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It is possible to give personalised feedback to every candidate!
A major AI-based experiment has proved it’s possible to give personalised feedback to every job applicant, solving one of the biggest complaints about the recruitment process.
Over a six-month period, Sapia gave personalised, same-day feedback to 250,000 candidates after each completed a text-based interview using its AI platform, says CEO Barbara Hyman.
The candidates ranged in age from 16 to 80 and included people from non-English speaking and Indigenous backgrounds. The feedback highlighted their strengths, as well as tips on areas for development.
The outcome, Hyman tells Shortlist, is that 99% of candidate reported satisfaction with their interview experience; 70% said they were more likely to recommend the company as an employer of choice; and 95% reported they loved receiving their feedback and “found it empowering, constructive and ‘scarily accurate'”.
Recruiters using Sapia gain insights into each candidate’s personality and the quality of their response to behavioural interview questions.
Sapia realised candidates would benefit from receiving some form of feedback and insight into their traits as well, and so it began rolling this out 15 months ago. The feature has since won a UK-based candidate experience award.
The feedback specifically does not include information about whether the candidate is a good fit for the role, “because that’s not our job – that’s the client’s job”, Hyman says.
For AI to be trusted, she says, the candidate needs to trust it, and so the candidate needs to get something out of it – including “the ability to understand themselves”.
Candidate experience isn’t simply an automatic email that says, “thanks, we’ve had lots of applicants, but we may not get back to you”, Hyman says.
Rather, a good candidate experience is “when everybody gets something out of it”.
“There really isn’t any excuse now for ghosting. And the feedback that companies give when they do it through humans is not that constructive. Getting a phone call saying you’re not a great culture fit – what’s that telling you? That’s a big cop-out.”
Employers’ fears allayed
When Sapia first deployed the candidate feedback feature, its clients were initially too scared to use it, says Hyman.
“They thought that if you give candidates feedback, you’ll risk a whole lot of candidates calling up and asking, ‘why didn’t I get the job?’ or candidates would disagree with it and it would undermine their trust in the process. This might diminish their employer brand,” she explains.
But these fears proved unfounded when recruiters started reading the responses candidates were invited to give about their feedback, which included whether they agreed with the feedback and whether they would recommend the organisation as an employer or retailer (most of Sapia’s clients are consumer brands).
“The fact we were able to show to clients what candidates thought about it really disrupted that fear and killed the notion feedback is a ‘risk’.
“In fact, what candidates feel is feedback is a gift, and that gift is really playing out in terms of employer brand,” says Hyman.
Reference: Shortlist 2020 | https://www.shortlist.net.au
Shortlist is a subscription news service that keeps recruitment agency and in-house talent acquisition professionals informed about all the crucial developments in their sector.
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AI uncovers potential ‘Job-Hoppers’
The language candidates use in conversation can reliably indicate their propensity to ‘job hop’, new research shows.
Sapia, which uses text-based communication to interview candidates, has uncovered a correlation between candidate language and job churn that is “stronger than what you would find normally in traditional psychometric testing of job-hopping”, says CEO Barbara Hyman.
HEXACO Personality Model & Job Hopping
Similar to its recent study measuring candidate personality traits, researchers used data from 46,000 job applicants who completed an online chat interview and used the six-factor HEXACO personality model to analyse responses.
The HEXACO traits are honesty-humility, emotionality, extraversion, agreeableness (versus anger), conscientiousness, and openness to experience.
The ‘openness to experience’ trait has long been considered in organisational psychology circles as an indicator of job-hopping, and this has been reinforced by Sapia’s research, says Hyman
“Low agreeableness also correlates with people who may move and look for better opportunities,” she adds.
Analysing candidates’ responses to determine their job-hopping likelihood is especially useful for many entry-level roles, where people do not have prior experience on their CV.
“We know ‘flight risk’ or staff churn is a really big problem for our customers, particularly those who hire at volume into low-skilled roles. For them to be able to identify this upfront and avoid or minimise it was really valuable,” Hyman says.
And, from the candidate’s point of view, “we’re seeing a real craving and an appetite for understanding yourself and understanding where your strengths are best placed”, she adds.
The researchers also note further work is required to assess the true predictive validity of the outcome – that is, establishing the correlation between inferred job-hopping likelihood and actual job-hopping behaviour.
Addressing bias
Sapia has also incorporated the job-hopping measurement into its algorithms to provide this additional information to recruiters, says Hyman.
Importantly, however, “we don’t automatically discount someone who has a high job-hopping likelihood; it’s just another data point you get to look at”.
For some employers and roles, the ‘openness to experience’ trait is generally desirable, Hyman says.
“In investment banking, you want people who are comfortable with looking outside of the box and being really curious and questioning,” she says by way of example.
She stresses the intention is to allow recruitment decision-makers to use the technology as a “co-pilot, not an autopilot”.
Read more here: When used properly, data amplifies inclusive hiring.
Barbara Hyman, Shortlist, Thursday 27 August 2020 2:20 pm
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Sapia: Finalist in the Computing 2020 AI & Machine Learning awards
The Computing AI & Machine Learning Awards recognise the best companies, individuals, and projects in the AI space today. The awards cover every corner of the industry: security, ethics, data analysis, innovation and more. They also showcase the movers and shakers. “The technology heroes and projects that deserve industry-wide praise”!
From data entry to chatbots, artificial intelligence has applications in every industry, sector, and role. Even the most basic implementations can free a workforce from time-consuming manual tasks, with more recent developments providing real insight into customer data.
Artificial Intelligence as a concept has existed for decades, but only in recent years have businesses begun large-scale adoption. AI technologies have the potential to reshape the world that we live in and change the way that we work.
Sapia is a Finalist in the Best Use of AI Category
This is a combination of Conversational AI and Explainable AI described by Computing as follows:
Best Use of Conversational AI
The consumer world is rapidly adopting speech-based AI – but these systems, which can engage with users like a human to capture context and accomplish tasks, also offer a step-change in how we utilise enterprise IT. They can accomplish data entry, but also book meetings, answer questions, manipulate data and much more. Our judges want to know where you implemented conversational AI in your business, why you chose to do so and what quantitative effect it has had, as well as the challenges you overcame along the way.
Explainable Use of AI
With the rise of legislation like the General Data Protection Regulation, AI can no longer be a simple black box. Companies must be able to provide the reasoning behind AI decision-making. Thus, this award will go to the company that has made the most progress in adding transparency to their AI processes.
Sapia is an Ai-driven, mobile-first chat interview platform.
It provides faster, fairer and more accurate hiring, without bias.
Conversational AI is how the technology works and Explainable AI is a key-value guiding the way the service is delivered.
Using Sapia, people apply for jobs by texting their answers in response to specific questions that are then analysed by AI for personality and work attributes. Given that it is AI facilitating the interviews, it means that every applicant can be interviewed. All in all, this makes it much fairer for all candidates and much quicker for recruiters and operational leaders.
The award will be presented on Tuesday 22nd October in London.Judges include Christina Scott, Chief Technology Officer of News UK, David Ivell CIO of Enginuity and also Natalia Konstantinova, Architecture Lead in AI for BP.
You can try out Sapia’s Chat Interview right now, or leave us your details to get a personalised demo
Additionally, to keep up to date on all things “Hiring with Ai” subscribe to our blog!
Lastly, have you seen the 2020 Candidate Experience Playbook? Download it here.