Hiring in India needs to be aligned with hiring practices in developed countries. In developed countries hiring has been transformed by technology. Technology has made hiring seamless, fluid, and free from friction. Gone is the ambiguity many job applicants faced before considering whether they were suitable for a position, software grants them insights into whether they are a suitable candidate or not.
Many such technologies are found in India as well, yet they haven’t permeated as many facets of the recruitment process here as they have in developed countries. There is much technological advancement needed in India to better the hiring process, the most important of which are mentioned below.
A Candidate Experience Using Chatbots
The plain fact is that, despite the current downturn, it remains an employee’s market. In the power equation between employees and employers, it is employees who usually get to decide where they want to work. The onus is on employers to provide an exciting candidate experience to prospective employees. This can be done by using chatbots.
Chatbots attract educated job applicants. In developed countries, young college graduates have come to expect that a prospective employer will have a chatbot that will answer all their queries to help them decide whether an employer is right for them.
A chatbot receives queries in conversational language and provides an answer in the same. Using a chatbot, a candidate can learn about vital company policies and understand a company’s culture.
Instead of having to toggle for information between multiple windows and read text written in legal or business language, a candidate using a chatbot can pose a simple question such as “what kind of health insurance policy will I be eligible for if I join at a Band 2?” The chatbot can easily understand the meaning and context of such questions and provide a suitable reply in easy to understand language.
Such interaction makes the process of finding a suitable employer easy and encouraging. Candidates can learn as much as they need using chatbots. If they find that an employer is a right place for them they can make the next move and apply.
The great thing about using chatbots is they provide a superlative candidate experience. Candidates have come to expect such experiences from progressive employers. Employers who don’t provide such an experience risk losing the most valuable talent to organizations that do.
Virtual Interviews
While the technology behind virtual interviews is still maturing, the potential of virtual interviews is immense. An important reason for this is that many young people want to work virtually. Such employees may never set foot in the office where they work yet contribute just as much as someone in the company who goes to the office every day.
They may work from their home, an island beach, a nature reserve, a cruise ship or some other place that others likely spend their vacations at. Such virtual employees are diligent and intelligent yet they may not be available for a face to face interview.
This is why they can only be interviewed virtually. A virtual interview happens in front of a screen and over the internet. While this can pose challenges to some interviewers, there is software available that helps them assess whether a candidate is someone that is right for them.
The software is powered by AI and can evaluate how truthful a candidate’s answers are. It can also help interviewers assess a candidate’s personality and quality of his or her work ethic. There is a still a long way for such software to go before it can be relied on completely, yet right now it’s an effective way to recruit talented young workers who value their freedom and enjoy work as well.
Gamification
From an industry worth a few hundred million dollars a few years ago, gamification today is a multi-billion dollar industry. There is a good reason for its growth. Gamification streamlines the recruitment process such that employers have a solid understanding of a candidate’s abilities before even interviewing them.
Unlike a college or school mark sheet which cannot pinpoint what job a candidate has an aptitude for, gamification can judge precisely what kind of job a candidate would be good at. Using fun games that test different abilities, gamification can reveal whether an arts graduate can be taught basic coding in addition to working in sales.
It can also judge how talented an engineer is and whether he or she has leadership potential. Gamification is rarely used by Indian companies to hire candidates. A few leading technology companies use some forms of gamification to assess how suitable candidates are, yet the software they use evaluates knowledge already acquired as opposed to inherent skills.
The article is Contributed by Mr. Vikas Kakkar, Founder & CEO of hireXP.
Here is some information about Mr. Vikas Kakkar: Vikas Kakkar is the Founder & CEO of Squad gain Techlabs Pvt. Ltd., a parent company that owns HireXP, leading recruitment software and Amara, an AI-enabled conversational Chatbot founded in 2017.
Prior to this venture, Vikas has held senior leadership positions in various organizations. In his previous role, he lead the International business at Knowlarity communications where he was responsible for establishing and developing profitable businesses from scratch in new markets and driving the sales growth.
He has also worked with multiple startups as a consultant to streamline their business operations and expand in international markets. Vikas holds a B.Tech in Information technology.
