Criteria Corp Blog

In business and academia alike, strong writing skills are often overshadowed by technical expertise.  STEM funding in schools dwarfs the resources allocated to humanities, while hiring managers often find it easier to evaluate candidates based on hard skills, like whether a candidate is proficient in Excel or Adobe Photoshop, rather than a candidate’s writing abilities.  The importance of writing skills is often underestimated by hiring managers, as many assume that these skills are only useful for writing and editing jobs.  In reality, a strong command of language can be beneficial for a variety of reasons, including:

Today we’re excited to announce that Criteria’s testing platform, HireSelect, now integrates with JazzHR.

In today’s competitive hiring market, employers are facing a steep challenge when it comes to finding candidates with the right combination of skills and experience. The perfect candidate rarely exists, especially in high-demand fields, and many hiring managers are having to rethink what qualifications they need to look for when identifying the applicants with the highest potential.

Gamification is already a big trend across a wide range of industries. Health and fitness apps use games and competitions to motivate people to reach their fitness goals. Plenty of consumer brands offer points-based rewards where consumers earn points or complete challenges to win bigger prizes – think McDonald’s Monopoly or Starbucks’ reward challenges. And the education industry has long used games as a way to make learning not only more fun but also more effective.

Companies have long debated whether working from home is beneficial or burdensome.  While it can be convenient for employees to set their own schedule and avoid long commutes, working from home can also cause issues like isolation or inefficiency.  Like most things, whether working from home actually works is dependent on the company and the individual. 

We all know that candidate experience is critical to a successful hiring process in today's job market. We’re still deep within a candidate-driven market where employers are facing talent shortages in key roles, and where “ghosting” is on the rise.

Microlearning is a form of learning in which information is delivered in short, succinct modules on simple, accessible platforms.  It was devised as an alternative to traditional learning methods, which can sometimes be counterproductive.  Today’s workforce simply does not have the patience to read, digest, and remember long, tedious packets of information.  Instead, microlearning is becoming an invaluable tool for employee training.  Microlearning is especially successful with millennials and Gen Z - the incoming labor pool.  It uses multiple types of short, easily digestible lessons, available on various sites.  There are various platforms and types of succinct lessons that can be used for microlearning.

 Gamification is a hot topic right now, especially when it comes to HR and hiring. The idea of gamifying the hiring process has an undeniable charm, and the possibilities feel endless. We’re just now experiencing the very beginnings of what gamification could mean for hiring, and game-based assessments are really the first “gamified” offering to emerge.  

Human Resources is the core of any company.  They set the tone for the entire organization by helping to make decisions about who gets hired, how those employees will be compensated, and how interpersonal issues between coworkers will be resolved.  The responsibilities of any HR department can be vast and, quite frankly, overwhelming, which is why efficiency is critically important.  However, in a department infamous for being busy running around putting out office fires, getting ahead is easier said than done.  Here are some steps HR managers can take to keep their department on track:

There’s a lot of buzz about game-based assessments as a way to evaluate candidates in the hiring process. Game-based assessments are so enticing because they seem too good to be true – they seek to turn something that can be stressful and tedious into something fun and engaging.