For this event, we asked industry trainers to give a crash course on the essential techniques and technology needed to make anyone a great sourcer. The full-day event featured training sessions by experts: Vanessa Raath, Carrie Collier, Shally Steckerl, Brian Fink,  Erin Mathew, Junius Currier and Mark Hamel. They gave their best insights on how to improve sourcing efficiency and effectiveness for everyone from beginner sourcers to seasoned professionals.

The main theme of the day was highlighting the rich community that comes with sourcing and recruiting. The presenters made it clear that the community can be a great source of support, assistance and knowledge.

The usage of AI to streamline the process was also a large part of the discussion throughout the event. With almost every presenter mentioning OpenAI’s GPT language models, it’s clear that this kind of technology will have an impact on sourcing and widespread change is fast approaching.

Highlights & Takeaways

• Carrie Collier and Vanessa Raath kicked off the event with a presentation on personalization, organization and curiosity. With it, they showed some of their favorite tools and chrome extensions to make sourcing more efficient, including Magical. The pair also shared their experiences with getting into the industry and building their personal brand as well as the power of becoming part of the community to trade techniques and share expertise. Their biggest recommendation to the audience was simple: “Stay curious!”
• ChatGPT made an appearance in Shally Steckerl’s session about automating tedious sourcing tasks such as pre-screening and candidate outreach. In his training session, he demonstrated some examples of prompts to give ChatGPT that yield the best results. His advice was if you frequently do a repetitive task, ask that question of ChatGPT to save time.
• Brian Fink and Erin Mathew discussed building a better understanding of the roles you are sourcing for, giving tips and tricks for breaking down a role to learn the essential skills and qualifications. This duo recommended using Reddit to find inside information on jobs, as the website is often used as a place for workers to vent about problems within their job or field.
• Finally, Junius Currier and Mark Hamel wrapped up the event with a run-down of sourcing fundamentals along with their favorite tips, tricks and tools. They highlighted start.me, GoLinks, Remove Breadcrumbs, OSINT and many more of the tools and extensions they use in their personal sourcing practices. In addition, they discussed the immense importance of building relationships in the sourcing community to stay on top of changes and trends in sourcing.

Looking Forward

Join us for all the HRTX events in 2023, both virtual and  in-person. We are excited to bring our signature event back to Boston this May as our first in person event since 2019! Sign up now to be notified when tickets are available!

You can also sign up for a Sourcing Masterclass this month with Shally Steckerl to learn how to find the candidates your competitors can’t.

The post Getting Back to Basics at #HRTX March 2023: The Essentials of a Great Sourcer appeared first on RecruitingDaily.

This HRTX, Hacking All Talent, featured nearly 30 industry trainers presenting their tips and tricks for hacking highly sought-after talent in eight fields. Each trainer brought their expertise and experience to teach attendees how they approach sourcing and recruiting for roles involved in:

• Nursing and Allied Health
• Data Science and Analytics
• Digital Marketing/Sales
• Finance
• Engineering
• Cybersecurity
• Government/Cleared Contractors
• Pharmaceuticals and Life Science

Over the course of the two-day event, attendees had their pick of a wide array of content. Each day started with a kickoff presentation – hosted by Brian Fink and Rachel Duran – to discuss broader topics and issues in recruiting today. Daniela Herrera and Shally Steckerl also hosted Ask Me Anything (AMA) sessions to discuss where the industry experts got their brains picked for more detailed information. There were also sponsored sessions for paid tools including Seekout, Clinch, Greenhouse, Filtered, Gem, Hired, Qualifi and HireEZ.

The through-line of this HRTX was coming to terms with recent months’ economic instability. With layoffs hitting a high in the tech industry, many people – including some sourcers and recruiters – are switching industries or seeking new jobs.

We also saw first-hand the effects of downsizing in the tech industry and beyond. Rachel Duran kicked off day two with a presentation about resilience and ditching toxic positivity in the wake of layoffs – including her own. As she said, change is inevitable but that doesn’t mean we can’t be ready for it.

Takeaways

• Many of the sessions examined new places for people to source from. Long-time industry expert Brian Fink recommended using A9 – or as we know it, Amazon – by searching for books related to a role and scraping information about the people who reviewed it. The usage of online libraries to find researchers was shown by M&T Bank vice president Greg Hawkes. Industry expert and Lockheed Martin enterprise Sourcer Dean Da Costa brought up looking to Federal Election Commission (FEC) database for donations for potential talent.
• Among other presenters, Shally Steckerl proposed using attendee lists of events to find candidates. Sourcing cleared candidates from contracts and contract numbers was mentioned by both Junius Currier and Todd Davis. And Alan Fluhrer, talent acquisition manager at W.E. O’Neil Construction, brought the discussion back to recruiting roots when he suggested building relationships in-person in order to attract loyal, top talent.
• One of the topics trainers really hit hard was understanding the role before beginning to source or recruit. Lindsey DiCello recommended that her audience gather information on the company and the team as well as build a relationship with the hiring manager. Similarly, there was talk of understanding the roles themselves and the people that are in them. Alla Pavlova of Riot Games gave insight into data scientists: Among other things, they don’t need to have a specific degree and often come from different backgrounds, making them a trick to find. A crash course in finance was given by sourcing and technology consultant Steven Rawlings. In addition, AMS’s Katie Gentry discussed knowing why pharma employees leave their current roles citing academic interest and passion.
• Automating and optimizing the sourcing was, of course, a large part of the sessions. A large portion of presenters shared their best Boolean search strings. They included Dean Da Costa, who showcased natural language in Boolean search strings. A system of automation using CODΞ’s candidate lookup extension was shown by Balazs Paroczay,

Coming Up

Sign up now to be notified when tickets are available for our HRTX Events in 2023, both virtual and in-person.

Don’t forget you can register for The 12 Days of Sourcing through December 23, 2022.
Register to receive a daily email with the link to a newly unlocked sourcing tip, trick or hack that’s being shared exclusively for this event. We’ll do that for 12 days. You’ll learn secrets of some of the industry’s best-known sourcing leaders, leading talent acquisition at some of the best-known companies.

The post Hacking All Talent at #HRTX December 2022 appeared first on RecruitingDaily.

The theme of the day was hacking tech talent, with discussions around sourcing for 14 highly sought-after tech positions. We asked each trainer to bring one tip, trick or hack to illustrate their approach to sourcing using only free tools. The idea was to give attendees strategies and tactics they could apply to their own sourcing.

Industry experts including Brian Fink, Dean Da Costa, Shally Steckerl and Larry Anderson held Ask Me Anything (AMA) sessions to keep discussions going. And, there were demonstrations for a number of paid tools in the space, including HireEZ, SeekOut, Gem, Filtered.ai, Findem, DataPeople, Arya by LeoForce and Celential.ai.

Over the course of the two-day event, the trainers used 30-minute time slots to teach nearly 3,000 attendees. After a general kickoff, participants could choose from a variety of training sessions, as well as sponsored presentations of product demonstrations and sourcing advice. In between, there were networking sessions where attendees could meet and chat via video or message to discuss the events of the day, as well as their personal work.

Each trainer’s session covered a variety of ways attendees could improve their own efforts. Some gave advice on new places to source from, including Facebook, Twitter, TikTok and YouTube. Others focused on optimizing and automating the sourcing process to make it more efficient. Several even taught the audience how to get a better response rate from candidates through the use of message templates, openers and personalization. And, not surprisingly, there was much discussion on searching techniques and Boolean strings.

Takeaways

• The majority of sessions focused on making the sourcing process more efficient by using new tools and hacks. Dean Da Costa, enterprise sourcing practice lead at Lockheed Martin, discussed both a search engine tool and an instant data scraper. A Google Sheets hack to “automate the mind-numbing” aspects of sourcing was shared by Sarah Goldberg. Carrie Collier introduced the Magical Text Expander, which allows for configuring variables and merging fields. In a particularly compelling session given by LevelUp’s Senior Tech Recruiter Florian Damian demonstrated how to automate sourcing by recording actions and playing them back using Macro Recorder Pro.
• Many trainers suggested personalizing sourcing methods to get better response rates from potential candidates. Talent engagement consultant Marvin Smith explored messaging prospects to turn them into candidates based on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, which details human motivation centered on needs such as safety and belonging. Industry coach Dena Davis shared how to personalize messages in order to soften any skepticism from the candidate. Larry Anderson, talent acquisition manager at Slalom, urged attendees to go “two layers deep” in conversations with candidates to win them over, which can be as simple as asking a follow-up question.
• One of the biggest takeaways was the idea that there are many, many untapped places from which to source. In “Sourcing from Twitter,” Twitter Senior Technical Sourcer Blair Fambro discussed using emojis, hashtags and the @’s of companies to source diverse candidates. A custom tool shared by M&T Bank Principal Sourcing Leader Greg Hawkes assists in sourcing from TikTok. Sue Viswanatha, career matchmaker for the engineering teams at Tinder, talked about scraping YouTube comments for candidates. Microsoft’s Sophie Okonkwo shared the tip of using emojis like a unicorn or ninja emoji to search for a certain skillset when working from any website. Another trainer, Odyssey Information Services Director of Recruiting Kristin Hughes, looked at sourcing in-person events.

Coming Up

Our next HRTX will be held December 7 and 8, along with…

…The 12 Days of Sourcing: December 8 through December 23, 2022
Register to receive a daily email with the link to a newly unlocked sourcing tip, trick or hack that’s being shared exclusively for this event. We’ll do that for 12 days. You’ll learn secrets of some of the industry’s best-known sourcing leaders, leading talent acquisition at some of the best-known companies.

The post Hacking Tech Talent at #HRTX September 2022 appeared first on RecruitingDaily.

No cost to register. No travel. Just a really special day of learning with some of the top minds in our industry doing what they do best. Bottom line? This event is going to be a lot of fun. 

But at the same time, packed full of actionable information, knowledge, and approaches that you can immediately apply to your own day-to-day. Walk away with eye-opening insights into how top trainers approach and solve hiring challenges.

Over 4,500 practitioners in TA joined us for our virtual #HRTX event in December, and that grew to nearly 5,500 for our March event.

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With the increase in difficulty to hire within our own teams, our focus for this event was how to find and hire for talent acquisition professionals.

We put together a team of 24 rockstar recruiting and sourcing experts and came up with 12 different requisitions for varying levels of TA roles.

Their job was to first show their approach on how to find candidates for this role, live sourcing on screen to show their strategy and approach. They then paired up with the other trainer with the same requisition to show how they engage and hire candidates as recruiters.

For the role play sessions, trainers took turns acting as both recruiter and applicant to offer unique perspectives or highlight what they would have done differently. Brian Fink and Craig Fisher joined them on stage to moderate and field questions from the audience.

We ended each day bringing the role-play moderators and Shally Steckerl on the main stage for a discussion and analysis of each day’s events.

You can check out the recordings for this event here. For an overview, highlights, and takeaways…keep reading!

The Trainers

Mike Wolford and Pete Radloff kicked off day one’s live sourcing in search of campus recruiters, while Shawna Lawson-Flintroy and Dean Da Costa sourced candidates for a junior sourcer position.

Later, Jonathan Kidder and Kevin Walters sourced for a diversity recruiter, with Jenna Aronow and Junius Currier pursued a technical recruiter position.

Steve Levy and Bret Feig sourced for senior sourcer roles, while Steve Rawlings and Vanessa Raath looked for recruiting operations specialist candidates.

Day two brought us into the higher level roles for hiring within Talent Acquisition. We saw a shift in the methods for both finding and hiring, with a smaller pool of candidates and an increased focus on the recruitment process.

Carrie Collier and Chris Brady tackled sourcing candidates for a recruitment marketing specialist. On the other hand (or screen), Ronnie Bratcher and Sophie Okonkwo sourced a TA technology specialist.

Keirsten Greggs and Glenn Gutmacher sourced for a director of recruiting as Dena Davis and Laura Mazzullo sourced for director of people operations.

Lastly, Alla Pavlova and Patrick Moran looked for a head of sourcing, while Mark Hamel and David Galley worked to find candidates for a head of talent acquisition.

Day One: Thought Leadership

Finding Hidden Talent

Eric Jaquith of SeekOut shared seven strategies that recruiters often overlook while using LinkedIn and other job sites. The first step is to “find the language people are using,” Eric said, while speaking on the need to keep tabs on open positions and look for various job titles. He also spoke about the role technology plays in helping recruiters uncover “diamonds” by using tools like AI-matching, power searches, filters and dynamic email templates. 

Diversity of Talent

Phil Ross of Untapped also spoke about reaching “untapped talent,” focusing on increasing diversity when hiring. Organizations are often stuck in a self-reinforcing cycle where they hire from a group of candidates who reflect the organization’s demographic, though the recruitment funnel and the attrition funnel are vastly different.

While diversity initiatives may seem intimidating, Phil simplified the process by suggesting the creation of sustainable systems. He emphasized the importance of improving employee experience and satisfaction and highlighted the idea of “centering the most marginalized” while designing policies and building and placing a culture that celebrates diversity at the front and center.

Scaling Recruiting Teams

Leslie Loo of Celential.ai shared insights on scaling recruiting teams while leveraging AI. Since hiring for recruiters is increasingly tough, hiring teams can use AI to fill in the talent gap and increase efficiency. He also spoke on how gaining deeper insights into the candidate can increase the accuracy of talent matching as well.

A More Holistic Approach

As we moved closer to the end of Day 1, Spencer Liu of MojoHire tackled the ATS, saying, “The ATS is dead, at least as we know it. Today, it is imperative to track more than just our ‘applicants.’ We can do talent management and talent recruiting in one system.” Building on the importance of adopting an integrated HR approach, Liu discussed how recruiters can begin using holistic talent acquisition and management solutions. 

Day Two: Thought Leadership

Market Research

While we’re talking about data, in Gillisa Pope’s session for HireEZ, we learned how recruiters can tap into market research to inform their hiring decisions. Though you might think that research is time-consuming and tedious, Gillisa took us through the entire process in just under 20 minutes.

She also pressed the importance of understanding market conditions, data-driven multi-source tools, using HireEZ’s outbound platform to identify your total addressable market and generating talent maps to find the right talent.

With the right tools, it will take you only 20 minutes to do all of this and widen your talent pool, incorporate diversity and even detect and address roadblocks before they become a challenge. 

Gender Wage Gap

In honor of Women’s History Month, Natalie Grandy of Gem turned the spotlight onto the gender wage gap with “How Gem Uses Gem: Women in the Workforce.”

Natalie spoke about the challenges women face in hiring, followed by best practices organizations can adopt to improve gender diversity.

For recruiters, avoiding bias is easier said than done. We all fall prey to unconscious biases and noted that even female recruiters can overlook female profiles.

Highlights and Takeaways

The live sourcing and role-play sessions were undeniably the highlights of the event. Despite the similarities in approach, what stood out was how the same tools and methods were used differently.

Bret Feig spoke about using social media and online communities, Carrie Collier found candidate engagement to be the key, and Chris Brady highlighted personalization in the candidate experience.

Role-playing gave the audience insights into what questions to ask, and how to vet candidates while focusing on skills, personality and future plans. It was also remarkable to see how the presenters “engaged” with candidates, retaining the human element of the hiring process.

Mike Wolford and Pete Radloff shared the importance of approaching specialty schools and student clubs for campus recruitment. Dean Da Costa and Shawna Lawson-Flintroy focused on what is essential to the candidate. Alla Pavlova provided insights into the international market, while Keirsten Greggs and Glenn Gutmacher discussed change management.

Dena Davis and Laura Mazzullo spent time on questions the candidate should ask, listening and responding to candidate needs and focusing on HR as a strategic function.

A Thank You

A huge thank you to our attendees for your questions, comments and participation, as well as to each of the trainers, sponsors, moderators and hosts for sharing your knowledge and expertise with the audience.

We’ll be back with another event in June. See you there!

The post #HRTX March 2022: Helping Recruiters and Sourcers Prepare for the ‘Great Rehire’ appeared first on RecruitingDaily.

On December 2, 2021, we are taking the tech industry’s toughest to fill job requisitions and running live, hands-on, and collaborative workshops.

100% LIVE sourcing guided by the trainer AND your comments.

• 3 workshops per session.
• 3 sourcers per requisition.
• 3 different approaches.

Our list of trainers and the agenda will be announced soon.

Grab your spot now and stay tuned for updates!

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Secure your spot today for #HRTX HARDCORE SOURCING, the largest free sourcing training event of the year. This #HRTX will bring together 24+ industry-leading speakers plus attendees from across the globe to explore the latest tips, tricks and methods for effective sourcing.

This #HRTX Virtual might prove to be one of the most knowledge-driven free sourcing training events of the year.

We are thrilled to be working with some of the best, most respected minds in the recruiting and sourcing space.

What you’ll learn:

Our trainers will cover a variety of the toughest sourcing solutions: From conquering barriers and limitations, to sourcing tips & tricks, LinkedIn hacks, organization methods, tools, tech, and even having the right mindset.

All across two full days of training at no cost to you.

To stay up to date and see this event’s full speaker lineup, follow the HRTX website.

Already registered? Can’t decide? Either way, tune in to Sourcing School over the next few weeks for our #HRTX Speaker Highlight series!

Larry Anderson – How to Close the Good Ones

Erin Mathew – Adding a ‘Dash’ of Marketing to your Sourcing Workflow

Ronnie Bratcher – The Fifth Dimension of Sourcing

Samantha Perera – For Crying Out (c)loud!

Mikey Weil – Help! I’m Almost out of InMails!

The post Join us at #HRTX Sept 22 and 23! appeared first on RecruitingDaily.

Emcee and presenter Brian Fink kicked things off, before turning to sourcing legend Shally Steckerl, who was ready to host an in-depth look at natural language search and showcase a series of tricks that reveal candidates otherwise hidden in the depths of the internet. Steckerl provided general rules of thumb about refining Google searches to a clickable number (under 500) and samples for event-specific strings such as (member OR roster OR attendee OR chapter OR board OR conference) COMPANY NAME. Consider those two a gift, but you’ll have to attend an #HRTX or harass Shally for more.

Ronnie Bratcher took the stage next, expanding the audience’s knowledge of search engine strategy, i.e., sourcing beyond Google. Have you ever heard of eTools? No? Bratcher explains that this Google alternative searches 15 other engines, allowing you to set languages and preferences as they go. This one also highlights the keywords, letting sourcers zero in on results. He also turns a spotlight on options designed with visual learners in mind like Carrot2 and Peekier.com. So much for AskJeeves. But knowing these engines exist is only half the battle cautions Brachter, you also have to know the right syntax to use them, something he covers in detail.

Just before lunch, Tangie Pettis dove deep into “How to Be More Productive When Sourcing,” starting with the Pomodoro Technique. For those not familiar, “pomodoro” means “tomato” in Italian. In sourcing, it means that we can only source for so long before we need a break. After 27 minutes or so, we start to zone out and need a refresh, even something as simple as standing up, shaking out the old limps, and sitting back down. Pettis introduces a series of tools that support this method, including a Chrome extension that blocks the website you’re on once the timer goes off. She also offers up similar methods for uncovering information about unknown phone numbers, locations, and more while staying super organization.

After that, Steckerl returned to explore the corners of the deep web – not the dark web, nothing sinister happening here. Instead, this is the information that’s off the beaten path and harder to find, meaning unlinked or private websites, dynamic or non-HTML content, for starters. These are web pages that Google and search engines can’t index. Ever try sourcing through peer-reviewed journals to close a particularly niche req? What about the Wayback Machine? With Steckerl’s guidance, you can. And that’s just scratching the Shally surface because he also got into custom search engines, which by building it yourself opens up even more avenues.

Taking a break from his other duties, Fink hopped up again to shed light on the current state of “social recruiting” – and what that means in the age of Amazon and Instagram. By the end of the day, it became pretty clear that if you can’t find candidates, you’re not looking hard enough (or don’t have the right tools in place!).

Interspersed in between these sessions, a few solution providers shared what they’re working on at the moment.

The folks from Oracle spoke on “3 Keys to Win the War for Talent,” which no surprise including sourcing, candidate experience, and internal talent. GR8 People examined the relationship between recruiters and technology, with automation in mind, reassuring attendees that AI supports but doesn’t supplant real-life humans. Symphony Talent, fresh off the SmashFly announcement, covered recruitment advertising and how programmatic strategies serve to target candidates and improve outcomes. Skill Scout put video front and center to bring humanity into job descriptions, providing a primer to get started without a whole film crew.

Do you see what we’re getting at?

#HRTX is a full day of hands-on, useful information from industry folks doing the research and development needed to make recruiting easier and more effective. Can’t argue with that. And if you’re in Los Angeles, you’re in luck – there’s one more event on the schedule for 2019, and it’s in your hood. If you can’t make it, fear not – 2020 dates are coming soon.

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Follow along on RecruitingBlogs, RecruitingDaily, and Ryan Leary’s Facebook for more context on the event during the day (runs about 8am – 2pm ET). We’ll have updates tomorrow and beyond on this site right here.

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9am this Thursday (9/6) at the Yello offices in downtown. Here’s the info you need to register.

If you yourself are not in Chicago but have friends in talent acquisition/hiring/recruiting that are based in Chicago, let them know. It’s a great event and this particular one should have north of 115 people — so lots of opportunities to share and discuss best practices in the space.

Hope to see you on Thursday! Have a great Labor Day in the meantime.

The post Friendly reminder for the CHI peeps: We’ll be in town Thursday for HRTX appeared first on RecruitingDaily.

The study’s criteria boiled down to best new processes for driving productivity and thus boosting the bottom line. Prominent success factors were improved candidate experience, and faster, more accurate gauging of best candidates. Loud and clear was concern that automation of the recruitment process might negatively impact the personalization they considered crucial. For a whopping 78 percent of respondents, diversity was very or extremely important to their recruitment success. 

The diversity Issue

While 88 percent of study respondents considered the traditional structured interview effective, the irony is that for a huge chunk of employers those “structured” interviews are …. well, … unstructured. Which, at their worst, results in a biased hiring decision, or at best, one that is poorly made due to unequal comparisons. 

Face-to-face interviews are often conducted by harried front-line supervisors and department heads who often pride themselves on “seat-of-the-pants” informal conversations with candidates, and decisions based on intuition. The thought processes that then leak into, and even dominate, these decisions are fraught with bias: “I liked him from the get-go, since he and I both graduated from Cornell (confirmation bias).” Or, worse yet, “Good creds, I admit, but I couldn’t get past that long mane of red hair. Reminded me so much of my ex-wife (similarity bias).”

Is AI the answer?

Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML) and Robotic Process Automation (RPA), are certainly hot topics in the world of recruiting and HR. These often conflated concepts are being talked about in almost every organization, at almost every event. The truth is that AI has the potential to positively impact Recruiting and HR in many ways, some of which we are already starting to see. AI is being used primarily to automate manual, time-consuming activities that eat up precious time of recruiters and hiring managers – enter Recruitment Automation. Organizations are using automation tools to source candidates, screen applicants, schedule interviews, and even facilitate referrals.

AI – the Good

Organizations are starting to use machine learning powered tools to help with drafting effective job descriptions. Tools like Textio can predict how your posting will perform and offer real-time guidance on ways to improve it, helping to reduce bias in job descriptions so that more diverse professionals will be more likely to apply. AI powered sourcing tools use data to standardize the matching between a candidate’s experience, knowledge, and skills and the requirements of the job. Many of these solutions promise to reduce unconscious bias by ignoring irrelevant information such as race, gender and age. They reduce human intuition when it comes to resume screening and matching, thus creating more consistent decisions, and when developed correctly produce less biased results. Chatbots and other AI assistants such as Mya are able to communicate with candidates throughout your process and even help schedule interviews with qualified candidates.

AI – the Bad

As is often the case with new technology there are some use cases that may not be a good fit, at least initially.That concern has recently been brought into the spotlight with startling coverage of a facial-recognition software flaw: Some algorithms don’t recognize dark skin. Or, as Bloomberg BusinessWeek put it, AI Has a Race Problem. The problem isn’t the algorithm, however. It’s the humans designing it.

Kairos AR software developer Brian Brackeen has seen the problem first hand. In fact, he’s been the problem. As explained to Bloomberg, he was attempting to demo his facial-recognition program for a prospective client but was unable to make the program work. The snafu? He was black, and, like most facial recognition developers, most faces he had used to train the algorithms were white. When his white, blonde colleague posed for the demo, the software worked.   

Nor is the problem exclusive to small startups. MIT researchers recently determined that IBM, Microsoft and China-based Face++ incorrectly identify as many as one of every three dark skinned women, and 12 percent of darker-skinned men.  The reason mistakes are far more prevalent for women comes back yet again to the fact that algorithms are created by humans. The developers are using too few female faces to teach the program.

Joy Buolamwini, founder of the Algorithmic Justice League, interpreted the impact.

“If more white males with generally homogeneous mannerisms have been hired in the past, it’s possible that algorithms will be trained to favorably rate predominantly fair-skinned, male candidates while penalizing women and people of color who do not exhibit the same verbal and nonverbal cues,” she wrote in her New York Times opinion piece, When the Robot Doesn’t See Dark Skin

Once again, the flaw is not the machine; it’s those pesky humans.

What happens to the candidate if we automate everything?

As LinkedIn pointed out, despite extensive automation of the hiring process, companies still need people to engage candidates and employees. Without the human side of HR, recruitment and retention would suffer considerably. Especially in hard-to-fill industries such as IT and healthcare, where unfilled jobs outnumber qualified candidates by millions, passive candidates must be the bulk of sourcing efforts.

According to a recent study by LinkedIn and the Lou Adler Group, active candidates represent 5 to 20 percent of the total talent market, while casual job seekers, known as Tiptoers, make up another 15 to 20 percent. The remaining 65 to 75 percent are passive candidates.  These folks need personal engagement, persuasion and negotiation. They need the human touch, and tools that allow them to introduce themselves and showcase their skills around their current work schedule, and often at a distance.  They need video interviewing.

One of the tools LinkedIn mentions in the study is the resurgence of video interviewing. In the world of automation video ads a personalized touch that the 1’s and 0’s behind many automation algorithms cannot.

Pre-recorded video interviews are being used to add efficiency and engagement to the candidate screening process.Offered early in the application process, these on-demand assessments are specially tailored to move from the traditional unstructured “structured” interviews, to ones that are truly structured – consistent, well-planned, well-documented, and equal from one candidate to the next. As contrasted with live video conversations between candidate and recruiter, the pre-recorded videos allow candidates to respond on-demand and remotely to a pre-determined set of interview questions at a time and place best suited to their schedule. Each candidate is presented with the same prepared set of questions, so that interview formats don’t deviate from one candidate to the next. Yet, each candidate can personalize the experience, to “tell their story” at their own pace, with plenty of opportunity to erase, regroup, and redo.

The responses are recorded, organized, and easily retrievable; recruiters can compare, contrast, and share with decision-making colleagues as often as needed.  The documentation is as well a hedge against discrimination complaints.

Amy Rueda, director of strategic talent management for UCLA Development, dismisses the notion that video interviews generate bias in hiring.

“I think people who argue that this tool can be used to discriminate are the biggest hypocrites to walk the earth,” she told Workforce. “It is an argument that doesn’t hold water. If you are an organization that is inclined to discriminate, you are going to do it whether it is in a video interview or in person. If you are not an organization that is inclined to discriminate, you are going to be looking for attributes that are key to the placement.”

Although video interviews are on the rise they are by no means the holy grail. Some candidates and hiring teams still feel uneasy about trying something new. Be sure to think about your candidate population and whether or not this method of assessment is right for your position.

Finding qualified active and passive candidates requires time-effective sourcing tools powered by Big Data, Machine Learning and AI. Luring and assessing them must rely heavily on video interviewing and other virtual tools that bring humans together quickly, easily, and cost-effectively.

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