Hire upgrade support guide

Log in to Hire in PI2, and you’ll notice a new homepage: the Hiring Center. Here, you’ll be able to view all Jobs you’ve created, along with the date created and number of candidates attached to each.

We’ll continue to add to the Hiring Center in the future. For now, we hope it makes your hiring experience a little smoother. 

In PI2, Hire comes with a brand-new feature we’re calling the Job Ad Optimizer (JAO). This feature takes an existing job description, compares it to the behavioral data from your Job Target, and suggests recommended language edits you can make to ensure your job ad speaks to your ideal candidate.

Speed-to-hire doesn’t have to come at the expense of quality. With the Job Ad Optimizer, you can accelerate job ad creation while increasing your odds of finding strong-fit candidates. Attract the right candidates right from first impression, and turn your job ads from standard to supercharged.

Note: The JAO is built on an English-only model. Other languages are not currently supported.

Interviews are a make-or-break part of the hiring process. Ask the right questions, and you’ll hone in on the right candidates. Ask the wrong questions, and we all know how that story can go.

With PI2, we’re revisiting our pool of interview questions to make our guidance more robust. Use our improved Interview Builder tool to ask questions that confirm behavioral alignment and probe for areas of misalignment.

Our Science and Content teams recently updated Hire’s existing interview questions to ensure their validity and accuracy. In the future, we plan to expand this pool of interview questions to provide more flexibility for interviewers, so they can facilitate even more dynamic conversations with candidates. 

Our goal with PI2 was to make the entire hiring process simpler and more intuitive. This philosophy extends to the way users set, adjust, and apply the Job Target.

Creating your own Behavioral Target takes just a few clicks. You’ll be prompted to take the new shorter-form Job Assessment, which we’ll use to automatically populate your Behavioral Target. If you wish to make further modifications, you can fine-tune the target by making manual adjustments.

You don’t have to do it yourself, either. Base your target on one of our benchmarks, or model it after a top performer already in the role. You can also create a collaborative target with input from multiple stakeholders. 

With PI2, we aim to give you the flexibility you need to create your ideal Job Target.

We’ve also made some functional changes to the Job Target. Most notably: Factor ranges can no longer be larger than 1 sigma wide. This was an intentional design change on our part, as it encourages more precise Job Targets, more relevant candidates to pick from, and ultimately better hiring decisions. 

“Establishing targets that span more than one sigma for any given factor can muddle which candidates are actually good behavioral fits for the role,” said Dana Pollet, PhD, Manager of Product Science at PI.

“With this change, users will be encouraged to select a range that enables them to identify the strongest behavioral matches for a role without ruling out candidates who are close or including too many to make meaningful sense of.”

Of course, you’ll still be able to assess and consider candidates who fall outside of the Job Target.

“We would never advise a user to disqualify a candidate because they fall outside of the target,” Pollet continued. “Instead, we encourage you to explore other data points to confirm alignment or possible misalignment, such as prompts from the Interview Builder.”

In the legacy Hire experience, Job permissions revolved around the concept of folders. Clients with pristine folder management could fine-tune exactly who sees which Jobs and candidates… but for most clients, that was easier said than done. The bigger the organization, the heavier the burden on admin users.

With Hire in PI2, we’re streamlining the way we handle folders. We’ll have more to share on folders in the coming months, but for now, here’s how Job access works:

Hire admins and organization admins have access to all Jobs. All other users, however, can only view or edit Jobs they have access to. To give someone access, simply share that specific job. And since candidates are now tied to Jobs, you’ll only see candidates that directly pertain to your access permissions. 

We hope you’ll find this new permissions process a lot simpler and easier to navigate.

Note: Because candidate access is now tied to Job access, only Hire admins and organization admins will be able to see candidates from the legacy experience who are unattached to a Job. To enable other users to view these candidates, add them to a Job.

In the legacy experience, Hire users were able to assess candidates without attaching them to a specific Job. 

For PI2, we wanted to revisit the way we promote fair and unbiased hiring. When using behavioral and cognitive data, hiring teams should always evaluate candidates within the context of a Job Target. Without the guidance of a Job Target, it’s easy for hiring managers and other stakeholders to make assumptions about a candidate without fully considering the behavioral and cognitive requirements for the position.

In the spirit of responsible use, we’ve redesigned the hiring experience so that all candidates must be attached to a Job. Don’t worry—any candidates in the legacy experience who aren’t attached to a Job will still be transferred to PI2. However, you’ll need to add them to a Job in PI2 to get full insights (i.e., BA report).

Along the same lines as the guardrails above, Jobs cannot be created without a Job Target. This is a departure from the legacy experience, where users could create a Job and assess candidates without a Behavioral or Cognitive Target in place.

By requiring Jobs to be connected to a target (and candidates to a Job), we’re able to promote fair hiring evaluations and responsible usage of candidate data. For you, this means fewer opportunities for bias and less legal headache, not to mention cleaner data organization and upkeep.

The Self-Concept you’re familiar with hasn’t gone anywhere. We recently added the ability to download a candidate’s Self-Concept data as part of their candidate insights packet.

By viewing the Self-Concept, you can visualize how comfortable (or uncomfortable) an employee was in a previous role, giving you a critical point of data and talking point heading into a hiring interview.

In the legacy experience, job access was primarily tied to folder access. For clients with hundreds (or even thousands) of folders, it was easy to lose track of who has access to which jobs.

With PI2, you can still create and manage folders like before. However, we’ve now added a “Share” button next to the job’s name in Hire. Use this share button to quickly share a job with others and grant them either “view” or “edit” permissions.

We hope this addition gives you more flexibility in how you share jobs and collaborate with others.

In the legacy PI experience, you were able to view a Job Report that contained a summary of the job, including key insights into your potential candidates and job requirements. You could also download the Job Report to share with key stakeholders.

In PI2, we’ve updated the content for these Job Reports to make for a smoother, more informative read. You can also switch between active Behavioral Targets and see how different targets impact the Job Report.

Learn how to view Job Reports in PI2.

The Job Assessment you know from the legacy PI experience has been significantly streamlined for PI2. Many clients reported that the old JA was cumbersome and repetitive. We’ve acted on this feedback, resulting in a shorter-form JA which consists of 20 behavioral items (five per factor) compared to the previous version’s 90 items. 

“We collected multiple samples of responses to the Job Assessment, then conducted extensive analyses to determine which items would be retained for the short form while ensuring that the retention and removal of various items would not adversely affect resulting Job Targets,” said Dana Pollet, PhD, Manager of Product Science at PI.

Though the behavioral portion of the Job Assessment was our primary focus, we also conducted a revision of the cognitive portion to improve clarity and reduce redundancy. 

The JA isn’t the only thing that’s changed. We’ve streamlined the in-software process of collaborating on a Job Target—now known, fittingly, as a collaborative target. Any existing JA results in the legacy experience will be transferred to PI2, while any pending JAs at the time of upgrade will expire. Provided you have received at least one JA result, you will see a corresponding Job Target in PI2; however, you will need to resend the ones that were pending and expired. If no JA results for a particular job have been received at the time of upgrade, you will instead see a pending Job Target and need to resend all JA invites. 

With these changes, we aim to make your hiring experience faster, but no less accurate or powerful.

Want to learn more about the above analyses? Here’s how the new JA was created and vetted:

“We examined item selection rates, correlations, and internal consistency, and conducted exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses in two samples. Analysis of these two samples allowed us to ensure that endorsement rates across each factor were not different for the short form (i.e., respondents weren’t selecting more A items in the short form compared to the original). We also conducted a cultural bias and localization review, as well as an equivalence study in which hiring managers completed both the original job assessment and the shorter version.

“Our research demonstrates that use of the shorter-form version will not result in item endorsements or selections that differ from the selection rates of the original version, nor will use of the shorter-form version result in a Behavioral Target that differs significantly from a Behavioral Target created using the original version.”

In the legacy experience, you might be used to creating custom invitation links from the Assessment Center. For PI2, we’re embedding that functionality right into the Hire experience, so you can create them with less hassle.

You can create job links to invite candidates to take the BA, just as you might have in the legacy experience. Any candidate who completes the BA through that job link will automatically categorized as a candidate for that job. You can also customize that job link. (Example: You can customize notifications or choose to auto-send the BA report.)

Note: Any existing candidate links will be transferred to PI2 and accessible via a link titled “Imported invitation links” within the Candidates tab. Candidates will be able to use a transferred link to take the BA; however, the link itself will no longer be modifiable. Any invitation links not attached to a job (including employee and “other” links) will no longer be accessible in PI2.

If you’re used to reading BA results in the legacy experience, you’re likely familiar with the concept of the Self, Self-Concept, and Synthesis.

In PI2, we’ve sunsetted the Synthesis. Why? In the legacy experience, the Synthesis represented the average of the Self and Self-Concept. While a neat way to visualize the data, we found it didn’t offer any unique interpretive value for hiring. Add to this the fact that many clients found the Synthesis confusing, and we felt removing it was the right call.

By sunsetting the Synthesis, we’re able to encourage hiring managers to focus on the data that does offer unique value—and that’s the “Self” and how it compares to (or differs from) the established Job Target.

When assessing candidates in the legacy experience, you would see a rating—known as Match Score—from 1 to 10. This score was a numerical representation of a candidate’s fit for a given role. The higher the number, the closer aligned the candidate was to the Job Target.

For PI2, we’ve given Match Score a visual refresh, along with a new name: Fit Rating. Like in the legacy experience, the Fit Rating summarizes candidate fit. However, you’ll now see this score displayed via a five-star scale. The new scale contains half-star increments (1 star, 1.5 stars, etc.), meaning you’ll still get the 10-point scale you’re accustomed to.

This is purely an aesthetic enhancement—one meant to improve user understanding while maintaining the science of the original Match Score.

We’re working on bringing downloadable versions of the cognitive report to PI2. As with any new release, however, we want to ensure we’re taking the time to deliver best-in-class data protection. This includes supporting GDPR compliance efforts and ensuring privacy for assessment takers.

We look forward to providing updates on downloadable cognitive reports in the future. More details to come!

In the legacy experience, Hire would automatically recommend candidates that matched a Job Target—even when those candidates hadn’t applied for the given role.

This was a popular feature among clients, and we’re pleased to bring it back for PI2 starting this summer. We’ve also enhanced our logic (based on user feedback), meaning we’ll be able to recommend additional matches per Job.

Note: Whereas the legacy experience supported other matches based on both behavioral and cognitive data, we will not be suggesting matches based on cognitive data in PI2.

Your legacy Job Targets will be transferred to PI2 without modifications.

Example: If Factor A is 2 sigma wide for a Job Target in legacy, it will remain 2 sigma wide when you open that target in PI2.

However, if you create a new Job Target or make manual changes to a legacy target, it must adhere to the 1-sigma-wide range.

Not currently—but it’s coming! We know this was a setting you had in the legacy experience, and we’re working to add this functionality to PI2 within the next few months.

By default, the person who owns the job will be the one notified when a candidate completes the PI Behavioral Assessment. You can customize who receives what BA notifications by creating an open invitation (OI) link for that job.

The ability to bulk-send BAs is currently only available for admins looking to send assessments to employees.

Unlike the legacy experience, there is no longer a dedicated page you can use to view job fit for all candidates at once.

That said, you can view a list of candidates from the new Hiring Center homepage, and then click on a specific candidate to explore their Fit Rating and behavioral insights.

• A person with the same email domain as one of your organization domains will automatically be marked as an employee.
• Internal candidates (employees added to a job with a company domain) will be labeled as employees.
• If an employee is associated with a job and has a matching company domain, they will remain an employee.
• Employees with a matching domain can be added to a job but will remain labeled as employees.
• When a candidate is marked as hired, they will be updated to employee.