Top 5 CEO Blog Posts of 2023

Time messes with your head, doesn’t it? Looking back on 2023, I came to realize that I only started writing my blog this year, but it has quickly become part of my work life and something I love doing. I’ve enjoyed digging into the data we’ve gleaned from the hundreds of thousands of interviews conducted in Pillar, sharing knowledge on one of my favorite topics (AI), and offering thoughts on how we can all become better interviewers.

As we close out the year, I thought it would be fun to look back on the posts that you, our readers, liked best and reflect on the content that resonated with you most.

How did we do that? Data! Our team gathered the analytics and sorted out the posts that got the most engagement over the course of the year.

So, here goes…our top 5 CEO blog posts of 2023.

5.) How AI Will Change the Skills You Recruit For in the Future

As we hurtle into a future where AI is no longer a distant concept, but an integral part of our rapidly changing daily lives, the skills that we need within our organizations are going through profound change as well. AI isn’t going to take jobs away, but it will reshape them. As a result, our focus must shift towards cultivating new skill sets within our organizations. 

In this blog, I put together 6 skills that I think are going to become more and more important as we seek out potential candidates for the future…from problem solving and critical thinking to ethical awareness and more.

4.) What Are Your Candidates Really Thinking In Interviews?

Have you ever wondered what lies behind the composed facade of a job candidate as they sit on the other side of an interview, answering questions with practiced finesse? As interviewers, we're accustomed to assessing candidates based on their skills, qualifications, and experiences. However, there's a hidden dimension to the interview process that often goes unnoticed – the thoughts and emotions that run through the minds of these potential future employees.

To get a glimpse into what candidates are really thinking in interviews, we ran 100K interviews through our suite of interview insights to determine what candidate sentiment (or in other words, how the candidate is feeling and responding throughout an interview) tells us about a variety of topics commonly discussed in interviews.

This post outlines five of the most interesting insights we found, and I’ll give away one insight now: sentiment for women is lowest when discussing compensation and highest when discussing job experience.

3.) Is “Four” the Magic Number?

A while back, Google’s staffing team analyzed five years worth of interview data and concluded that four was the magic number of interview stages needed to predict a candidate’s future success with an 86% confidence level. This led them to implement the “Rule of Four”.

We decided to dig in and see if this rule stood up in today’s world. Is four really the magic number to ensure you’re getting the best people into your roles? Check out the post to see if Google got it right.

2.) ChatGPT for Hiring: The Good, The Bad, & The Ugly

This post was written right when all the hype with ChatGPT came to fruition. 7 months later, and a slew of vendors are still launching ChatGPT-related products. And it’s still tough to decipher which products are just marketing ploys and rebrandings of already-developed Chatbots and which can actually be used as a force for good in hiring. 

In this blog, I unpack the good, the bad, and the ugly of ChatGPT in the context of hiring.

1.) Unveiling the Truth: Analyzing Gender Differences in Interview Data

Since starting Pillar, we’ve had a clear view on the widespread bias that’s happening in the interview process and have been helping teams eradicate it. Unfortunately, it is there. A lot of times, people don’t even know it, but we can’t bury our heads and ignore it anymore. 

I’m not surprised to see this blog take the #1 spot as I highlight some of the realities of bias to unravel the truth behind gender differences in hiring. There are some really astounding insights that came out of this, including how women get asked 20% MORE questions than men during an interview & with 25% LESS time to answer those questions. I also offer some suggestions on how you can avoid bias throughout your selection process.

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Well, there you have it…your favorite blog posts from the year. It’s clear to see that you appreciate good data and enjoy reading about, in my opinion, the hottest topic of the year…AI. Did your favorite post make it into the list? Is there anything you wish I’d write about more? Let me know by sending me a DM here. I always love hearing from you!

Cheers to writing more in 2024 and wishing you a wonderful holiday season,

Mark Simpson
CEO & Founder