5 Ways Talent Acquisition Technology Transforms Recruiting

Talent acquisition (TA) requires a human touch. But for larger companies, TA is a complex undertaking. And maintaining a human touch is challenging at best when hiring hundreds or thousands of hires annually. At HireVue Horizon 2019, TA leaders from two large enterprises shared how they’ve used talent acquisition technology to transform recruiting and keep the human side of TA alive, while reaping other benefits as well.

The Case for Technology in Talent Acquisition

In the breakout session titled “How Technology Has Changed Talent Acquisition,“ Molex Head of Global Talent Acquisition Rodney Moses and UTC Associate Director, Early Career Leadership Development Programs Lisa Krause shared why both companies needed to transform their TA approach.

Molex is home to 120,000-plus employees in 60 countries worldwide. And it adds some 35,000 new employees annually. Rodney described the historic TA process at Molex as “a broken system” that required a lot of phone tag with candidates. For a “relationship company,” that wasn’t effective. “Humility is our number one principle … and you can’t pick that up reading a resume or seeing an SMS text message …. We were missing a lot of good candidates… It was very transactional, very reactive,” Rodney shared.

UTC’s Lisa Kraus oversees early-career hires for a company with more than 240,000 employees in 80 countries. UTC’s 4 businesses make aircraft engines, systems, and components as well as intelligent building solutions. Each of those businesses has its own TA functions and processes. Before infusing technology into the process, hiring for each business was very administrative and tactical and not focused on adding value.

Bottom line: both companies were bogged down by tactical, manual processes. They needed a change that would positively impact time to hire and the interview to offer ratio and still have a human touch.

The solution: implementing HireVue OnDemand video interviewing technology and HireVue Coordinate (for UTC) to:

• Automate parts of the recruiting process
• Make the recruiting process structured
• Assess candidates better and faster
• Save time

Here are 5 ways Molex and UTC transformed recruiting using talent acquisition technology, specifically HireVue OnDemand video interviewing technology.

1. Eliminate Phone Tag and Improve Quality of Hire

When your hiring pool includes thousands of candidates annually, phone tag hurts the process. It extends time to hire and forces recruiters to spend valuable hours doing administrative tasks instead of vetting candidates.

Lisa shared, “The first step that we took was replacing the phone screen with OnDemand interviews. That alone created a huge time saving for all of our recruiters and our program managers. ...Right away we took that time out of the process and we were really able to focus on were the right qualified candidates coming to us. ...we had more information about the candidates, which led us to bring in better candidates and then result in more offers. We had to schedule less on-site interviews because we had more qualified folks coming in for those fewer days.” Hear Lisa talk more on the topic:

2. Broaden the Candidate Net and Reduce Travel Costs

UTC didn’t stop at using video interviews for intern or campus hiring interviews. It’s also using HireVue OnDemand for executive recruiting. The significance of that isn’t just time savings, it’s cost savings too. Lisa shared, “We bring in people for our executive positions from all over the world. Imagine the cost of that.  … We know [the ROI] is there.”

Rodney shared, “About 80% of our employees at Molex are outside of the U.S., so I spend most of my time outside of the U.S. And it’s a complex hire…. having to coordinate those interviews.”

Many of the roles Rodney and his team hire for are software engineers. He realized that a single hiring manager was doing the bulk of the interviewing due to the manager’s expertise. The hiring manager had some 30 interviews on hold waiting for him to find time.

Rodneys said, “We put in HireVue and that eliminated our backlog. He could go through and review every interview and pass or fail and we had the answer.”

Molex uses HireVue to broaden the net for campus recruiting too. Here’s what Rodney has to say about how, “Now, our borders are totally down. We don’t have to worry about where the candidates come from. It’s getting [us] with [the] very best candidates,” with campus recruiting using HireVue:

3. Improve Recruiter Productivity and Relationships with Hiring Managers

Because video interviewing technology empowers recruiters to do less administrative work, it lets them be more productive. They can spend the time saved sourcing candidates and ensuring they understand hiring managers’ needs. As Lisa shared, “It takes them [recruiters] out of the logistics of scheduling phone interviews and trying to find time with various candidates. That’s quite time-consuming. And so the time savings for that has been huge for our recruiters.”

There’s an added benefit as well. When recruiters have time to better understand what skills the candidates need, they can pass on better-qualified candidates to hiring managers. Better-qualified candidates save hiring managers time too, which strengthens the relationship between recruiting and hiring managers. Hear Lisa explain:

Rodney added, “I’ve seen a difference in the hiring managers as well. It gives them time to focus on not so many reactive things.”

And with multiple people being able to watch the same candidate video interviews, using HireVue is not only building relationships between recruiters and hiring managers, it’s creating a common company language around recruiting. Lisa shared, “There’s transparency between our talent teams and our hiring managers and even our executives. It’s bringing us closer together. We’re able to talk in the same way about talent. This tool provides the foundation for us to speak the same language around the candidates we’re trying to bring in.”

4. Improve Employer Branding

Both Molex and UTC hire a lot of technical talent. And technical talent wants to work for companies known for technology. By using a technology solution for hiring, Molex and UTC can show candidates that they embrace technology.

Lisa shared, “We’re a high-technology company. ...Using HireVue really enables us to sell that point. It fits in with our brand messaging. We’re using the latest technology as part of our process and it shows our mission to provide our marketplace with high-technology products.”

5. Seeing the Full Candidate and Seeing Candidates Consistently

A structured video interview gives recruiters and hiring managers a holistic look into candidates. A look that can’t be seen on a paper resume or heard in a phone screen and that can take too much time to get to trying to schedule more live interviews for candidates than needed.

A structured interview also gives the hiring team a way to ensure each candidate answers the same questions. That consistency can help reduce bias.

Rodney said, “Having a way to have candidate stories come to life and for us looking at our guiding principles on how we can really measure candidates consistently … you don’t’ get that out of just a resume, whether or not somebody has those kind of skills.“

Hear more from Lisa and Rodney, including how they got internal buy-in and are viralizing  HireVue OnDemand technology in their organizations.

Watch the full “How Technology Has Changed Talent Acquisition” on-demand breakout session.

Find more Horizon 2019 breakout sessions.

 

Photo by Rami Al-zayat on Unsplash.