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.”
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.
“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’.
“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.”
In an earlier blog, we talked about HR’s role in managing business risk. Today we turn our focus on one risk area that occupies CHRO’s, CEOs and Boards- the risk presented by bias and how to maximise fairness by removing bias.
Despite all the attention generated by International Women’s Day year a few months back and year on year, and myriad other initiatives, Boards, CEO’s and CHRO’s know that bias goes beyond gender and fixing it requires more than a training session or two.
Most of us would not even know when are being biased…
‘I just had a feeling he wasn’t going to be any good’
‘he just wasn’t a good culture fit’
‘she just doesn’t have the requisite experience’
‘we had such an awesome interview, we could have chatted forever we had so much in common ‘
It starts with having the data. The data revolution has been happening for decades in every other function but where is the data around recruitment?
More on bias measurement later…
Daniel Kahneman, Psychologist & Nobel Laureate, has this to say about managing bias in human decision-making.
“When making decisions, think of options as if they were candidates. Break them up into dimensions and evaluate each dimension separately. Then – delay forming an intuition too quickly. Instead, focus on the separate points, and when you have the full profile, then you can develop your intuition.”
Regarded as the father of behavioural economics, after 5 decades of research he has concluded that the research is unequivocal: When it comes to decision-making, algorithms are superior to people
Recruiters: The corporate hiring machine is evolving. Can you feel it?
As recently as a year ago, many top companies still selected candidates based on the most misleading of heuristics: The school they attended.
Harvard? Right this way! Community college? No thanks, we don’t take your kind around here.
This Pearson Hardman-style hiring strategy may have ‘worked’ in the past. Not any more, for two reasons: A) the talent isn’t out there, and B) everyday people expect a better standard of hiring fairness. They know that opportunity isn’t distributed equally, and that elite colleges are more a proxy for privilege than actual performance potential.
(Funny that it took a labor shortage to show companies that potential can come from anywhere. Psychologists and sociologists have known it, and have been saying it, for decades.)
Regardless, you’ve got LinkedIn CEO Ryan Roslansky telling Fortune that its company is favouring soft skills over college degrees, because such a practice creates a ‘much more efficient, equitable labor market, which then creates better opportunities for all’. He’s right about this approach. Even if you take away the benefits to diversity and inclusion, it makes sense purely mathematically: Now your hiring pool has increased from a few hundred thousand candidates to, at the very least, millions.
Resumes foster bias. Despite this fact, we insist on using them. Why? Because, until now, there hasn’t been a compelling reason not to. You could screen, interview, hire, and get warm bodies in seats with relative ease. Business could go on. Consequently, bias became a can that could be continually kicked down the road. Not anymore, for reasons discussed above.
The same is true for hire quality. Google ‘how to measure quality of hire’ and you’ll get a million different answers. Some advocate the for speed- or time-to-productivity approach; others say it’s about measuring ‘culture fit’. One or both of those might be true, but that’s beside the point: hire quality is nebulous not by its nature, but because the inputs (i.e. resumes) are messing with the outcomes.
We know that conscientiousness (that is, the propensity for someone work diligently and systematically on tasks) is a good predictor of on-the-job success. We also know that structured interviews are the best explainer (at 26%) of employee performance (versus previous job experience, which explains just 3%).
We might construct a valid candidate interviewing and vetting process based on these two facts alone. Fundamentally, we know that if A) we look for conscientiousness, and B) we do it in a structured, fair, repeatable way, we’ll get good candidates. Hire quality will take care of itself. Good inputs, good outcomes. Voila.
(It’s not quite that simple, but you get the point: There are reliable, proven ways to ensure validity, and the two examples cited above are very real and useable.)
Instead we rely on unstructured interviews, unruly hiring managers, and resumes – none of which can determine how hard-working a candidate is. Bad inputs that create bad outcomes. Consequently, we regularly examine hire quality and wonder why we struggle to measure it, or worse, connect it to the wider financial outcomes of our business.
Let’s keep this as simple as possible.
Our free job interview rubric contains more than 20 questions designed by our psychologists to help you uncover hire quality. Get it here, use it, and let us know how you found it.
There are millions of ways to assess for soft skills in interviews, just as there are millions of ways to calculate quality of hire. You may get some success by going it alone, but humans are, historically speaking, terrible at accurately assessing personality traits (and therefore, hire quality).
Our Ai Smart Interviewer does this very thing. Using deep, always-evolving personality science, our platform interviews and assesses candidates for desirable soft skills and behaviors, and even matches the resultant talent profiles to your company values.
Of course, the benefit is that hire quality is achieved and proven for you – you don’t have to worry about biased interviewers, bad questions, enforcing consistent processes, and the other headaches of recruitment. With that time back, you can focus on your people.
Or, think about it this way: LinkedIn is getting really smart with its hiring. Other companies like Apple, Delta, and IBM are too. Will you be left behind?
To find out how to improve candidate experience using Recruitment Automation, we also have a great eBook on candidate experience.
Is your recruitment team overwhelmed by the sheer volume of job applications and CVs? Are you struggling to find the right candidates in a timely manner? Is administrative work taking up too much of your team’s time, leaving little room for building relationships or focusing on business growth?
If you answered “yes” to these common challenges faced by recruiters and hiring managers, recruitment automation can provide the solution you need. This is particularly relevant in a time of high unemployment when there is a larger pool of candidates actively seeking opportunities in various roles.
Recruitment automation processes can help increase productivity, expedite candidate selection, accelerate the hiring process, and reduce costs. Furthermore, it improves the candidate experience and enhances your organization’s talent profile and brand reputation. It’s no wonder that most recruiters and hiring managers have already integrated automation into their recruitment processes.
Recruitment automation systems, powered by AI, offer significant advantages. They streamline repetitive tasks, such as CV screening and initial candidate assessment, allowing your team to focus on more valuable activities. With the help of AI algorithms, these systems can quickly sift through a large number of applications, identifying the most qualified candidates based on predefined criteria. This significantly reduces manual effort and minimizes the risk of overlooking qualified individuals.
Additionally, recruitment automation systems improve the efficiency and speed of the hiring process. They facilitate seamless integration between various recruitment platforms, such as job boards and applicant tracking systems, consolidating data and eliminating the need for manual data entry and repetitive tasks. Automated workflows ensure that each step of the recruitment process is executed smoothly and consistently, from initial application to final hiring decision.
Moreover, recruitment automation systems enable better candidate engagement and communication. They support personalized and timely interactions, such as automated email responses and status updates, which enhance the candidate experience and maintain a positive employer brand image.
What is recruitment automation?
From the way we shop or pay bills online, to how we order food or choose our entertainment, data-driven technology has changed the way we do everyday things. Technology helps us to make better use of our time and lets us transact or connect in more convenient and efficient ways.
In much the same way, recruitment automation is the technology that automates or streamlines tasks or workflows within the recruiting process that would previously have been done manually.
These new technology tools and platforms address tasks at every step of the hiring process. They often leverage technologies such as machine learning, predictive data analytics and artificial intelligence.
Recruiting and HR are all about human capital. So at first, glance using machines and technology can seem counter-intuitive.
Recruitment automation technology, however, is not designed to take the human touch out of the equation, it’s designed to help humans work smarter.
Here are ten of the benefits and advantages:
Reviewing and screening CVs and job applications is widely acknowledged as time consuming and repetitive tasks of the recruitment process. It’s often one of the first processes that recruiters prioritise for automation.
In an age of high volume briefs– such as team roles in retail, customer service or graduate internships – it’s standard to receive a high volume of candidate applications. Properly and fairly reviewing every candidate among hundreds or even thousands is beyond any recruiter. It’s not, however, beyond the capacity of technology.
Sapia is a leading innovator in the recruitment technology space.
Since 2013, Sapia has worked to solve and consistently improve the frontier problem of every recruiter and every employer. That is how to get to the right talent faster while consistently improving the candidate experience.
Sapia’s solution addresses top-of-funnel recruitment needs with an artificial intelligence-enabled automated interview platform, designed to integrate seamlessly with leading Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS).
While some automated interview platforms use video and voice technologies, Sapia uses mobile-based text. Candidates know text and trust text, and they welcome the opportunity to tell their own story in their own words and in their own time.
The automated interview is built around a few open-ended text questions that can be customised to the specific role family – sales, retail, call centre, service etc – and specific requirements relating to the employer’s brand and employment values.
The platform uses AI, ML and NLP to provide reliable personality insights into every candidate. It can accurately predict candidates’ suitability for the role. Additionally, it can guide their progression through the recruitment process. It delivers insights that recruiters and employers need to make better hiring decisions at scale.
See How Sapia’s Interview Automation Works Here >
Sapia provides blind-screening at its best. The platform effectively takes a candidate’s gender, age, ethnicity and other traits out of the process. There is no visual content, voice data or video that can act as triggers to subjective bias. Also for most customers, even CVs are removed from initial screening.
The blind screening means all candidates are competing on a level playing field and have the opportunity to tell their story without the subjective biases of a traditional human interview or a cursory review of their CV. Blind screening also supports employers’ diversity goals.
Integrated with an ATS, a simple Sapia interview link sent to an applicant’s mobile lets recruiters nail speed of recruiting, quality of candidates and a better candidate experience in one.
Sapia will help to:
Improving the candidate experience is a priority for every recruiter and employer. This is as the effect of a poor experience can cause lasting damage to reputations and brands. Sapia is the only conversational interview platform with 99% candidate satisfaction. Candidates enjoy the process and value the personalised feedback/coaching tips.
Recruitment automation doesn’t describe just one technology product or platform. Automation will generally involve a suite of platforms, software, tools and technologies. All of them work together to provide end-to-end functionality throughout the hiring process. Integration with an applicant tracking system (ATS) or candidate relationship management (CRM) platform helps bring all the tools and data together in one place.
The efficiencies and savings of recruitment automation can be gained through every step:
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Finally, discover how Sapia’s Ai-powered interview platform can help support your recruitment needs today. It’s a powerful way to bring all the benefits of recruitment automation to your business. You can also take it for a test drive here >