What are Recruiters Looking for in Future Employees?

First impressions at interviews can be deceiving. With work cultures and the nature of work changing at a rapid pace, the job marketplace is changing, too. Recruiters are ever more cautious of their hiring processes. Apart from practical knowledge-based and job-based skills, employers are keenly looking for certain socio-cultural abilities in their workforce. These intangible skills are hard to gauge, but not impossible. 

Therefore, apart from background screening of the potential employees, it is important for recruiters to assess the overall social and cultural skillset of the applicant. This is an area where professional background checks can contribute at a deeper level in recruitment processes of organizations, large companies and start-ups, too. Here are some skillsets that organizations desire in their employees, which, to some extent, could be assessed through background verification processes. 

Emotional intelligence

The capacity to recognize and consider one’s own and others’ emotional feelings is a key necessity. Emotional intelligence is important in today’s work atmosphere that is increasingly becoming dominated by technology. Technology consultants and authors, Megan Beck and Barry Libert, argue that the rise of AI makes EI all the more important. They note, “Skills like persuasion, social understanding, and empathy are going to become differentiators, as artificial intelligence and machine learning take over our other tasks.” Organizations that want to gauge the EI of a job applicant can do so in two ways: at the interview stage and through background verification. The process of professional background verification can reveal instances or hints to a person’s emotional intelligence during past employment verification, reference checks, and profile screening.

Inclusivity and openness to diversity

A recent demographic analysis conducted by the Pew Research Center, revealed that by 2055, the U.S. will no longer have a single racial or ethnic majority. The world is becoming increasingly globalized and small, and India isn’t far from reaching such a scenario at workplaces. Experts suggest that such a shift towards a more diverse population will have a huge impact on the workforce and how organizations address diversity in the workplace.

Diversity and inclusivity in the workplace refers to the variety of differences between individuals. These differences could be ethnical, political, religious, cultural, and gender-based, among others. It includes how individual employees identify themselves as well as how their coworkers perceive them. Being inclusive and open to diversity is a key necessity in an increasingly intolerant world, of which workplaces and organizations are a part.

One way that organizations can assess and know more about a job candidate’s abilities to work within a diverse workplace is through background checks. Education verification, identity checks, criminal records checks and profile screenings could reveal information about happenings in an individual’s past that could be related to tolerance or intolerance, comfort or discomfort with diversity.

Cultural intelligence

Cultural intelligence is the natural ability in a person to interpret someone’s unfamiliar and ambiguous gestures the way that person’s compatriots would.

Cultural intelligence has become an important part of an organization’s culture. Research by David Livermore, author of Leading with Cultural Intelligence, suggests that 70% of international ventures fail because of cultural differences. 

Regardless of the country, most organizations face the challenge of developing talent to deal with the globally dispersed and culturally diverse workplace. Apart from the interview rounds, organizations can gauge a candidate’s cultural intelligence with the help of professional verification agencies. They conduct profile screening and check, past employment verification and education verification, which can reveal a fair amount of information about a candidate’s CQ.

A growing number of recruiters in India are now engaging professional background verification companies in India, not only to gather factual information about a candidate, but also to collect information that helps in knowing more about a candidates attitude and character relating to the above mentioned skills. Are you, as a job-hunter future ready for your next big job? And as a recruiting organization on the lookout for the perfect candidate with a mix of practical and life skills, are you equipped to understand the potential job applicant completely?