Written by Nathan Hewitt
Hiring surge helps HR tech capital raising over the line despite virus
PredictiveHire – In the press
An Australian tech firm that uses artificial intelligence to quickly filter job applicants has managed to successfully complete a Series B fundraising round, despite financial markets catching coronavirus last month.
Melbourne-based PredictiveHire finalised the $3 million raise, led by recruiter Hudson with returning venture investors Rampersand and Capital Zed, just after bans on mass gatherings were announced and segments of the economy began shutting down.
“Some of our FMCG [fast-moving consumer goods] retailers, contact centres and emergency services clients have been getting thousands of applications per vacancy in the past couple of weeks, and they need a tool that can filter them quickly but with humanity,” Ms Hyman said.
PredictiveHire claims to have nine of the ASX 100 among its clients, including Wesfarmers-owned Bunnings, who use its software-as-a-service to text questionnaires to the mobile phones of job applicants.
Encouraging 50 to 100-word answers to a handful of questions like ‘what is a change in your life that has happened to you and how did you deal with that change?’, PredictiveHire runs each submission through an engine that performs a branch of artificial intelligence called natural language processing. Built on 25 million words texted back by 350,000 applicants for previous jobs, PredictiveHire claims its engine – run by co-founder Buddhi Jayatilleke, who built the data science team of human resources tech unicorn CultureAmp – can automatically provide hirers with the applicants that best suit their pre-set criteria.
Avoiding Bias
“There’s a lot of ways people can game CVs, but it’s the words and responses to relevant questions that give a real insight into a candidate’s suitability,” Ms Hyman said. She admitted there was little the start-up could do about applicants who get someone else to answer the questions for them but relied on that being picked up by the phone calls or face-to-face group interviews that followed on from PredictiveHire providing its shortlist.
“It’s designed so that your best chance of success is being yourself,” Ms Hyman claimed. If English is your second language, there’s no need to worry because we’re not biased against that, or race or gender or address or any of those factors that work against diversity when hirers take the CV-reading approach,” she said. For the thousands of applicants that will inevitably be unsuccessful as the COVID- 19 crisis raises unemployment, PredictiveHire provides automated feedback including six insights into their personality and a coaching tip for future interviews.
“Even in a usual year, the big hirers reject in six figures, and these people are also their customers,” Ms Hyman said. “They want to give them a good experience and constructive feedback, but there’s no way that’s going to be done consistently for every candidate using manual processes.”
PredictiveHire will use the $3 million injection, which takes its total raised to $5 million since launching two years ago, to further its push into graduate recruiting. This more sophisticated process, only possible as its proprietary data bank of words had grown, was still in demand even as the pandemic stalled markets, according to Ms Hyman. “Good employers can see to the end of this and still want the best talent as it becomes available,” she said.
Suggested Reading:
https://sapia.ai/blog/the-impact-of-picking-the-wrong-assessment-is-measurable-and-high/
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Recruiters can stop ghosting
Right now there is an opportunity for our profession to show even more empathy for the thousands that are looking for work.
Even with all the hiring freezes around, we are seeing many organisations use this time to get ready for the bounce back and the inevitable volumes coming from the changing employment landscape.
Gone are the days of screening CVs, followed by phone screens to find the best talent. A 5 to 10x increase in the number of people applying for jobs makes this no longer an option. And no-one’s time is served well by screening thousands of CVs.
Given that humans don’t scale, automating your screening and assessment criteria is an important job for the right technology.
Imagine offering to candidates an interview that feels nothing like an assessment.
- An intuitive, human and fast interview for the role – 5 free text questions via chat. They can do this anytime, anywhere, anyplace.
- Receiving immediate feedback – personalised, motivating and constructive. Coaching tips to help them perform at their best whatever their next role.
- Having candidates feel comfortable to be who they are, without fear of being judged by a video, or pressured by a time-bound assessment.
It’s the automation of your interviews – with heart ❤️
And importantly – with fairness. Because an interview via chat is blind. So, everyone gets a fair go.
Technology that puts the candidate’s experience first is:
- RELEVANT: CV’s don’t tell you whether someone has the qualities that matter the most – grit, curiosity accountability, critical thinking, agility, or their communication skills.
- RESPECTFUL: Gives everyone a first interview and never ghost again.
- DIGNIFIED: Value the time candidates give you, by giving them personalised feedback.
- FAIR: Video amplifies bias, so you need to have an approach that is 100% blind to gender, age, ethnicity, and all those irrelevant markers of job fit.
- FAMILIAR: Text is intuitive. It’s natural. It’s what we do every day.
By embracing new technology you can change candidate experience.
And by changing candidate experience, you can change a life.
“Wow, this was not at all what I expected, a great surprise to get a reply such as this, your appraisal was absolutely correct, and the coaching tip will be utilised in many aspects of both work and private life”
You can’t argue with candidate feedback 🙂
Understand how we can help you deliver on these promises and download the 2020 Candidate Experience Playbook here.
Blog
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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The Candidate Experience Playbook
To find out how to improve candidate experience using Recruitment Automation, we have a great eBook on candidate experience.
Hiring with heart is good for business: candidate experience in C-19 times. Sapia launches its Candidate Experience eBook. This book provides an insight into the changing face of the candidate experience.
If there was ever a time for our profession to show humanity for the job searchers, that time is now. Unemployment in Australia has passed a two-decade high. The trend is similar for other countries. That means there are a lot more candidates in the market looking for work.
With so many more candidates, the experience of a recruiting process matters more. What are candidates experiencing? Are they respected, regardless of whether they got the job or not? Is their application appreciated. Are they acknowledged for that?
This may be the time to rethink your candidate experience strategy.
Here are two big reasons to prioritise improving candidates’ experience:
1. There is a much higher value attached to it – both for candidates and your organisation.
This story won’t be unfamiliar to you: An Australian based consulting firm advertised for a Management Consultant and decided to withdraw the advert after 298 candidates had applied. That was in their first week of advertising.
When candidate supply outstrips demand, that is bound to happen. Inundation of your Talent Acquisition team becomes an every-day thing. Employers are feeling swamped with job applications.
Being effective is much harder when there are more candidates to get through every day.
High-volume recruiting issues become further aggravated when two additional dynamics come into play:
>> When the role for which you are hiring requires a relatively low skill level.
In the example provided above, the Management Consultant role had several essential requirements which should have limited applications. Included in the applicant list were hoteliers, baristas, waiting-staff and cabin crew (it’s heartbreaking). So when it comes to roles with a much lower barrier to entry, the application numbers can quadruple.
The traditional ‘high-volume low-skill role’ has now become excruciatingly high-volume. This trend is being seen across recruitment for roles like customer service staff, retail assistants and contact centre staff.
>>When your organisation is a (well-loved) consumer brand.
Frequently, candidates will apply to work for brands that they love. Fans of Apple products, work for Apple. They also apply to work and get rejected in their millions. So, how do you keep people as fans of your brand when around 98% of them will be rejected in the recruiting process? That’s not only a recruiting issue – it’s a marketing issue too.
Thousands of organisations and their Talent Acquisition teams are grappling with both dynamics right now.
The combination of unemployment and being in Covid-19 lockdown means that consumer buying is being impacted. Their confidence is down. Buying is also down. With people applying for more jobs and spending less as consumers, the hat has somewhat switched. For many who were consumers, they have now become candidates. That may be how they are currently experiencing your brand. As candidates first, customers second.
If customers are candidates and candidates are customers, is there a reason for their experience to be fundamentally different?
Candidate experience is defined as the perception of a job seeker about an organisation and their brand based on their interactions during the recruiting process. Customer experience is the impression your customers have of your brand as a whole throughout all aspects of the buyer’s journey.
Is there a difference? It’s all about how the human feels when interacting with your brand. A person is a person, regardless of the hat they are wearing at the time!
All about the human experience.
Millions, even billions, of dollars are spent each year by organisations crafting a positive brand presence and customer experience. Organisations have flipped 180 degrees to become passionately customer-centric. It makes sense to do so. Put your customers first, and that goes straight to the bottom line.
What is perhaps less recognised is the loss of revenue and customer loyalty which is directly attributed to negative candidate experiences.
How about those loyal customers who want to work for your brand? They eagerly apply for a job only to get rejected.
2. Candidate Experience improvements have become super easy to implement.
For those who have tried in the past, you may well know that it can take an extraordinarily long time to ‘define’ a Candidate Experience strategy, create its metrics, find a budget and then execute on it.
Have a look inside the ‘too hard’ basket and there you may well find many thousands of well-meaning ‘candidate experience’ initiatives, that are still lying dormant! So many want to focus on candidate experience, but may shy away from doing so. This is because it’s perceived as time-consuming and expensive.
Plus, right now there is so much on which CHROs need to focus. From ensuring workers’ wellbeing to enabling remote working. Who has the time to also worry about the experiences of candidates?
However, that has changed. Boosting candidate experience is no longer too hard, too expensive, nor too time-consuming. Technology becomes more manageable, quicker and cheaper over time. Also (borrowing from Moore’s law), its value to users grows exponentially.
Candidate Experience Playbook: Hire with Heart
The good news is that for those organisations who genuinely want to improve candidate experience, it has become much easier to do so. Finally, it is possible to give great experiences at scale while also driving down costs and improving efficiencies.
Win-win is easily attainable. In the Sapia Candidate Experience Playbook, read how organisations are hiring with heart. All by creating positive experiences for candidates while also decreasing the workload for the hiring team.