College students participating in an internship program.
Over 20 years ago, SkillSurvey started to pursue the idea of improving reference-checking in hiring processes. At the time, the company launched the first-ever digital reference checking platform SkillSurvey Reference. To date, the platform has been used by over 50 million applicants and over 4,500 employers.
While being more efficient is a main goal of SkillSurvey’s work, making better hiring decisions and doing so compliantly are the other two. With regard to compliance, the career-oriented company aims to reduce bias in hiring. SkillSurvey focuses on an individual’s relevant “soft skills” for a job rather than on the other factors that can often sway decisions such as work history, educational institution, and demographic factors. Employers can assess job candidates for their full potential, not merely their connections.
From the perspective of Scott Pulsipher, President of Western Governors University,” “It’s what you know, not how you acquired it.” This idea resonates with Ray Bixler, the president of SkillSurvey, as he is determined to rid reference-checking of bias. Traditional reference checking, done via phone calls and reference letters produces considerable bias. However, SkillSurvey’s platform works to remove bias and the company’s research shows no bias on the part of the platform toward any demographic group.
SkillSurvey’s platform also helps companies with their diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts. For example, the company provides a standardized methodology to enable consistent use across all candidates, offers a library of job-specific surveys that ensures that only relevant information is asked, uses neutral language in survey behavior items, and validates behavioral work competencies against success at work across diverse groups of employees and positions. The platform helps organizations hire individuals committed to working in an inclusive environment. Most importantly, all surveys measure the degree to which a candidate has demonstrated behaviors linked with promoting DEI.
According to Bixler, the reference platform also helps level the playing field for job candidates who are very hard workers but who might not be great at interviewing. He shared, “And let’s not forget, not everyone is an ‘interview star.’ Many people are introverted or not the most confident when interviewing for a new position. Getting others, their references, to share their successes can keep non-interview stars moving forward to getting an offer.”
Ray Bixler, president of SkillSurvey.
In 2022, SkillSurvey launched a new platform for colleges and universities — SkillSurvey Career Readiness — which allows students to gather feedback from people they worked with while completing an internship, apprenticeship, or like work project. This feedback helps students and their institutions gain hard data on their soft skills as perceived by their supervisors. Students who use the platform, according to Bixler, get “personalized insight into their work-related competencies and how their work behavior compares to other students nationally, and achieve a better understanding of how they are progressing in the areas most sought after by employers as compared to how they rate themselves in a self-assessment.”
The intent of the Career Readiness platform is to help college students be more prepared for jobs as well as to assist others who may not have a college degree in showcasing their soft skills as they are being considered for employment. Research shows that students who can successfully communicate the specific skills they learn in internships and other work-related opportunities are much more likely to gain employment.
Bixler’s goal is to “help individuals post a ‘My Soft Skills’ report on their digital wallets and other online profiles, such as LinkedIn, as another way to showcase that they are ‘Career Ready’ from the viewpoints of people who’ve experienced their work.” Bixler added that “We also believe that work experience matters more than a degree.”
It is vital that job candidates understand how to do the specific work involved in a job — the “hard skills” — but research demonstrates that it is having the “soft skills” that leads to success for employees. For example, a salesperson needs to be able to track their deals and forecast their pipeline, and a data analyst must know how to use software to analyze data. Those are givens. Yet it is the soft skills that matter most in how an employee will succeed. As Bixler shared, “How a person collaborates, communicates, and helps solves problems are the necessary soft skills to work in today’s environment. Without strong soft skills, workers will fail at their jobs.”
