I think AI should support human beings. Technology should always do something that enables people, not disable people. – Jack Ma, tech entrepreneur and philanthropist

As recruiters and hiring managers, we understand that our roles task us not just with finding immediate candidates for open positions but to also have a long-term mindset for uncovering talent with leadership potential. Many of us have dedicated significant time and training to developing interview skills to reveal leadership capacity. However, it can be a challenge to find more profound insights about a candidate’s less tangible traits, such as personal confidence, motivations, and character attributes that define how they will perform as a manager or leader in your hiring organization.

The Role of Emerging Tech

That’s not to say that face-to-face interviews are not impactful for determining leadership prowess. However, there are emerging technologies we can use to support our efforts in finding the most high-potential talent to serve in critical roles — whether it’s the role they are being interviewed for today or a position they may be promoted into in the future.

What if there was a way we could tell whether a candidate will fit into a role and follow a leadership career path in the company before they are even interviewed? Thanks to data-driven AI technologies, that possibility is more accessible than ever before. Let’s explore how HR technology is helping recruiters to spot candidates with leadership potential.

Measuring Your Recruitment Efforts

Experienced hiring managers know that recruiting is all about KPIs. How you perform on these key data points can make or your break your performance as a recruiter, which is why it’s important to track each of your efforts using reliable data that you can refer back to frequently and use to make better-informed decisions in the future. These KPIs include cost-per-hire, time-to-hire, time-to-fill, quality-of-hire, and your employee turnover rate.

When you use technology to start to track these efforts, you will begin to identify your performance strengths and your gaps through data such as the number of applicants per job post (i.e., via job boards vs. via referrals). You can also learn more about how many candidates pass the screening process, your drop-off points, and the skill level of the candidates you attract for leadership roles.

Once you understand the data behind your recruiting endeavors, you can take the next step to creating matching algorithms for leadership and potential leadership roles. This will help you sort through candidates, and reduce time spent recruiting by replacing old manual processes and help you to increase the quality of your hires by lowering unconscious bias and relying more on data-driven decisions to assess skills, cultural fit, and long-term potential.

Looking Beyond Resumes and CVs

We’ve discussed in the past how automation and AI technology is freeing up a lot of the time that recruiters traditionally spend on scanning hundreds or even thousands of resumes. However, technology also holds an untold potential for helping recruiters take a deeper dive into a candidate’s skills and experience that may not be apparent just by looking at their work history.

In fact, recruiters are now relying on AI to scan social media and blogs to find subject matter experts who may be fit for a leadership role. This also helps recruiters to find passive and hidden talent that may not come through traditional job boards and referrals.

Using Validated Assessments

Besides using data and automation to measure efforts against objectives and gain more profound insights into a candidate’s background, HR leader and recruiters are unlocking the power of predictive assessments to determine which of their recruits have the leadership chops they’re seeking. Data analytics provides a reliable and objective way to make better hiring decisions for the onboarding and retention of future leaders. New tools such as validated assessments and predictive analytics are helping recruiters to avoid poor hiring choices and ensure that they have a talent pipeline that is leadership-ready to drive a better internal succession plan.

Leadership assessments can help recruiters to get a better read on a candidate’s personality traits, values, and motivational drivers. By going beyond looking at just skills and experience, you can make sure that your seemingly ideal candidate doesn’t have some of the red-flag traits that often derail leaders, such as:

• Poor teamwork and collaboration skills
• Insufficient training and development
• A tendency toward arrogance or “knowing it all”
• Lack of strategy and vision
• An inability to inspire or motivate others
• Low self-awareness or emotional intelligence
• Lack of accountability to people or organizations

Modern tools and analytics can help you become a recruiting leader. Data-driven solutions provide the information needed to help you find the best talent at all organizational levels for your company and predictive analytics can help improve your KPIs and supercharge your HR talent management efforts.