I remember my time visiting multiple college campuses for recruiting some of the brightest and most ambitious kids. Every single campus on the roster was an exhilarating albeit supremely tiring effort. Exhilarating – because it was our one chance to meet so many of them brilliant ones in one go. It’s like walking the red carpet. And tiring- because it was just too much effort to hire 1-2-3-5-10 good people. We always keep looking for a way to make it less tiring, but somewhere, we are equally concerned about not letting our guards down and making our hiring less effective.So, in the spirit of the return of the annual talent bazaar, also known as campus recruiting season, we thought off 5 things you could be doing differently, if you are recruiting from campuses this year
1. Invest in oil
Data is the new oil, you’ve heard that right? Standardize the data you’re collecting for your prospects, your processes, and your recruits. Collect more, not less. More importantly, once you’ve built the initial rule engine (CGPA >7.5, Cool Internship, Dept = {Comp Science OR Elec}, etc.), know that it is only data that can change your rule engine for the better. Intuition is so 1990s.
2. Use the power of newer data sources
E.g. social media. Does the CV, SOP & Face to face interaction really tell you everything about the candidates? A templatized CV is sometimes like a lion in a zoo. A little too trained. Make candidates download your recruiting app, like your facebook page, put a comment on your company wall, get their friends and family to support candidates through likes and retweets, leverage alternate data from mobile devices, check how many of them have rooted their device, etc. Bring the world of behavioral economics and game theory to recruiting, if you can! With most of us leading a digital life, it will be cool to get additional insights churning data from the online world. We designed Algo360 to use the power of alternate data. We repurposed our understanding of alternate data points (of course with candidate’s permission) to understand candidate fit for a role. Results so far has been promising and implications exciting!
3. Unlearn your methods, preferences and biases
Let’s be honest. We as hiring managers have our own biases when hiring. It seems they are working, but – we don’t know what we don’t know. Are we penalizing some other deserving candidates? Are we losing out on some great talent because of our over-dependence on a particular filter? That 6.49 CGPA guy? Or, that girl from instrumentation engineering? High quality analytics can give a fit measure for each candidate, and a good reference point. It can make us rethink if we like someone (due to our bias) but it tells us that s/he may not be a good fit. Or, the exact opposite of that.Oh, and while on that, could this be the year that you evaluate resumes and publish your shortlist across multiple campuses in one go?
4. Bring AI to campus recruitment
In our office, we claim that AI has two meanings – “Artificial Intelligence” and “Apna Intelligence” (Our own intelligence, that is). Recruiting has a lot of the latter, and with a lot of variance/ success. But it is time to codify AI to lead into AI. Sor8er, our home-grown AI enabled hiring tool, makes our job of sorting through hundreds of resumes hitting our mailboxes everyday a lot easier. And with every passing cycle, it is becoming smarter and faster.*Also, to paraphrase Bill Hoffman of US Bank – “The ‘A’ in AI should be ‘augmented’, not artificial. There’s nothing artificial about building a highly quality, personalised relationship with a customer understanding of an employee. Using AI takes some of the minutiae out so you can enable the human being to do what they do best, which is be a human being.
5. Reduce the time to hire, and increase the fit to hire
In the campus hiring events, good candidates go off the market fast. You do not want to spend your time going through hundreds of applicants’ data when you can automate this process and use this time to talk to the right candidates and roll out offers to them. Also, how many times are we not sure about the candidates because of the short interaction time available? With Sor8er, we have been trying to objectively evaluate each candidate’s fit for a role. And it feels awesome.So, what next? We are working on productizing Sor8er for mass use. At the same time, we do not believe that there is a “universal fit algorithm”. You can try working on these approaches yourself or give us a shout and get Sor8er customized for you needs. Either ways, you will see a significant impact – we have seen a 50% reduction in our time requirements and more than 65% reduction in time for selection. We also expect a downstream impact in terms of increased engagement and decrease in attrition.Interested? Drop us a note.