Closing the Hiring Execution Gap: Insights from our Summit in Oslo

Want better hiring results? The most successful companies use proven methods, not guesswork. At the Hiring Revolution Summit 2025 in Oslo, over 300 HR and TA leaders met with experts to talk about the "Hiring Execution Gap" – the gap between what research shows works best and what most companies actually do when hiring. Learn how closing this gap could improve your team's hiring success.

Why your hiring strategy matters so much

Here's something surprising: According to McKinsey research, top performers in complex jobs are 85-125% more productive than average employees. That means your best people are basically doing the work of two people!

Now multiply that effect across dozens or hundreds of hires, and you'll see why Malcolm Burenstam Linder, CEO and founder of Alva Labs, during his introductory speech, claimed that:

"TA can and should be the most strategically important function in the entire company."
– Malcolm Burenstam Linder, CEO & Founder Alva Labs

The way to hire more top performers? Hire according to science. The challenge: the gap between knowing what works in theory and actually making it happen in our daily recruitment processes.

This is what The Hiring Execution Gap is about – and what we spent an afternoon in Oslo, together with HR and TA leaders, to twist and turn and find the solution to.

Below is the distilled version, for everyone who couldn't join the live event – but still needs to steer their organisations towards a research-backed hiring approach. Enjoy!

What actually works in hiring (according to science)

The highlight of the summit? That would be Dr. Paul Sackett – the most published author in the 100+ year history of the Journal of Applied Psychology – sharing his groundbreaking 2022 research that's essentially rewriting the rulebook on hiring.

If you've been in HR for a while, you might remember the famous Hunter-Schmidt study from 1998. Well, it's time to update your mental model, because Dr. Sackett's research has turned some conventional wisdom on its head.

Here's what might surprise you:

• • Structured interviews reign supreme. Yes, the humble interview – when properly structured – has emerged as one of the most predictive hiring methods, delivering twice the predictive power of unstructured conversations. So those "just have a chat" interviews your hiring managers love? They're leaving tremendous value on the table.
• • Job-specific methods beat general assessments. The closer your assessment gets to actual job tasks, such as work samples, job knowledge tests, and empirically-keyed biographical data, the better it predicts performance. But with this said - more general assessments still have good predictive validity, making them a solid way to create a structured framework at scale, in combination with other methods.
• • One method isn't enough (not even close). Even though many the of the individual assessment methods aren't as predictive as we once thought, there's some good news: combining methods creates a multiplicative effect. The sweet spot appears to be around 3-4 complementary assessment methods. 

Perhaps most fundamentally: Dr. Sackett reminded us that the very definition of job performance has evolved. It's no longer just about task performance – it now includes citizenship behaviours (helping others, supporting organisational needs). This expanded definition requires a more sophisticated approach to assessment.

Making research work in the real world

Does any of this sound familiar?

• "But I can spot talent when I see it!"

• "We have so many hiring managers – how do we ensure they all follow the process?"

  You're not alone. These challenges emerged as universal across organisations.

  John Hermiz from the Swedish Defence Conscription and Assessment Agency (conducting 40,000 assessments annually!), Hira Wasif from Alva Labs, and Jonas Behrendt from Schibsted Marketplaces shared their frontline experiences;

Practical solutions you can implement next week

The panel offered actionable advice:

• • Co-create rather than impose. Jonas shared that Schibsted's success came from building processes with hiring managers, not for them. "If we just present something and say 'this is how we do it here,' it's very hard to get through," he noted.
• • Create short training videos that hiring managers can watch right before starting recruitment.
• • Provide a toolbox. Give hiring managers a bank of structured interview questions and assessment options they can quickly customise for their needs.
• • Prove it works. As Hira put it, "Organisations that have the data to back up what they're saying... don't struggle as much because they have the data to back them up." Success stories create momentum.
• • Invest in skill development for your recruitment team. John developed a comprehensive 33-course training programme for his team of 100 psychologists. While that might be extreme for most organisations, it shows the value of proper training.

How AI is changing the playing field

So, what's actually happening with AI right now? That's what Google Cloud's Nordic AI Lead Sina Nek Akhtar came to tell us, and spoiler alert: it's evolving faster than most of us realise!

Sina broke it down into five key trends that are transforming how we'll work (and how we'll hire) in the very near future:

• • Multimodality: Today's AI can analyse images, videos, and audio simultaneously – identifying objects and even controlling robots.
• • Long context: Modern AI can process up to 1 million tokens (equivalent to 10 books), finding specific information like a scene in Les Misérables from just a hand-drawn image.
• • Scaling intelligence: AI is becoming 900 times cheaper than a year ago, making powerful tools accessible beyond just large corporations.
• • Agentic augmentation: AI is evolving from passive tool to active helper that takes actions for you – like Google's Project Astra that can locate your misplaced glasses.
• • Hyper-personalisation: AI creates tailored experiences based on preferences, from planning complete holidays to customising services across industries.

The most eye-opening moment came when Sina shared Shopify CEO Toby Lütke's company-wide memo. It declared that AI usage would be mandatory, new hires would only be approved if AI couldn't do the job, and performance reviews would include how well employees are using AI. "This is essentially where we're heading," Sina reflected.

The maths that should wake up every TA Leader

Malcolm Burenstam Linder closed the summit with a compelling demonstration and some maths that should make every TA leader reconsider their priorities.

Here's the scenario he presented: Imagine you're making 100 hires in the next year.

• • With traditional, unstructured hiring (0.2 validity): You'll get about 31 high performers
• • With best-practice, structured hiring (0.6 validity): You'll get about 60 high performers

That's nearly double the top talent with the same headcount and budget – just by improving your process!

7 actions to take today

1. Think like a system designer, not a method picker
2. Structure everything from job descriptions to decision-making
3. Combine 3-4 complementary assessment methods for each role
4. Track quality of hire and use that data to improve
5. Match methods to context – use job-specific tests for immediate performance needs
6. Co-create processes with hiring managers
7. Use AI thoughtfully with fairness and security in mind

As Malcolm perfectly summed up:

"Some exceptional hires might happen randomly, but exceptional hiring at scale happens by design."
– Malcolm Burenstam Linder, CEO & Founder Alva Labs

The question is: Are you ready to start designing?