience to assess a requirement and initiate hiring; to sit across a prospective candidate and feel the dynamics that would fit into the company’s vision or goals.

However, the complexities and progressive levels of recruiting demand a scientific approach that relies on facts, logic, and accurate processes.

Here’s a peep into the well-balanced framework of the hiring process that throws more light on its artistic and scientific nature:

1. Sourcing

Technology is transforming the hiring environment, and with the advent of AI, it is quickly becoming the most scientific process in a business. The most significant changes in the recruitment scene are due to digital footprints, which have resulted in "social sourcing." Sourcing chores are becoming increasingly automated as recruiters acquire the most relevant and crucial information - that goes well beyond resumes - on potential candidates thanks to the abundant data available.

2. Attracting

When you find your ideal candidates, your capacity to persuade them to join your company is determined by the human or creative factor of convincing. Your efforts to impress or convince highly-qualified individuals into joining your organisation are fuelled by company culture, distinctive advertising campaigns, and design/cultural aesthetics. HR branding is challenging, but if done right, these creative initiatives will ease the process.

3. Selection

It is the intermediate level where critical judgments are made by leveraging both science and art. Aptitude tests or recruiting AI can be used to assess and review skill-level or knowledge to assist you to choose from the applicants. Scientific tools can aid you in spotting some hidden causal linkages that experience may not immediately give.

Meanwhile, you may also come up with creative solutions to handle the selection process. To whatever extent the technology-backed processes lead in hiring, still, it takes the talents, experience and expert intuitions of a recruiter to make difficult judgments, especially when bridging gaps or taking a chance on the unknowns. The gut instincts, mentioned earlier, are really important to find suitable candidates.

Hiring: The True Blend of Art & Science

We are not strangers to how science and scientific data are used to find and source candidates. You may use “push techniques” to reach out to potential applicants, like advertising a position on social media, through emails, or text messages. “Pull methods” can also be used, such as arranging a recruiting event with on-site screenings.

However, at the end of the day, how you make applicants feel about your organization will determine whether or not they will jump on your bandwagon. Persuading people to like your firm takes insight, a grasp of human nature, and a creative tinge to sell your brand and the job.

Yes, you might be able to uncover more viable applicants if you consider recruiting as a sterile, scientific process. Maybe you'll attract their attention right away. But, beyond that, will you truly provide them with a cause to choose your firm? Most likely not. As a result, both a technical and an aesthetic approach are equally vital.

Final thoughts

The success of hiring is rather unpredictable. It's too much of an art and a science to be squeezed into any one box. Something that you can do is boost your chances, increase your likelihood, and hike your chances of hiring the appropriate candidates from the talent pool to develop productive and highly efficient teams.

Zita helps you in the process with our artificial intelligence-backed platform that will make your recruitment processes more streamlined and fruitful. Try Zita’s recruitment platform to know the difference. To know more on how Zita helps HR processes with the right blend of creative AI solutions, reach us here.