“It’s been groundbreaking”: How Clemenger Group uses AI Smart Interviewing to hire accurately and efficiently
When Tash Sanjay joined Clemenger Group’s Retail Services business as its HR director, she was given a tough remit to hire 400 casual workers in just four weeks.
“So I was new to the company. A quick analysis of our hiring technology showed that the ATS itself was the problem. We were operating very manually, almost not using the ATS to its full functionality, because it wasn’t good. So we decided that we needed to upgrade our ATS, but then we discovered Sapia.ai.
“We’ve been with Sapia.ai for about 12 months now. The solution for us has been game-changing: We actually couldn’t function, given the amount of hires that we do, without it. Speed to hire was critical.”
Going beyond speed to hire
But Tash quickly learned that speed wasn’t enough to properly service its clients. Clemenger Group needed to match candidates accurately to skills and values.
“The initial reason to go with Sapia.ai was speed to hire. But now, it’s become much more of a talking point about the holistic benefits of AI, and our clients that we have are wanting to understand more about that. That it is a point of difference for us. It has been groundbreaking for us.”
Tash came across many other assessment and conversational AI platforms but found none that could satisfy both efficiency and deep talent intelligence.
“We saw that there were many traditional personality tests, and that sort of thing. They were interesting to me in the sense that it’s a good way to differentiate candidates quickly, but nothing was tailored to what our business values were. We didn’t have the choice element. So what I like most about implementation with Sapia.ai was that it could tailor models and personality traits to specific roles, like a retail-based role.
“We were able to edit those models to align with our values, and the other products in the market didn’t allow for that. The other providers have old school solutions, like Myers-Briggs type personality tests. There was just no flexibility.
The thought of AI for recruitment creates uncertainty and fear. Tash was quick to point out to her team that Sapia’s technology would not replace them, but empower and improve their decisions.
An AI that empowers TA and hiring managers
“I came into a business that was very conservative and traditional. So to go to AI was the best step for them. A company like ours would traditionally have an outsourced recruitment solution. The benefit of having an in-house one is personalization, and the fact that you are speaking to someone. So we convinced them that AI doesn’t actually remove that, it just gives us a way to get to the right candidate and have that personalized conversation.”
Sapia has taken the Clemenger team by storm. You wouldn’t think recruitment could be fun, but that’s exactly how Tash describes it.
“So when we get an application through, say, an Indeed platform, the way we operate is we actually automatically send them the link. Effectively, everyone gets an interview, and we advertise it that way. This has been a huge competitive advantage.”
“Launch day was really fun. Everyone was sitting there saying, ‘How many have we got? How many have completed it?’ And I was tracking it by the second, refreshing the dashboard to show them. So that was fun.
“Candidates are loving it too. They love the speed and the ease.”
And when Clemenger reaches out to top candidates, they have comprehensive profiles and tailored follow-up questions to drive the discussion forward.
“If you look at our candidate feedback through the dashboard, everyone’s saying, ‘Oh, that was actually super easy. That was a great experience. That was so much quicker. I actually prefer not talking to someone’.
Personalized candidate experience
“And when you’ve had the conversation, I think what I love most is, as I said, the personalization. It was the key to our business. We can jump on a call and say, ‘Congratulations – can we ask you another question?’ And these questions are built by referring to comments that candidates have made in their interview or things that they’ve said.”
Across the board, it’s a love-fest.
“[Sapia.ai] is second-to-none. Everyone at Clemenger is bought into the platform. I think it’s funny now when I go to client pitches, and my team mates are saying, ‘We have this tool, and we can effectively hire candidates in minutes.’
“So it’s nice to see that they’ve come on the journey.”
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