How our fully-automated Video Interview solution delivers unprecedented hiring velocity

Decentralized recruitment, while enabling larger companies to hire efficiently, suffers in a labor-short market.

Under ordinary circumstances – like, say, the world before COVID and the Great Resignation – it’s ideal to let local hiring managers build their own workforces. Generally speaking, the decentralized approach is better for productivity, candidate experience, and the overall satisfaction of hiring managers, who look favourably on the trust and autonomy they get from head office.

However, when good candidates are hard to come by, the dearth of talent puts stress on the joints of such a sprawling network. We hear this frequently from companies who come to us to help improve efficiency, diversity, and quality of hire.

Here are the common problems companies are having with decentralized hiring in 2022:

• Hiring managers are frustrated, because they have a trickle of applicants and little control over employer branding and recruitment marketing.
• Consistency is hampered by inconsistent processes and rogue hiring managers, who frequently abandon workflows and ATS protocols in order to acquire warm bodies by any means necessary.
• Job advertising budgets are distributed unevenly, resulting in consternation for already-strained teams.
• Diversity is put on the backburner, both because hiring managers have the final say, and because they have little-to-no accountability over decisions.
• The company’s recruitment centre (i.e. head office) is unable to collect and analyze sufficient data to diagnose and fix recruitment problems across its decentralized network.
• The company is using an ATS with which either some (or all) of hiring managers are unhappy. Head office may know this, but in any case, it decides that the process of researching, purchasing, and implementing a new ATS is not worth the pain.
• A staunch desire to stick to the status quo, or ‘the way we’ve always done things’, because the company assumes that this period of hiring difficulty will soon pass.

These challenges (and others) have effected a drop in confidence in the way companies interview and process candidates. An Aptitude Research and Sapia.ai report from earlier this year found that 33% of companies aren’t confident in the way they interview, and 50% have lost talent due to poor processes. Meanwhile, 22% of the average talent pool is drained at the application stage.

Statistically speaking, roughly one in five people, at minimum, are bailing out of your application process at the very beginning.

How to improve efficiencies across a strained decentralized hiring network

As with many things in business, the answer to alleviating organizational pain lies in small, iterative improvements. Our recommendations do not include haphazard technological upgrades, nor do we advocate for widespread process changes. These will more than likely cause your decentralized hiring network to fall apart.

Here are some good places to start.

Look at removing time-wasting entry barriers, like resumes and cover letters

This is particularly important for the retail and hospitality industries, but certainly applies to any companies that hire entry-level team members at volume. Given the average level of job experience at this level of employment, most resumes and cover letters aren’t useful in gauging candidate quality. On the contrary – they take up precious hiring manager hours, are cumbersome for candidates to write, and are the main cause of the 22-24% candidate drop out rate we mentioned above. That’s not even accounting for the fact that anywhere between 60-80% of resumes contain falsifications.

Implement a simple, standardized process for capturing a candidate experience NPS baseline

Decentralization, almost by definition, makes capturing useful information difficult. But if you use an ATS as a tool for centralization, consider adding a candidate NPS measurement step to your application process. It can be as simple as a Net Promoter Score scale (1 to 10). If you hire at volume across multiple localities or regions, asking this one simple question can help you produce meaningful insights about how candidates find your process. What gets measured, gets managed, and though there are many other data points you might want to collect, this is a good (and relatively easy) place to start. If you’re keen to learn more about this, check out our podcast episode on candidate experience with Lars van Wieren, CEO at Starred.

Speak to your hiring managers regularly

Quantitative data is gold, but qualitative data is platinum. Make a habit of interviewing (not surveying, interviewing) your hiring managers on the ground. You’ll uncover invaluable insights that may enable you to make fast changes at scale. We help our clients collect qualitative feedback from hiring managers as a matter of course, leading to increases in productivity and hiring manager satisfaction.

Here are some useful questions to ask your hiring managers:

• Take me through how you run your local (e.g. instore) hiring process, from start to finish.
• Explain your process for interviewing candidates.
• Where do you think you waste the most time?
• What doesn’t work as well as it should?
• What kinds of candidates are you seeing, and how would you rate the overall quality?
• How might we support you in hiring more effectively?

This kind of bottom-up research aims to understand how hiring managers are actually behaving and interacting with systems. Some may be breaking from established protocols, but if you ask them why and how, you might uncover tactics and efficiencies that can be brought back to the rest of the organization, thereby improving the way all hiring managers operate. Two adages apply here: ‘Necessity is the mother of invention’, and ‘People will always find the path of least resistance’.

This fact-finding method is better than surveys because surveys impose a limited scope in which potential problem areas are preset. “We’re asking you about these things,” you’re saying, “and therefore, we’re suggesting they’re most important.” As a result, other problems and possible solutions are likely to be excluded from discovery. You’ll always learn more by having real conversations, because they can go in any conceivable direction.

Look for novel ways to encourage applications from otherwise passive candidates

Again, incredibly useful for retail, but applicable in a wide range of industries and contexts. Think about the universal touchpoints you have with customers (a.k.a candidates) across your decentralized network. In retail, some good examples might be your receipts and carry bags. These provide you invaluable real estate to advertise your jobs and employer brand. Consider putting a URL or QR code on these assets, and you might drastically increase the amount of people who know about and apply for the jobs you advertise. This tactic has the added benefit of capitalizing on active and loyal customers; after all, if they’re buying from you, they’re a prime target for recruitment marketing.

The best part about this manner of advertising? You already own the space, and the design can be centralized and rolled out at scale.

We’d be remiss if we didn’t point out that Sapia’s Ai Smart Interviewer is a dynamite solution for the inevitable pain points of decentralised recruitment. Our technology can be rolled out across your entire company, and takes care of the application, screening, interviewing, and assessment stages of your process.

Hiring managers save time – as much as 1,600 hours per month, for some of our customers – but they still get the option to approve and interact with short-listed candidates. Better still, our platform captures vital data on diversity and candidate experience, enabling you to see exactly how your network is performing, individually and collectively.

Best of all, Sapia tech integrates directly with the leading ATS platforms, and can be rolled out in as little as four weeks.

Woolworths Group, Australia’s largest private employer, uses Sapia to hire more than 50,000 candidates per year, nationwide. To see how they flourish in a labor-short market, check out our case study here.

It’s been an exciting start to 2021 for Sapia (Formerly PredictiveHire) and I’m pleased to share that we have been nominated as one of six global HR Tech startups to watch, by the HR Technology Conference and Expo, which is taking place this week.

I’m extremely proud of my team for achieving this feat – it’s been a team effort, and after several months of implementing new processes and initiatives, it’s a wonderful accomplishment. I am thrilled that Sapia has been recognized as one of the leaders in the industry by the HR Technology Conference this year.

Sapia was among six companies chosen from 24,000 applications to have the honour of presenting. It gives us the opportunity to showcase our technology to over four-thousand viewers that will be tuning in over the week. It’s a huge honour to be showcasing how our Ai-enabled chat technology can truly change recruiting.

We launched our exclusive Ethics Charter called FAIR earlier this year; a call to arms commitment that includes a guarantee towards inclusivity, fairness for all, explainable AI, transparency, privacy policies and accountability. We also recently commissioned exclusive research with Aptitude Research to uncover global company attitudes towards automation, technology in talent acquisition and unconscious human bias.

We’ve hit several milestones when it comes to evolving our offering for the better, and presenting at the conference this weekend is the cherry on top. Our biggest priorities right now are raising awareness of the importance of ethical AI and abolishing unconscious human bias. The world right now is at a stage where this is critical for the success of companies of the future and we’re proud to be discussing this and more at Friday’s session.

Sapia will be featuring in a session on innovative HR tech startups on Friday March 19 at 2:00PM ET.

To register for the virtual webinar, guests need to enter their details via this link: https://blog.hrtechnologyconference.com/hr-technology-conference-exposition-spring-set-to-explore-industrys-startup-ecosystem.

More about Sapia

Sapia is a frontier interview automation solution that solves three pain points in recruiting –  bias, candidate experience, and efficiency. Customers are typically those that receive an enormous number of applications and are dissatisfied with how much collective time is spent hiring.  

Unlike other forms of assessments which can feel confrontational, Sapia’ Chat Interview™ is built on a text-based conversation – totally familiar because text is central to our everyday lives. Every candidate gets a chance at an interview by answering five relatable questions. Every candidate also receives personalised feedback (99% CSAT). Ai then reads candidates’ answers for best-fit, translating assessments into personality readings, work-based traits and communication skills. Candidates are scored and ranked in real-time, making screening 90% faster. Sapia fits seamlessly into your HR tech-stack and with it you will get ‘off the Richter’ efficiency, reduce bias and humanise the application process.  We call it ‘hiring with heart’.

The good people at SuccessFactors have created an HR software system to help you deliver business strategy alignment, team execution, and maximum people performance. They’re passionate about helping you empower your workforce. And with Sapia, you can now take full advantage of SuccessFactors ATS to get ahead of your competitors by integrating Sapia’s interview automation for faster, fairer and better hiring results.

Decrease SuccessFactors ATS hiring complexity

From attracting candidates of diverse backgrounds and delivering an exceptional candidate experience, you’re expected to do a lot! All whilst you’re selecting from thousands of applicants…
The good news is that technology has advanced to support recruiters. Integrating Sapia artificial intelligence technology with the powerful SuccessFactors ATS facilitates a fast, fair, efficient recruitment process that candidates love.

You can now: 

• Reduce your screening time by up to 90%
• Increase your candidate satisfaction to near 100%
• Achieve interview completion rates over 90%
• And reduce screening bias for good

Sapia + SuccessFactors

Gone are the days of screening CVs, followed by phone screens to find the best talent. The number of people applying for each job has grown 5-10 times in size recently. Reading each CV is simply no longer an option. In any case, the attributes that are markers of a high performer often aren’t in CVs and the risk of increasing bias is high.

You can now streamline your SuccessFactors process by integrating Sapia’s interview automation with SuccessFactors.

We’ve created a quick, easy and fair hiring process that candidates love.

1. Create a vacancy in SuccessFactors, and a Sapia interview link will be created. 
2. Include the link in your advertising. Every candidate will have an opportunity to complete a FirstInterview via chat.
3. See results as soon as candidates complete their interview. Each candidate’s scores, rank, personality assessment, role-based traits and communication skills are available as soon as they complete the interview. Every candidate will receive automated, personalised feedback.

By sending out one simple interview link, you nail speed, quality and candidate experience in one hit.

Integrate SuccessFactors and get ahead

Sapia’s award-winning chat Ai is available to all SuccessFactors users. You can automate interviewing, screening, ranking and more, with a minimum of effort! Save time, reduce bias and deliver an outstanding candidate experience.

Experience the Sapia’s Chat Interview for yourself

The interview that all candidates love

As unemployment rates rise, it’s more important than ever to show empathy for candidates and add value when we can. Using Sapia, every single candidate gets a FirstInterview through an engaging text experience on their mobile device, whenever it suits them. Every candidate receives personalised MyInsights feedback, with helpful coaching tips which candidates love.

Together, Sapia and SuccessFactors deliver an approach that is: 

• Relevant—move beyond the CV to the attributes that matter most to you: grit, curiosity, accountability, critical thinking, agility and communication skills
• Respectful—give every single person an interview and never ghost a candidate again
• Dignified—show you value people’s time by providing every single applicant personal feedback
• Fair—avoid video in the first round interviews and take an approach that’s 100% blind to gender, age, ethnicity and other irrelevant attributes
• Familiar—text chat interviewing is not only highly efficient, it’s also familiar to people of all ages  

There are thousands of comments just like this …

“I have never had an interview like this in my life and it was really good to be able to speak without fear of judgment and have the freedom to do so.

The feedback is also great. This is a great way to interview people as it helps an individual to be themselves.

The response back is written with a good sense of understanding and compassion.

I don’t know if it is a human or a robot answering me, but if it is a robot then technology is quite amazing.”

Take it for a 2-minute test drive here > 

Recruiters love using artificial intelligence in hiring

Recruiters love the TalentInsights Sapia surface in SuccessFactors as soon as each candidate finishes their interview.

Together, Sapia and SuccessFactors deliver an approach that is: 

• Fast—Ai-powered scores and rankings make shortlisting candidates quicker
• Insightful—Deep dive into the unique personality and other traits of each candidate 
• Fair—Candidates are scored and ranked on their responses. The system is blind to other attributes and regularly checked for bias.
• Streamlined—Our stand-alone LiveInterview mobile app makes arranging assessment centres easy. Automated record-keeping reduces paperwork and ensures everyone is fairly assessed.
• Time-saving—Automating the first interview screening process and second-round scheduling delivers 90% time savings against a standard recruiting process.

Don’t believe us, read the reviews! 

See Recruiter Reviews here > 

HR Directors and CHROs love reliable bias tracking

Well-intentioned organisations have been trying to shift the needle on the bias that impacts diversity and inclusion for many years, without significant results. 

Together, Sapia and SuccessFactors deliver an approach that is: 

• Measurable—DiscoverInsights, our operations dashboard that provides clear reporting on recruitment, including pipeline shortlisting, candidate experience and bias tracking.
• Competitive—The Sapia and SuccessFactors experience is loved by candidates, ensuring you’ll attract the best candidates, and hire faster than competitors.
• Scalable—Whether you’re hiring one hundred people, or one thousand, you can hire the best person for the job, on time, every time.
• Best-in-class—Sapia easily integrates with SuccessFactors to provide you with a best-in-class AI-enabled HRTech stack. 

Getting started is easy

Let’s chat about getting you started – book a time here >