7: The Far Future (Possibilities beyond Tomorrow)

The task of recruitment and selection, put simply, is to find the right person for the right job, and the right job for the right person. As a field, we have made some progress toward developing methodologies, tools, and practices, including structured interviews, psychometric assessments, and guidelines for fairness and diversity to help make this happen. Data from academic studies and practical applications show that these methods work to help improve recruitment decisions (Hough & Oswald, 2000; Schmidt, Oh, & Shaffer, 2016). We have described new tools, like video-interviewing and talent signals, which lean on those established methodologies while making use of modern technology in the previous chapters of this book. We have also discovered some of the limitations of these tools as well as the technologies we have available today: a reliance on flawed job performance data, the need for extensive sampling, and a lack of data to link personality to specific jobs in a meaningful way. These limitations highlight the magnitude of the task at hand: finding the right person for the right job remains a challenge. Even more so, helping someone find their ideal job remains a challenge.