AI-Driven Talent Assessment: Revolutionizing Remote Tech Hiring

It’s time to embrace AI-driven talent assessment. Despite employers trying to cling to tradition by forcing employees back to the office, work-life will never resemble what it was pre-pandemic.

However, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, regardless of what doomsayers, technophobes, and Luddites say. If we embrace the current technology, it can be beneficial for workers, recruiters, and employers.

Not only are the majority of today’s job applications conducted online, but more companies have elected to start performing job interviews remotely. Most recruits may never even set foot into an employer’s office.

Consequently, many of the parameters for hiring tech talent have changed. Recruiters and HR leaders must employ the right tools, solutions, and services to contend with this chameleonic landscape.

The following guide will examine how leveraging AI-driven talent assessment can improve remote tech recruitment and hiring. You’ll learn how leading companies utilize AI-powered platforms to find hidden potential, test coding proficiency, and build high-performing remote engineering teams.

On average, current job seekers need to submit at least 100 applications before they’re given a single job offer. With companies’ current recruitment processes being what they are, it’s very easy for rare talent to fall between the cracks.

By leveraging AI assessment data-driven recruitment, recruiters and companies can make talent acquisition more efficient. This benefits both job-seekers and employers. But these days, every software company seems to have a generative AI tool integrated into their recruitment process.

With generative AI becoming so common, it’s very easy for mediocre software developers to appear more capable than they are. According to Postman’s 2023 State of the API Report source, at least 60% of developers are using generative AI tools for their jobs.

GitHub’s statistics are even more alarming with 92% of surveyed software developers admitting that they use AI-based coding tools. However, it’s important to note that not all these AI tools are generative ChatGPT-type tools.

Diffblue Cover is intended to autonomously write or improve Java unit tests. Products like these can also streamline integrated testing leading to more efficient CI/CD pipelines.

While it’s been said that those who are capable of using and understanding AI will be more valuable in the job market than those who don’t. Supposedly, this goes for recruiters too - as you’ll see further down this guide.

But what’s important is that you judge a candidate on how they use AI - not just whether they use it or not. Generative AI has been shown to produce false information (hallucinate) on occasion. If a generative AI was to introduce a programmer to an unsafe API or library, it could potentially introduce threat vectors or vulnerabilities to their products.

AI-source code generators may also be susceptible to hallucinations. Thus, the ideal software engineering candidate should be cybersecurity-conscious. They should be able to read, edit, vet, and understand the purpose of all written source code. As such, your candidate should not be over-reliant on AI.

This is a factor you must include in your talent assessment processes. While they may have an impressive GitHub repo portfolio, they may not be able to formulate solutions to complex problems.

Moreover, job-seekers have also begun using generative AI to help write their resumes and cover letters. While some recruiters may not necessarily see a problem with this, it may be part of your assessment criteria or something you may want to consider during the candidate vetting process.

After all, you want candidates to be honest and capable of expressing themselves. At times, you want to see if they have a unique voice. It’s hard to detect or measure that voice when it’s filtered through a machine.

All-in-all, while modern technology presents new opportunities for recruiters, it also presents a host of new challenges. However, this is only one part of the equation. Recruitment companies and HR departments also face certain internal challenges that can only seemingly be solved through modernization.

It’s common for your company’s recruitment team to experience a high yield of candidates and application submissions, especially if it operates around the graduate space. However, at times, some companies may also experience high drop-off rates at various stages of the vetting and recruitment process. Trying to find and secure remote work candidates can be even trickier, especially with more candidates being averse to physical meetups. It’s harder to moderate or provide these candidates with invigilated assessments.

Regardless, if you’re vetting traditional candidates or remote hires, your process can be susceptible to some of the same weaknesses. For instance, the number of people who seemed interested at the initial phase of recruitment may not follow through because they lose interest, they may be tired of repeating the same cycle of tests and assessments, or they may find more promising opportunities.

Recruitment is as much about enticing great talent as it is about seeking it out. As such, your recruitment process should feel worthwhile or not be too overwhelming. A 2019 PwC survey found that 49% of candidates rejected a job offer because of a dismal recruitment process.

In addition to suboptimal recruitment processes, companies may also find that they lack diversity in their candidate pools. It’s no secret that human beings have to contend with their own unconscious biases during the recruitment process. You also have to cope with an ever-changing team of recruiters.

Your HR staff or recruitment team is bound to grow and change over time. As will your systems and procedures. Many recruitment firms struggle to scale their resources to meet the demands of companies and the job market. Recruiters are seldom tasked with finding a single candidate. What if your team is assigned 10 or 11 slots to fill? Can it be handled?

While it would be great if we could find a single AI talent assessment software solution that could somehow make all these problems go away, your company or team needs to be in a position to use these tools correctly. This means transforming your recruitment process.

First, you need to ensure that you have instituted policies to help prevent or reduce candidate drop-off rates. You can do this by educating candidates about the companies and roles they’ll be recruited for. Simply briefing them using static email messages, newsletters, and other text-based paths isn’t enough.

Consider preparing videos and interactive material. While it may not always be possible to meet some of these remote working candidates in person face-to-face meetings, you can always bridge the gap using technology. We’re not just talking about video conferencing software here.

Recruiters and HR firms have begun using Virtual Reality (VR) to provide candidates with more immersive recruitment experiences. Recruiters can also use VR to assess soft skills, poise, presentation skills, etc. in a way that can’t be done through telephonic or video conferencing means.

This can be extremely useful for remote tech recruitment. Your remote work candidates are likely to be based in different countries which decreases the chance of in-person meetings. Furthermore, while they may never see a hiring company’s offices in person, they can use VR to tour and preview them.

The US Army provides candidates with a virtual demo of army life. Similarly, tech recruiters can use AI-driven VR to preview work culture or educate candidates on what a role entails.

Next, you need to ensure that your recruitment processes are as free from (unconscious) bias as possible while ensuring that you have a diverse set of candidates in your pool. But why does it matter? Companies that hire diverse talent have been shown to bring in as much as 19% higher revenues than companies that don't.

However, diversity isn’t AI’s strong suit. Not yet. Many AI-driven automated recruitment tools are still liable to data bias. This issue partially stems from the fact that a lot of solutions aren’t developed and/or tested by a diverse group of engineers. Incidentally, this should encourage more tech recruiters and companies to increase their diversity quota so they can produce more inclusive products.

But is there a systematic way to achieve this? One that can eliminate your own bias from the scenario? If you do elect to use an AI assessment software to help you conduct interviews, it’s best to find one supplied by a company that has actively worked to reduce data bias in its products.

For instance, Sapia.ai is a text chat-based AI interview automation tool. Sapia’s creators claim that it is 100% blind, and thus can’t discriminate on the appearance or ethnicity of a candidate.

However, tools such as these still have their disadvantages. Diversity stretches beyond ethnicity and gender. There is a huge push to make interviews more accessible to disabled or neurodivergent candidates.

While solutions like Sapia.ai can most likely be paired with accessibility features such as text-to-speech (TTS), it’s essential to be cognizant of the fact that they do not eliminate bias but reduce it. But we use what we can.

Although Sapia.ai's diversity claims may feel somewhat exaggerated, AI assessment tools allow you to develop more cost and time-efficient recruitment cycles. Primarily, because of its ability to conduct thousands of simultaneous interviews. It cuts waiting periods for candidates which ultimately minimizes the risk of them losing interest.

These are just a few of the characteristics you should be looking for in your AI-driven assessment software.

If you’re looking to overhaul or completely modernize your recruitment and talent acquisition processes, a singular tool may not be enough. Instead, you may find it best to develop a pipeline built on a stack of different AI-augmented talent assessment and recruitment solutions.

These days you can find an AI-automated tool for everything. Whether it’s editing PDF files containing contractual information or writing and sending emails for you, most modern recruiters use AI tools to make their jobs easier. While you may be eager to be a part of that group, it’s important to know what your options are. After all, each tech recruitment firm/team’s AI-driven talent assessment stack will look different. So what are your options? What tools are established tech companies and recruitment leaders using today?

There are a lot of websites and channels from which you can procure talent. Recruiters have always used simple search engines and automation software to sift through these websites.

However, these methods hinged on keyword searches which aren’t always reliable. Candidates don’t always have the “right” search keywords in their resumes and curriculum vitae (CVs). This may cause you to miss out on some truly exceptional talent because of a shallow flawed system.

AI-based recommendation and search engines can produce more nuanced and contextual evaluations, resulting in more accurate result sets. A good example of this is the AI and machine learning features behind LinkedIn Recruiter.

For recruitment agencies and HR departments looking for a product that emphasizes diverse hiring, HiredScore may do the trick. Its set of machine learning-based tools tries to reduce or eliminate bias by squarely focusing on accreditation and skills during the search process.

Furthermore, companies can use HiredScore to optimize their job listings so that they can appeal to diverse demographics.

Speaking of diversity, one of the key benefits of being able to hire remote staff is that it allows you to hire developers from other countries. This, in turn, enables you to build heterogeneous and flexible tech teams that can approach problems from different points of view.

However, it also poses new challenges. For instance, it can result in a larger candidate pool which makes vetting and finding the right talent more difficult.

So you need a recommendation engine or job board that can make it easier for you to find international talent. Turing is an AI-based platform that gives recruiters and companies access to over 3 million developers in 150+ different countries. The company utilizes stringent testing to ensure that only the best candidates are selected.

As tech evolves, it’s important to find future-proof talent that you won't have to eventually replace or retool. Trying to build a query around these criteria using old keyword-based search engines isn’t easy. As such, AI-enabled search engines should be part of every recruiter’s AI assessment software stack.

It’s common for recruitment agencies and companies to use personality assessment tools to test if a candidate would be well-suited to a company’s work culture. While it’s likely that many remote hires won’t ever step foot inside the office, companies should still seek to nurture a positive work culture. It can increase productivity, and job satisfaction and decrease the chances of absenteeism.

This can be a tricky act to balance especially if your workforce consists of permanent employees and independent contractors. One of the differences between employees and contractors is that businesses typically hire the former in a permanent capacity under the employers’ payroll. On the other hand, contractors are hired to work on a singular project. Thus, they can often be seen as transient staff.

Regardless, personality screening is still important for remote work contractors. You may need separate criteria and testing for them.

The issue with most traditional fixed personality tests is they rely heavily on self-assessment. Candidates could easily lie to fit in the criteria of the recruiters or companies.

AI-based personality assessment tests can provide recruiters with more dynamic testing. Particularly chat-based ones. Some of them can mask assessments as casual conversation, allowing candidates to lower the guards and reveal who they truly are.

In addition to providing chatbots for screening, tools like Humantic.ai can help you identify which personality traits match best with specific work cultures and roles. It then sources a conversational template from its library and uses it to interview your candidates.

Automated reference-checking software is important for cases where you’re looking for experienced candidates. Manually verifying and contacting all the references on each candidate’s resume can be time-consuming and suboptimal.

Moreover, some candidates may only provide certain references upon request. AI-augmented software allows you to quickly request and verify references. MARTHA also aims to ensure that these reference checks are unbiased.

For instance, candidates tend to include references who they feel will produce the most positive feedback. MARTHA asks questions that are most likely to produce honest responses.

Nevertheless, when you’re searching for tech talent, using managers and co-workers as references is only one part of the evaluation. You also need to examine past work and the projects they’ve worked on.

AI-code reviewers are generally used by software developers to verify the quality of their code. Recruiters can also use these tools to assess a candidate's past work. Most of these tools check the code quality, efficiency, and security of your code.

Although these tools were intended to be used by software engineers, savvy recruiters with little coding experience can also use them to assess the abilities of a developer. These tools work by applying a combination of static linters, templates, and collected data to ensure that developers implement the best practices and design patterns.

Often the best way for software developers to attract recruiters and companies is to ensure they have a hefty portfolio on platforms such as GitHub and LinkedIn. So it’s important for recruiters not to get tricked by “quantity over quality”.

Social media is an important brand and marketing tool for most companies. When candidates become part of a workforce, their social media activity becomes an inseparable part of the employer’s social media presence. They ultimately represent the company.

While there are arguments against the ethics of screening candidates’ social media, a lot can be learned from a candidate's social media activity and presence. For instance, you can identify maladjusted social media behavior and habits that could potentially interfere with productivity.

Social media has always been a useful tool for recruiters. It allows them to engage with potential candidates, analyze trends, and perform research. Recruiters can use social media analytic tools that are typically employed by marketers to assess their own outreach. Ultimately, AI-powered social media analyzers can improve your recruitment process in more ways than one.

With technology and software changing so rapidly, recruitment agencies typically try to contend with this fact by trying skill-based evaluations that are future-proof. Unfortunately, this is nigh impossible.

Instead, you need a tool that can produce dynamic evaluations that are relevant to the current tech climate. For instance, new versions of the Java JDK are released almost annually. While it may be better to quiz Java development candidates on their understanding of the current/latest LTS release, you may instead want to test candidates on their pro-activity.

Recruiters and HR departments have been using automated tools to vet and screen resumes for years. This number will only increase in the coming years. It is believed that as many as 99% of Fortune 500 companies use AI in their recruitment processes.

A 2023 study conducted by Zipia found that 65% of recruiters use AI in their recruitment processes, citing its abilities to save time, provide actionable insights, and make everyday tasks easier as reasons for adoption.

The U.S. healthcare sector is severely understaffed - an unfortunate fact that was apparent even before the Covid-19 pandemic hit. Magellan Health, a for-profit healthcare company utilizes AI extensively in their recruitment systems.

They’ve used AI to optimize their career website so that it's easier to navigate. The company has also included a conversational chatbot as well as an AI-powered CRM that can more easily link recruiters to job seekers and candidates.

However, you may be wondering why this is used as an example. In the current scenario, nearly all sectors are looking for IT and software development professionals who can modernize their businesses. If you scan through the IT section of Magellan Health’s career website, you’ll find listings for digital product managers and software engineers.

But if you’re not convinced and you’re looking for examples of prominent tech companies using AI for recruitment, IBM, Amazon, and Siemens all use AI for recruitment. These companies use and supply their products for recruitment.

IBM’s Watson is effective in assisting healthcare professionals with cancer diagnostics. However, IBM’s Watson-based models are flexible enough to be applied to a host of other problems such as recruitment.

Whether it’s true or not that a large majority of Fortune 500 companies use AI in their recruitment processes, it seems they’re still struggling to utilize it to improve the candidate experience. However, it can be hard for these companies to bridge the work culture gap, and engage with and convert talent.

Trying to find and manage remote work candidates through traditional means can be arduous. Keeping up with a global clientele while ensuring that your talent pool is filled with accredited and experienced candidates who are satisfied with recruitment and testing processes is a tricky balance to maintain.

AI-driven talent assessment tools can lessen your workload and assist you in finding the right candidates for your clients. It can go as far as increasing the likelihood of a hire. The first step is to understand what modern tech companies are looking for and how you can use AI to fill in the gaps and deliver capable candidates to them.