Hello HR Tech – Recruiting is so much easier!
Last week I made a promise to share a journey that brought me to be working in the business at the cutting edge of technology and science within the People/Talent sector.
In my previous post, I shared some of the thinking of people within my sector. This is what I learned about hard work during my 13 years working in tech recruitment.
I was 22 years old when I became a recruiter. I was competitive, driven and hungry to succeed. Not only in financial terms, like many other recruiters, but also my professional status and standing. I wanted to be one of the best at my job and to be respected for the work I did.
And I know there are thousands of recruiters out there whose hard work often goes unrecognised by clients, candidates, managers and colleagues alike. I no longer know exactly what it’s like to be a recruiter in 2018 but back in 2005-2010 if you joined one, my teams, we’d have had conversations that went something like this:
There is no shortcut in recruitment
It requires a lot of hard work and skill with a splash of good luck.
The hard work is the time commitment needed to consistently deliver for your clients and candidates.
You need the skill to learn the difference between C# and C++ and how technologies stack together.
Eventually, your business development efforts will combine with good luck when that client answers your call and confirms they are indeed looking to hire someone within your vertical specialism. Happy days!!
You agree to terms for the customer’s key role, you pat yourself on the back and then you go again – back to the hard work because now you’ve got to find suitable candidates.
Good recruiters already have a network of great candidates – you go to them first, qualify/rule out and you’ve got a shortlist inside an hour or two. Then, more hard work.
When the other unknown recruiters working at unknown agencies also trying to fill the same role, clock off at 6 pm to enjoy their evening plans, you’re still in the office.
If you’re anything like I was you’ll still be in the office until 9 pm when the contractors start to get a little irate.
“Sorry for ringing so late in your evening but I’m trying to fill a key role for an important customer.”
Most of them appreciate your hard work and candour. Some even sound impressed with your commitment.
A few get grumpy but them’s the rubs – it’s water off a duck’s back for a driven, professional recruiter who wants to do their best for their customer and won’t mind, professionally, ruffling the feathers of a few early-to-beders to ensure they keep on top of their game, delivering great candidates to their clients.
Eventually, your hard work pays off and you place the successful candidate (probably after at least one candidate did an interview no-show following the death of a distant relative/hospital appointment/dog vs homework / insert obscure excuse)
Meet Tom & Sally to get a sense of what I was filling – I was definitely ‘Tom’!
That was my early recruitment career. Because I knew there were no shortcuts to success. I needed to graft, sacrifice my evening socialising (don’t worry, I made up for it at the weekends!) to ensure I found the best candidates for my clients.
I was a recruiter and I really, really loved my job. I genuinely hope today’s recruiters love their jobs as much as I did but the recruitment world I knew is no longer. And that’s because Talent AI has created a shortcut!
Not a corner-cutting shortcut. But an evidence-based, efficiency-creating, quicker, faster, more accurate shortcut.
AI can now rapidly identify suitable talent and create a shortlist of candidates for a human recruiter to then engage with.
A shortcut that also helps remove bias from talent workflows.
In fact, it’s such a clever shortcut that it should have its own name. I have a suggestion. Let’s call it…Recruitment!
Because recruitment was still recruitment when ATS providers rolled out filters and keyword identification tools which were quickly gamed by candidates – writing retail on a CV pushed it up the results list but that didn’t make the candidate more knowledgeable in retail.
It’s still recruitment – just done heaps better
Recruitment was still recruitment when talent attraction projects were created. Recruitment is still recruitment throughout the modern-day careers day (which I hope has evolved from my experiences back in the early 2000s)!
It’s still recruitment if you bring in video interviews (disclaimer: I hate the idea of video interviews; I think they simply shift bias to a different stage in the recruitment process).
Recruitment will still be recruitment with AI, it’ll just be better for candidates, clients and recruiters alike.
Suggested reading:
https://sapia.ai/7-tips-to-making…stment-decisions/
Related
Blog
Should you share AI-driven interview insights with your candidates?
By Barb Hyman
I was prompted to write this after reading a piece by Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic in HBR who asked this same question in the context of consumer companies. I want to challenge everyone who is hiring to ask themselves the same question in that context.
My answer of course is unequivocally yes. It’s the right thing to do. It will boost trust in your hiring process big time, and it will be a boost to your employer brand.
Here’s some objective data: Aptitude Research interviewed more than 300 HR leaders in 2022 to find out, among other things, the benefits of giving candidates feedback. It improves quality of hire, candidate experience, AND first-year retention.
Imagine what the world would look like if everyone had better self-awareness. Today, not knowing yourself carries an even greater cost. How can you make good decisions about what career you pursue if you don’t actually know what career suits your personality? Imagine the careers you may be missing out on because you don’t have that self-knowledge.
When people ask me what our innovation has achieved in the world – I respond with, “We are raising the collective self-awareness of humanity.”
Unlike GPT-3, 4, or whatever comes next, Sapia’s AI-driven insights can enhance a person’s self-knowledge and agency. That’s the journey in life we’re all on – to understand who we are. “To know oneself is to have mastery over one’s destiny.”
Our AI-powered smart chat technology is aimed at helping candidates better understand themselves and even offers personalized coaching tips. It’s an innovation in recruitment that, as far as I know, no other company comes close to. It challenges the power balance in recruitment and empowers candidates to make the right decision for them.
Just look at these data:
- 83.69% of the people who interviewed with Sapia said, ‘It has helped me become aware of my own strengths and improvement opportunities.’
- 48.18% said, ‘It’s given me more confidence.’
- Only 16% said that it wasn’t useful for them.
In conclusion, sharing AI-driven candidate insights with your candidates is not only beneficial for them, but can also be a game-changer for your organization. If there’s any doubt about this within your team, feel free to pass this post around.
Blog
Sapia named top performing HR vendor
Top performing HR vendor
The HR Service Provider Awards 2020 hosted by HRD Mag sets out each year to find the best HR vendors in Australia.
Sapia Awarded A Silver Medal in the Category Of Recruitment Systems & Technology
Taken from the HRD website:
The winners are selected from a pool of submissions from vendors providing an overview of their business or product, insight into their point of difference in the industry, statistics around market share and growth over the past 12 months, and other relevant information such as industry accolades, client testimonials, and the like.
Finding a dependable service provider can be quite a daunting task for HR professionals. From an impressive array of vendors offering their expertise, HR professionals need to choose the one that suits their company’s unique needs.
To assist HR professionals with this challenging task, HRD’s annual Service Provider Awards recognises the industry’s top performers. The Sapia submission was judged by a panel of HR leaders who determined the top performers in this category.
Thank you HRD for recognising Sapia as a top-performing HR vendor in your fourth annual Service Provider Awards report!
About Sapia
Sapia automates interviews so that every applicant is interviewed in-depth and at scale for you. All by using a text chat so that you can get to the best people fast.
Much faster: Candidates are assessed, scored and ranked using Ai, dramatically reducing recruiter time and effort. 90% recruiter time savings, against standard recruiting processes.
Improves candidate experience: An accessible, mobile-first familiar text experience that candidates enjoy with no confronting videos interviews or questionnaires. 99% candidate satisfaction and 90% completion rates.
Inclusive and fair: Blind screening at its best using Ai with the same structured behavioural interview for every candidate. Gender/Ethnicity/Indignity mixes preserved through recruitment stages due to Ai objectively assessing performance/personality, not their background.
To keep up to date on all things “Hiring with Ai” subscribe to our blog!
You can try out Sapia’s Chat Interview right now, or leave us your details to get a personalised demo
Blog
Sapia.ai’s smart interview platform now available on SAP® Store
Today we’re pleased to announce that our AI Smart Interviewer is now available on the SAP® Store, the online marketplace for SAP and partner offerings. Sapia.ai integrates with SAP® SuccessFactors®, delivering access to the world’s only smart interview platform powered by deep learning AI to SAP customers.
Sapia.ai CEO Barb Hyman said the partnership enables seamless integration with the SAP SuccessFactors platform. “In enabling SAP SuccessFactors customers to access our world-leading AI-powered recruitment solution, we’re removing friction in bringing an AI-powered approach into their HR processes. Sapia.ai customers are reducing their time to hire by up to 83%, and by using the AI’s recommendations, are hiring candidates better suited to the role, reducing employee churn by up to 62%.”
Global brands trust Sapia.ai to accelerate and enhance their recruitment and promotion processes. A conversational, Natural Language Processing (NLP) based chat AI interviews, assesses and screens for the best talent at scale via an easy-to-use platform, generating insights for both candidates and hiring teams.
In addition to improving diversity outcomes by eliminating unconscious bias in candidate screening, it also allows companies to reallocate thousands of hours spent screening talent toward higher-value tasks.
SAP Store, found at store.sap.com, delivers a simplified and connected digital customer experience for finding, trying, buying, and renewing more than 2,300 solutions from SAP and its partners. There, customers can find the SAP solutions and SAP-validated solutions they need to grow their business. And for each purchase made through SAP Store, SAP will plant a tree.
Sapia.ai is a partner in the SAP PartnerEdge® program. The SAP PartnerEdge program provides the enablement tools, benefits and support to facilitate building high-quality, disruptive applications focused on specific business needs – quickly and cost-effectively.
Visit the Sapia.ai listing on the SAP Store here.