Employers increasingly rely on pre-hire assessments to evaluate soft skills, but a new study from HiringBranch suggests that scoring these skills in isolation may weaken the predictive power for frontline hiring. The research, discussed in the latest episode of the podcast You Should Know, reveals that individual scores for empathy, acknowledgment, active listening, and reassurance show only moderate correlation with human annotators, whereas a combined proprietary model demonstrates significantly stronger correlations.
Assaf Bar-Moshe, Chief of Research and Development Officer at HiringBranch, joined host William Tincup to delve into the findings. The Montreal-based assessment company employs an open-ended, voice-and-writing assessment design that simulates real customer interactions. Bar-Moshe, a trained linguist, explained that the company uses a "sociopragmatic analysis of the words that the candidate is actually saying," focusing on linguistic patterns rather than personality traits. The study underscores that in customer-facing roles, the interplay of multiple skills is critical. As Bar-Moshe put it, "If a candidate can express empathy, but is unable to solve the issue correctly or to comprehend the issue correctly or to reassure the customer, then this empathy is nice, but it's actually useless."
The research identifies four pillars of customer service: acknowledgment, reassurance through positive language, empathy, and active listening. HiringBranch translates job descriptions into conversation flows and scenario-based assessments, calibrated per client, region, and role. For instance, regional variations across markets like Vancouver, Toronto, and Montreal lead to different scoring weights for the same role, reflecting cultural differences in communication styles.
The practical implications for employers are significant. Traditional assessments that report soft skills as isolated scores may misrepresent a candidate's true capability in live interactions. A candidate might score high in empathy but fail to resolve a customer's issue effectively, leading to poor performance. By combining skills into a holistic measure, HiringBranch's model better predicts on-the-job performance, as validated by tracking hires months after placement.
During the podcast, Tincup recounted a retail confrontation over mispriced broccoli that hinged on diplomacy rather than policy, illustrating the complexity of frontline interactions. Bar-Moshe emphasized that effective customer service requires a blend of skills, and evaluating them separately overlooks how they work together in real conversations.
HiringBranch also previewed a self-serve capability in development that would allow hiring managers to build assessments from a library of conversation flows and skills, reducing reliance on weak or generic job descriptions. This could democratize access to sophisticated assessment tools, enabling smaller employers to implement evidence-based hiring practices.
The full study will be published under the AI research tab on the HiringBranch website. As the workforce evolves, this research challenges conventional wisdom and offers a more nuanced approach to hiring frontline talent.
