Airline improves hire time with video interviewing

+ Challenge

Manual, high-volume hiring with low interview attendance rates, prolonging interview processes

Cathay Pacific consistently ranks among the World’s Best Airlines, due in part to its heavy emphasis on hiring best-in-class flight attendants and customer service talent. To maintain their edge, they partnered with HireVue to consider more candidates, empower their recruiters, and find quality employees before their competition.

Hiring in months to hiring in weeks

Cathay Pacific receives over 300 applications per week for its Customer Service and Flight Attendant roles. Prior to HireVue, they relied on a very manual screening process: CV screening to a large number of candidates, phone screen, group interview, and a final interview in person. Between candidate phone tag and group interview no-shows (30% on average), it often took months to fill these roles.

With HireVue, Cathay Pacific has replaced their phone screening with OnDemand video interviews that candidates can complete on their own time for the recruiters to review.  Those who pass the video interview are invited into the office for the final round assessment. The no-show rate for the final interview has significantly dropped since utilizing HireVue. By reducing steps in the hiring process with a single, more versatile video screening, they’ve reduced their hiring time from 3 months to 2-3 weeks.

Finding graduate talent where they are

Career fairs are essential to identifying high potential graduate talent and building a recognizable employer brand. In order to meet as many students as possible, Cathay Pacific utilizes a video introduction to let all students take an OnDemand interview.

“In previous years, students needed to wait in line for hours to get a chance for a 5 minute interview. Now, we bring iPads to Career Fairs, students simply need to answer 2-3 general questions, and we follow up with relevant job opportunities. With HireVue, we can consider every interested student, not just those who get in line first.”

QUEENIE TSANG

Assistant Employer Branding and Talent Community Manager

Cathay Pacific also uses HireVue to screen specific high-priority graduates for their trainee roles. They use video as an opportunity to build their employer brand, showcasing their workplace, staff, and even record a personal message from the hiring manager in a pre-interview intro video. 90% of students who are invited to take part in this interview complete it.

“Because newly graduated students’ profiles may look very similar on paper, video identifies the skills that matter for success of our jobs and we can consider more candidates than ever before.”

QUEENIE TSANG

Assistant Employer Branding and Talent Community Manager

Addressing language proficiency with video interviews

While traditional language assessments analyze formal and proper grammar, they don’t reflect the way a language is spoken in the real world. Through video, Cathay Pacific can evaluate a candidate’s use of colloquialisms and slang: real-world proficiency that a traditional language assessment would miss. “Many of our positions have specific language requirements. From just looking at a candidate’s resume, we wouldn’t know how well they can speak a language. By asking candidates questions in a specific, required language, we gauge their fluency.”

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