The document discusses new trends in recruitment based on research evidence from Greece. It begins by outlining traditional recruitment approaches and what works and doesn't work when hiring high-performing employees, such as cognitive ability tests and situational interviews over unstructured interviews. It then covers new digital approaches like video interviews, voice profiling, and social media analytics. Issues around global testing practices, applicant reactions, privacy, and ensuring fairness are also discussed. The document concludes by noting the need for valid, evidence-based tools to make fair hiring decisions as new data sources and analytics disrupt traditional talent identification processes.

1. Ioannis Nikolaou
Associate Professor
Director of the MSc in HRM @ AUEB
twitter@nikolaou
inikolaou.gr
inikol@aueb.gr
New Trends in
Recruitment – Research
evidence from Greece

2. The traditional approach
• If it aint’ broke, don’t fix it: the old world of
talent is alive and well
– What to assess
•Talent identification (RAW)
– How to assess
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3. What works and what doesn’t work…
Hiring high-performing employees
What doesn’t work
• The conventional-
unstructured interview
– Tell me about yourself
– Tell me 3 strengths and 3
weaknesses
– Why are you interested in
this job opening?
– How much do you know
about our organization?
What works
• Cognitive ability tests
• Job simulations / work samples
• Situational judgement tests
• Situational interviews
• Personality tests
• Behavioural interviewing
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Tip: Look for the evidence, not your gut feeling or your intuition…

4. The news kids on the blog: Talent in
the digital world
• Digital Interviewing & Voice profiling
• Globalization – Trends in international testing
• Applicant Reactions
• Social Networking Websites
– Social Media Analytics and Web Scraping
• Big Data and Workplace Analytics
• Gamification
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5. Digital Interviewing & Voice Profiling
• Video-recorded structured interviews
•Benefits: increases standardization and time saving
•Limitations: impersonal
– Text analytics and Voice Mining
– Algorithmic reading of voice-generated emotions
•Micro-expressions and automated emotion reading
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6. Globalization - Trends in international
testing
• Convergence vs. divergence and the role of
cultural differences
– Testing practices in hiring context across 22
countries
•Different selection practices tend to generalize across
countries incl. Greece
• Ryan, A. M., Reeder, M., Golubovich, J., Grand, J., Inceoglu, I., Bartram, D., Derous, E., Nikolaou, I., & Yao, X. (2017). Culture
and Testing Practices: Is the World Flat? Applied Psychology: An International Review.
• Sackett, P.R., Shen, W., Nikolaou, I. et al. (2010). Perspectives from twenty-two countries on the legal environment for
selection. In J. L Farr and N. T. Tippins (Eds.) Handbook of Employee Selection (pp. 651-676). New York: Taylor & Francis.
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7. Applicant Reactions (1/2)
• Treat me well, or….
– It is not only companies that evaluate
• An important aspect of choosing the
appropriate hiring practices
– The role of fairness and justice
– The impact on applicants’-turned-employees
attitudes and behaviors
– The impact on employer branding
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8. Applicant Reactions (2/2)
• The role of personal interaction  interview
• The important role of interviewer’s personal
characteristics, namely informativness and
personableness
– Young graduates’ positive reactions to new
methods (e.g. personality and ability testing)
• Nikolaou, I. (2011). Core processes and applicant reactions to the employment interview: an exploratory study in Greece.
International Journal of Human Resource Management, 22(10), 2185-2201. doi:Doi 10.1080/09585192.2011.580187
• Nikolaou, I., & Judge, T. A. (2007). Fairness reactions to personnel selection techniques in Greece: The role of core self-
evaluations. International Journal of Selection and Assessment, 15(2), 206-219. doi:DOI 10.1111/j.1468-2389.2007.00382.x
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9. Social Networking Websites
• The new kid in the block… new?
– However, Job Boards are alive and well
• Approaching passive job seekers
• Closely linked with applicant reactions
• Important privacy concerns
• Nikolaou, I. (2014). Social Networking Web Sites in Job Search and Employee Recruitment. International Journal of Selection
and Assessment, 22(2), 179-189. doi:10.1111/ijsa.12067
• Nikolaou, I., Bauer, T.N & Truxillo, D.M. (2015). Applicant Reactions to Selection Methods: An overview of recent research
and suggestions for the future. In I. Nikolaou & J. K. Oostrom (Eds.) Employee Recruitment, Selection, and Assessment.
Contemporary Issues for Theory and Practice (pp. 80-96). Hove, East Sussex: Routledge.
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10. Social Media Analytics and Web
Scraping (1/2)
• FB activity related to demographic,
personality, attitudinal, and cognitive ability
variables
– Web scrapping opportunities in hiring
•Initial findings re personality (Big5), gender, religious
identity, age and intelligence
•However, do these provide any real value
above/beyond existing methods?
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11. Social Media Analytics and Web
Scraping (2/2)
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Web Scrapping and Linguistic Analysis
twitter@nikolaou

12. Big Data and HR Analytics
• Not just HR Metrics… but using advanced
statistical methods and combining HR with
business data
– Data Mining
•Past behavior is a good predictor of future behavior, for
example:
– Using performance data, sales data, and employee survey data, to
determine which employees are most successful and why, and
develop pre-hire screening surveys
– Analyzing unstructured data from career-oriented social networking
sites not only for recruiting purposes, but to better understand
career progressions
– Predicting hiring success & high potentials 12

13. Gamification (1/2)
• More Americans play games than do not, half
of all gamers are under the age of 30
• Moving from a “push” to a ”pull” model
• Assessment of soft skills, hard skills,
personality, interests, etc.
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14. Gamification (2/2)
• Serious games using the Situational
Judgement Test Methodology
– Soft Skills assessment
– Highly reliable, high construct validity
– Now exploring applicant perceptions of the game
and predictive validity
• Nikolaou, I. & Georgiou, K. (2017). Serious gaming and applicants’ reactions; the role of openness to experience. 32nd
Annual Conference of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology, Orlando, USA
• Georgiou, K. & Nikolaou, I. (2017). Serious gaming in employees’ selection process. 32nd Annual Conference of the Society for
Industrial and Organizational Psychology, Orlando, USA
• Georgiou, K. & Nikolaou, I. (2017). Gamification in recruitment and selection. 18th congress of the European Association of
Work and Organizational Psychology (EAWOP), Dublin Ireland. 14

15. The future is here, but be careful…. (1/2)
• Vast data pools and improved analytic
capabilities will fundamentally disrupt the talent
identification process.
– Availability of many more talent signals
– New analytic tools and increased computing power
However…
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16. The future is here, but be careful…. (2/2)
• Limited validity evidence compared to old
school methods
• Privacy and anonymity concerns may limit
access to individual data
• Trade-off between development costs and
accuracy/validity and user experience
• Adverse impact / unfair discrimination concerns
• Chamorro-Premuzic, T., Winsborough, D., Sherman, R. A., & Hogan, R. (2016). New Talent Signals: Shiny New Objects or a Brave
New World? Industrial and Organizational Psychology-Perspectives on Science and Practice, 9(3), 621-640.
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17. Conclusions
• We live our lives online but…
Valid, evidence-based tools and methodologies
are required in order to take fair and just hiring
decisions
17

18. Ioannis Nikolaou
Associate Professor
Director of the MSc in HRM @ AUEB
twitter@nikolaou
inikolaou.gr
inikol@aueb.gr
New Trends in
Recruitment – Research
Evidence from Greece