Author: Eva Elks Herrmannsen, Associate Consultant, Namos Solutions
A recent study has found that the pandemic has made recruiters more prone to nepotism. During lockdown, recruiters have tended to heavily rely on candidate referrals from a small group of personal connections and this has meant that individuals, especially graduates from less privileged backgrounds, have been marginalised. A significant proportion of recruiters are searching online platforms, such as LinkedIn, to find candidates due to the lack of in-person contact.
Personal recommendations certainly have their have place in the recruitment process and they can be valuable especially given the lack of networking events during the pandemic. The new OCR update, enabling candidates to view and send messages to their LinkedIn connections on a company’s career website, has the potential to be a very useful tool for referrals. Research has shown that individuals who are hired based on a recommendation tend to have high job satisfaction and longer company tenure. Whilst this method of referrals may be deemed by many to have merit it could be argued that, if used solely, it perpetuates nepotism which has been a long-standing feature of business networking and recruiting.
Oracle’s new Best Candidate feature uses Adaptive Intelligence to generate candidate recommendations for a role based on the applicant’s skills, qualifications and experience. Not only does this feature speed up the recruiting process by removing some of the manual screening time, it also reduces some of the bias, unconscious or otherwise, that may be held by the recruiter thus allowing organisations to find the best candidate. Our brain continuously use subconscious biases to quickly process and filter information, however, this can hinder our openness to diversity. In particular, the “similar to me bias” means we favour individuals who are familiar and similar to ourselves as this is often perceived as a safe option. The pandemic has created unprecedented times in which people have felt at risk and in all probability have exacerbated people’s tendency towards choosing the safe bet candidate.
Building a diverse and inclusive workforce begins with hiring and thus it is imperative to equip companies with the fairest tools to assistant in this process and for them to adopt and maintain an open mind-set throughout the hiring cycle. As we begin to leave some of the aspects of the pandemic behind and have the opportunity to create our ‘new normal’ from lessons we have learnt in this period, we have a significant responsibility to create new patterns of hiring that challenge nepotism and promote equal opportunities.
For more information on Oracle Cloud Recruiting, please contact the Namos HCM team at info@namossolutions.com.
About Namos Solutions
Namos Solutions are an award-winning Oracle OPN Modernised Partner specialising in the implementation and support of ERP, EPM and HCM business solutions, both in the Cloud and on-premise.
With global experience together with an impeccable track record, our business is built on our passion for delivering successful business transformation. Passion underpins everything we do at Namos – passionate about delivering beyond expectations, earning trust and building long-lasting relationships with our clients.
Although based in central London, we work wherever our clients need us to be. Many leading organisations located all over the world trust and rely on our expertise to deliver industry-leading business solutions. Namos customers can currently be found in the UK, Europe, Middle East, Asia Pacific, North America and Africa. For more information, please visit www.namossolutions.com or email info@namossolutions.com.
