What is common between the internet, smartphones, Instagram, the great recession of 2008, and now, of course, the COVID-19 pandemic? Gen Z (those roughly born between 1995 and 2015) have been shaped by all of these and more. With the campus hiring season set to begin, firms will soon start competing for some of the best talents from this generation. These firms will need to understand and adapt to the expectations of this generation of digital natives.
We all know that the talent war is real and brutal, the pandemic notwithstanding. Learn how to step up your recruitment game by embracing the following trends that are transforming the campus recruitment landscape.

It’s digital, all the way!

The pandemic has made it next to impossible for recruiters to travel to campuses and run recruitment drives, the way it was done traditionally. The current turbulent times have given companies good reason and made it all but necessary to adopt technology for driving recruitment at campuses. The shift to digital platforms has made it possible to conduct smart and scalable placement drives from one’s home. Automated assessments with instant results, video interviews, and seamless remote onboarding are just some of the digital offerings that help ease the operational complexities of campus recruitments.

Out with the old, in with the new!

The days of staid pre-placement talks by companies and presentations to students, extolling the organization’s virtues are now passe. Students now look for organizations that use innovative methods to create immersive engagement, standing out from the crowd of run-of-the-mill recruiters. This has led to organizations choosing to build brand visibility through virtual reality videos, hackathons, ideathons, and case study competitions to establish the vital connect with the students.

Communicate your values

Gen-Zers are socially conscious and gravitate towards companies that are purpose-driven. What does your organization stand for? What are the values that drive it? Communicate these values with sincerity to the students. The year 2020 was a landmark year that saw an increased focus on diversity as a result of the Black Lives Matter movement that shook the world. Has your organization recognized the importance of promoting diversity and inclusion to drive better business outcomes? Communicate that to potential candidates since studies have shown that for many from Gen Z, a company’s stance on diversity and inclusion would be almost as important as the pay offered.

Show off your company culture

Building a great company culture is essential to the happiness of its employees and for the business’s overall success. According to a study conducted by InsideOut Development, Gen Z is driven by job security, growth, and learning opportunities. This generation has an entrepreneurial mindset, hence if your company encourages and supports innovation and an entrepreneurial spirit, call it out! Access to the latest technologies, flexibility at work, and a transparent work culture are all crucial for this generation to thrive at work.

When geography ceases to matter

Earlier, companies were constrained by logistical challenges with conducting hiring drives in campuses in remote parts of the country and so, their talent pool was limited. Cut to the present – with campus recruitment going online, there is no limit to your reach. Campuses across the country are available. A case in point was when in one of the recent HirePro Momentum webinars, Mr. Rohit Jhamb, Vice President, Human Resources, at Accenture elucidated on how Accenture leveraged technology intelligently and ran a country-wide hiring program across campuses in the year 2020. Based on their performance in the assessments, students from these campuses were stack-ranked and the multinational behemoth was able to recruit the best talent from campuses.

Conclusion

It is obvious that traditional recruitment efforts are no longer sufficient to attract and retain the best talent. Companies need to be aware of and embrace the latest trends in campus recruitment to succeed in their campus recruitment efforts. HirePro has been at the forefront of seamless campus recruitment for the past two decades. To explore HirePro’s university hiring solution, contact us at sales@hirepro.in or call us at 080 6656 6000 for more information.

Reference The Ultimate Guide to Generation Z in the Workplace

A primer for recruitment specialists

Hiring managers and recruiters frequently visit college campuses to discover and hire the best talent. The activities centred around these hiring festivals come under the umbrella of campus hiring or university hiring.

Campus hiring events are held annually on most college campuses across the country. Large MNCs and FMCG brands start guest lectures in IITs around July. Hiring fests abound in December when premier MNCs are invited to campus. The NITs follow a similar schedule, with events kicking off in July and being held year-round. BITS campuses have two drives from August to November and January to March.

Recruiting companies range from reputed MNCs such as Microsoft, Amazon, and Google to the large services firms such as TCS, CTS and Infosys; to FMCG and automotive brands such as Reliance, Mahindra and Mahindra and others.

Campus events may include guest lectures, introductory sessions with students, evaluation tests and assessments, group discussions, screening interviews, coding interviews, hackathons and coding challenges et al. While most of the events focus on talking, hackathons and coding challenges go straight to the nub of assessing the problem-solving and analytical abilities of students.

With the recent pandemic, almost all of this activity has moved online. Coding challenges in particular are a natural fit for the online digital environment. These challenges act as a preliminary/qualifying round for fresh graduates and students, sometimes after an informational interview or event.

How does it work? Typically, the candidate gets a web link from the hiring company, which leads the candidate to a stand-alone coding platform where they can take the test. Many companies prefer to use internal tools or coding assessments provided by leading recruitment platforms such as HirePro. Upon logging in, the candidate is given a series of coding problems to be solved in a specific time duration, ranging from 30 minutes to a couple of hours.

If you’re a recruitment specialist or hiring manager looking to set up a coding challenge for your campus hiring program, here are some dos and don’ts you must follow for success:

1. Plan Ahead: Although many platforms provide templatised and pre-packaged coding challenges, a round of planning and due diligence on your part will make it a more valuable activity.Your organization may have specific or atypical needs in terms of coding – programming language, platform, domain etc. Clarify these details with your internal teams and work with a domain expert to set up the right coding challenge.For example, the HirePro platform provides an exhaustive library of over 2,000 high-quality curated and reconstructed questions in 28 programming languages and a range of automated coding skills tests that you and your team can choose from, to design your coding challenge.The same goes for the level of complexity and type of challenge – the scenarios and problem statements must be vetted by your internal team.
2. Promote: The coding challenge must be promoted appropriately with your target audience – the candidates. Explore the opportunities afforded by the college/educational institute to promote it. Enquire if digital announcements on the college social media, website and WhatsApp groups are possible – you will need to prepare appropriate cards or posters to share on digital media.
3. Platform: What platform the challenge (or challenge series) will be hosted on is an important consideration. Evaluate the possibilities out there – the market leaders typically have the capacity to scale as per your requirements. However, niche platforms and newcomers may offer newer features. Some of the important features that you must add to your evaluation list include:
   1.   A feature-rich assessment interface that provides superior user experience
   2.   A chatbot for live support during the challenge
   3.   A robust proctoring feature-enabled platform for the challenge, whether human or AI-powered, that can help eliminate fraud.

   One vital requirement is for the platform to maintain session integrity in case of network or power outages on the candidate’s end. Accounting for low-bandwidth scenarios is always advisable in our vast country with varied network availability.

4. Support: As with in-person events, lots of things can go wrong online as well. It is essential that you earmark the right real-time support flows (processes, personnel) on the platform end, college end as well as within your company. Power outage, network outage, candidate infrastructure issues and a myriad of other issues can prove to be roadblocks. Proper troubleshooting support can mitigate most of these.
5. Closure: Ensure your candidates have a superior experience across every touchpoint with you, your team and the platform. Give them constructive feedback post the event with details of how they did on the challenge. Announce your assessment rubrics prior to the challenge and within the challenge (in the platform itself). Let candidates know how they performed against the rubrics and expectations. Give proper instructions to selected candidates as to how they will be moved into the next phase of assessment.

A streamlined event can ensure a seamless experience for your candidates and hassle-free selection for your team. A well-designed and executed coding challenge can help land your company the best talent for your open positions.

HirePro’s coding assessment platform provides a frictionless and secure test environment for unbiased selection of talent. Talk to us today to evaluate the platform for your next coding challenge.

Over the past few years, technology has ushered in radical changes in campus recruitment methods. Since conventional paper-based pre-hire tests are time-consuming and restrictive in their assessment qualities, they are becoming a thing of the past. Companies are increasingly adopting online assessments, especially for campus hiring, as these have been found to be far more efficacious. Post the pandemic outbreak, online assessments seem to be the safest and most logical method of testing a tech-savvy talent pool. Simply put, online assessments offer a host of superior benefits over traditional hiring processes.

Speedy, real-time results for large-scale hiring

Paperless assessments are not only eco-friendly (which will appeal to Gen Z), but are better equipped to quickly draw insights into the skills of candidates. The use of data analytics gives companies real-time results and reports, saving precious time for HR teams. This speeding up of the whole process is especially helpful when large-scale recruiting is required.

Tapping into a larger talent pool

Logistical costs incurred during recruitment can be quite high. Hence, most companies select only a few campuses to hold their hiring fairs. This means they miss out on hiring talented candidates from lesser known colleges. Online assessments allow companies to easily spread their recruitment net far and wide to tap into this previously ignored pool of candidates at no additional cost. Online testing can be conducted across multiple venues simultaneously and safely, regardless of geographic distances and pandemic safety issues.

Customizable testing methods

Online assessments can be conducted for campus recruitment using varying difficulty levels and measuring several parameters such as aptitude, tech skills, general knowledge, and psychometry. These assessments can be easily customized based on the requirements of each company.

Data analytics save time and provide objectivity

HR teams need to narrow down a tremendous amount of data, to several important metrics. This used to be a time-consuming and uphill task, allowing room for subjectivity and bias to seep in. Online assessments using analytic engines save time and take the guesswork out of the equation. These assessments become a useful tool in reducing employee turnover by ensuring the right candidate-to-job fit.

Easy access to data

With online assessments, data is compiled and saved in an easily accessible manner. This allows hiring teams from different departments in the company to collaborate in the recruitment process. It also provides the HR team with an exhaustive database of candidates which can be a gold mine for future hiring.

Creative ways to attract top talent

Online assessment challenges can be a positive process for hiring teams and a lively, creative experience for candidates too. Hosting events like hackathons and ideathons brings forth the best and the brightest to vie for a job. A case in point was the British Secret Service’s Can you crack it? campaign to find and hire skilled cryptanalysts. An additional benefit – as online assessments can be customized for each company, they can include company graphics and branding, thus helping to underline the company’s identity and values.

Advantage AI

AI-based proctoring is a key benefit in online assessment as it ensures the elimination of unfair practices during the testing process. Also, remote proctoring allows candidates to attempt an assessment at a chosen time, leading to a higher participation rate. This in turn gives the company a wider pool to select candidates from.

Online assessments are here to stay. They can be customized to fit a company’s needs and reduce the company’s cost-to-hire and time-to-hire. A recent market study by CareerNet finds that functional skills are the most in-demand skills in present times. HirePro’s functional assessments are designed to test candidates on their ability to perform with expected speed and mobility.

Our end-to-end remote recruitment platform helps to streamline your campus recruitment program. Harness the power of HirePro’s technology to make your campus hiring both target-driven and cost-efficient.

Campus recruitment involves assessment of candidates’ skills, abilities and performance. To achieve this objective, campus assessments are typically inclusive of, but not limited to-

• Behavioral Assessment 
• Functional Assessment
• Cognitive Ability Test
• Role-based Test
• Language Proficiency Test
• Remote Work Assessment

The concept of an assessment center took off during World War II, to help with recruitment in the army, in large numbers. In the 1950s, assessment centers evolved to be an effective system after their adoption by large organizations such as Sears, GE and AT&T. Over the next few decades, many firms embraced technology to develop virtual assessment centers (VACs).

Planning and implementing a traditional campus assessment programme is a grueling task with increasingly complex  logistical challenges and rapidly mounting costs. The inherent inefficiencies in traditional methods often make them time-consuming. Moreover, they  fail to offer intelligent insights about the candidate pool. The need for an efficient assessment model has spawned online assessments which are conducted with the help of various assessment tools.

Assessment tools aid the talent acquisition teams by filtering the candidate pool to fewer yet highly qualified candidates thereby saving time/costs in the recruitment process. 

The tests are generally administered through sophisticated software tools that automate the entire process. These tests can be deployed  in varied segments such as psychometric, aptitude and coding. The test results are often delivered instantly, thereby reducing the time and resources consumed.

Coding assessments  are amongst the most popular tests when a candidate’s proficiency in programming paradigms needs to be assessed. Coding interviews essentially require candidates to develop algorithms for a desired output.

Traditional methods require candidates to appear for the test and perform under a proctor’s observation. However, with the arrival of dedicated online platforms, candidates can submit their answers online with detailed test scores generated rapidly. The technology in such a platform can even monitor browsing behaviors and alert examiners of fraudulent activity. 

 The popularity of online assessment tools has touched dizzying heights because they: 

• Alleviate the burden on time and other resources
• Help analyze results by providing detailed reports on various parameters
• Provide accurate insights through superior computing power
• Offer the capability of assessing a larger pool of candidates
• Improve hiring quality
• Deliver fair results with standardized  assessments 
• Make the experience convenient for  both the employers and candidates

While there are a few drawbacks with online assessments for campus hiring, the benefits outweigh those. There is a significant amount of planning that goes into developing an online assessment. It is essential to pick the right questions for an accurate evaluation. It goes without saying that candidates must have access to, and the necessary skills to use computers and related applications. Any technical issue can cause  interruptions and result in the need for a re-test.

Online assessments provide flexibility, and shorten the entire hiring process considerably. In this digital era, technology-oriented solutions are gaining traction. Computerized tests, automated scoring and analytics have corroborated the success of hiring strategies. Online assessments will continue to become reliable tools and several SaaS companies will focus on providing such software solutions.

At HirePro, we offer a good mix of assessment tests so you can meet your talent requirements with minimal resources. Our assessment platform houses a host of questions and can be custom-built to suit your campus hiring needs and deliver the finest experience. They are designed to help you with your university recruitment, without having to compromise on the quality of fresh talent. Reach out to us at 080 6656 6000 or write to us at sales@hirepro.in for a demo. 

Top tech talent is hard to come by. Talent scarcity has increased manifold as the global pandemic accelerates the unparalleled rapid adoption of technology across industries. Moreover, demand in the IT sector continues to outpace the number of qualified developers rapidly. Companies are now sparing no effort to scour campuses to find and clinch talented tech candidates.  

Microsoft estimates that by 2025, there will be 149 million new technology jobs globally. This spurt in demand will span across data security, privacy, and trust, cybersecurity, data analytics, cloud, and software development. As a result, campus hackathons are emerging as reliable tools. They establish a sustainable pipeline of highly motivated and talented candidates equipped with in-demand skills. This helps reduce the acute tech talent shortage in the industry.

New technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML), Robotics are still not significant parts of the educational curriculum in colleges and universities. Campus hackathons provide a much-needed outlet for students interested in demonstrating their talent and exploring career opportunities in these new-age technologies. Moreover, recruiters conducting these events find a ready pool of talented candidates who are eager to join their organization.

What is a Campus Hackathon?

A hackathon, datathon, or codefest is an invention marathon held on campus to drive sustained innovation. It is a tool that fast-tracks a practical learning experience for students by providing them with key technical skills to propel their tech and coding careers. It also enables crowdsourcing of solutions to tackle real-life business problems and social issues.  

In this time-bound competitive event, participants collaborate to learn by doing in a high-stakes environment. They gain knowledge, develop and build proofs of concept, and minimum viable products that have the potential to turn into actual marketable products. During the event, students have the opportunity to meet and interact with like-minded peers, professional engineers, mentors, and recruiters. 

How to Organize a Successful Campus Hackathon?

Hacker using computer, smartphone and coding to steal password and private data

A successful campus hackathon calls for the efficient organization of many moving parts. The hackathon process entails several steps such as ideating and planning the event, marketing it, driving registrations, helping participants create prototypes, and so on. Typically, the pre-event preparation takes between 30 to 40 days. And the event itself is held over a period of 24 to 72 hours.

Modes of Engagement for Campus Hackathons

• Offline or Onsite Hackathons

An onsite hackathon takes place at a physical venue. Participants are divided into teams of two to six students, and team members sit and work together for the entire duration of the event. Onsite hackathons require laborious planning and logistical support. Everything from booking a spacious venue, catering meals, ensuring an adequate supply of power to providing an uninterrupted Wi-Fi connection must be meticulously arranged. Moreover, onsite hackathons require weeks of planning and flawless execution to create an atmosphere conducive to ideation and collaboration.  

• Online Hackathons

Online hackathons, on the other hand,  do away with logistical barriers. They leverage the world wide web to attract students across the globe to participate in the event. They are less capital intensive, and the costs saved on event logistics are spent on marketing and prizes. Online hackathons usually run for a longer duration and may result in higher-quality solutions. Most organizations join hands with a partner platform to conduct hackathons online. Online platforms ease the burden of organizers by automating several aspects of the event. 

Online or virtual campus hackathons allow students to compete from anywhere. They eliminate travel expenses and allow students to participate from the comfort of their homes. By facilitating collaboration with their teammates on their own schedules and allowing them to submit and develop their projects online, virtual hackathons also free them from time constraints. In addition, online campus hackathons encourage a greater diversity of participant profiles and provide multidisciplinary teams with a conducive environment to develop complex solutions. 

• Hybrid hackathons

Hybrid hackathons are a blend, with some parts of the hackathon held online and some held offline. Typically, organizations prefer conducting the first few stages online and the final stage onsite, where the final product prototype is presented. Hybrid hackathons are more cost-effective than onsite hackathons because only a few selected teams are hosted at the physical venue. However, hybrid hackathons are usually longer than online and offline ones. 

Benefits of Campus Hackathons

Benefits to Participants 

Campus hackathons provide students with an unparalleled networking opportunity. Students can establish industry connections and meet people with similar passions. Campus hackathons inspire participants to take risks and innovate to find cutting-edge solutions to pressing problems. It helps them explore their potential and gain the requisite skills to prepare for a successful technical career. Moreover, students get a chance to impress potential employers. They secure employment opportunities by showcasing their talents and boosting their resumes. 

Benefits to Talent Acquisition Executives and Hiring Managers

Campus hackathons have streamlined the recruitment process for tech talent by enabling recruiters to evaluate candidates’ skills as well as determine their cultural fit. Recruiters can reduce the cost-per-hire and enhance the speed of talent acquisition. They are also proving to be more effective than the traditional interview process in filtering out unsuitable candidates. 

Traditional innovation management processes can be tedious and time-consuming. Campus hackathons, on the other hand, have shorter innovation cycles, which give recruiters a good yardstick to measure skills. Moreover, the winners and participants of campus hackathons form a ready talent pipeline for hiring managers and talent acquisition executives. Since they are holistically evaluated for a combination of skills specific to hiring needs such as technical aptitude, cognitive abilities, business acumen, leadership potential, and people and time management skills, it increases the probability of finding the right match for specific roles in your organization.  

Virtual campus hackathons allow you to expand your recruitment catchment area further. You can now scale up a campus hackathon from local to global instantly without bearing a significant cost burden. Today, candidates are more open to virtual campus hackathons, which have become an integral part of the campus hiring process. 

Imperatives of Organizing Campus Hackathons

• Stage 1: Select Mode of Engagement

The first stage of organizing a campus hackathon involves choosing the right mode of engagement. The budget for the event will depend on the mode and, in turn, determines the scale and duration of the event. 

• Stage 2: Decide Logistical Details 

Next, the date, venue, sponsors, rules, code of conduct, judges and speakers, and prizes should be decided. Subsequently, selecting an intriguing purpose, theme, and problem statement will generate interest among potential participants. 

• Stage 3: Run Promotional Campaigns 

Promoting the campus hackathon to create buzz around it is essential to attracting the right mix of participants. Low-cost channels such as blogs, webinars, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google Groups, mailing lists, websites, and outreach campaigns and PR measures can be deployed to gain visibility and capture the attention of potential attendees. 

• Stage 4: Organize and Track Moving Parts

A few days or weeks before the event, all technical and logistical aspects will have to be tracked and organized. The finalists must be chosen by an expert panel, prior to the event, based on predetermined selection criteria. They should be given sufficient time to prepare for the event. Any queries by participants must be promptly answered, and they should be provided access to mentors or advisors for guidance. 

• Stage 5: Host the Event and Conduct Follow Up Activities

A detailed timeline consisting of team-related and host-related tasks, including well-spaced breaks, should be mapped out to ensure a smooth sequence. After the kick-off and completion of a successful hackathon, post-hackathon activities such as follow-up blogs, video and photo sharing, gathering feedback should be done. This will help build a community around the event and ensure that sustained post-event connection and engagement are maintained. 

Choosing the Right Platform to Conduct Campus Hackathons

Coding assessment platforms help in effortlessly hosting campus hackathons and managing the end-to-end event workflow with ease. They enable you to create and market the campus hackathon, build registrations, manage teams, evaluate submissions, and publish results. They also provide targeted brand visibility and promote an organization’s work and culture. Quick scheduling and seamless collaboration ensure the success of the campus hackathon. 

Conducting hassle-free automated hackathons need not be a challenge anymore. HirePro, an ISO 27001-certified, and GDPR-compliant platform speeds up high-quality talent-hiring for you. Our platform enables you to design customized tests for hackathons based on your specific needs. The features of HirePro’s coding assessment platform encompass an intuitive interface with a feature-rich coding editor for superior candidate experience, a repository of 2000+ coding questions that supports 28 programming languages, AI-powered advanced automated proctoring technology to control cheating, and deep real-time insights on code status and code quality. See HirePro’s coding assessments in action now. 

Conclusion

Organizations are increasingly leveraging campus hackathons to bolster their talent acquisition efforts. They use these events to strengthen employer branding, secure fresh talent, increase employer brand affinity, and improve employee retention in the long run. Today, campus hackathons are mutually rewarding events, transforming the traditional recruitment process. 

Campus hackathons do not lend themselves to a one-size-fits-all strategy. Tapping a stream of eligible tech talent demands a customized approach to conducting campus hackathons. Comprehensive planning and agile implementation, supported by an intuitive hackathon platform, is a reliable way to make the event a success every single time.

Campuses have always been one of the most sought after recruitment destinations for finding employable talent. Various assessments are used to zero in on suitable talent on campuses. Multiple internships and entry-level positions get filled and these also function as a talent storehouse for organizations’ future hiring needs. 

Summative assessments, which include typically  written exams, technical rounds and  face-to-face interview processes to measure  talent metrics, have been around for a long time now. The standard recruitment toolkit now includes behavioural assessments and these have honed the recruitment process to find the most appropriate hires done.

The test of behaviour and personality has been a part of recruitment processes of Defense, Bureaucracy and Intelligence for decades now. Nudge theory/Nudges, a concept in behavioural economics, is used for desirable outcomes in decision-making processes. The behavioural insights are applied routinely in the government, corporate, health care and business sectors. Now these are a part of standard recruitment processes across sectors. 

Behavioural Assessment

Behavioural assessments, the most used tool in clinical assessments, are applied in recruitment to evaluate the core competencies of the candidates and assess their fit to the core values of an organization. These assessments are used by employers as a part of their screening process to predict the behavior of prospective candidates and standardize their hiring process. These tests are reliable and thus validate the hiring process.

These assessments facilitate the examination of generic personality traits such as  customer service orientation, willingness to learn and leadership capabilities of individuals. Candidates who do well on these tests  easily align with the values and needs of the work environment while becoming enablers for emotional awareness and well-being among their peers. 

When behaviour feeds the talent and how!

There is a paradigm shift in the variables that decide employment today. The right attitude, emotional maturity and a proven ability for teamwork  amplify candidates’ chances of selection.  The assessment tools are quite like an algorithm. They are designed to gauge whether the natural inclination of a candidate meets the aspirations of the recruiters. 

The behavioural assessment tools are a type of psychological tool that are used to observe, explain, predict, or at times even correct behavior of test-takers. They employ psychometric tests where questions are open-ended, have no right or wrong answers, and are not leading in any way. Candidates are naturally led to respond with what they feel is right, making it a dependable process and identifying their likely behaviour and attitude even before they are recruited. 

Online behavioural tools include:

• Situational judgment tests which introduce a series of real-life scenarios relating to the job and organization in question. The test-taker must decide the most effective course of action for a given situation.
• Caselets which include the case description and are quick tools to test a  candidate’s business knowledge, aptitude and reasoning abilities. These are used to assess behavioral competencies in individual contributors, first-time managers and even mid-level managers.
• A case study simulator which uses experiential simulation to test candidates’ ability  to identify issues, brainstorm and suggest appropriate action steps to resolve them. 

There are several compelling reasons why employers should consider behavioural assessment in campus hiring. Behavioural assessments:

• Help predict a candidate’s performance for a particular role. 
• Ensure objectivity and fairness as the same tests are given to all the candidates. 
• Impart the organization’s values to potential employees and increase the probability of finding candidates who reflect the brand image .
• Give candidates a fair idea of  what the role entails. 
• Are free of bias as the results are based on data. 
• Are a good return on investment as they offer accuracy in hiring, ensuring that the organization need not spend on re-hiring.  the organization need not spend on hiring candidates for the same role again. 
• Make decision-making a quick and simple process. A behavioral assessment is ideal for this because the behaviour of two candidates is not  the same despite similar skill-sets. 

According to SHRM, a survey conducted found that of 237 companies of all sizes (about half of which are in the U.S) approximately 52 percent used skill and knowledge assessments in hiring, and 38 percent used predictive behavioral assessments.

The farsightedness of behavioural tools and talents

Behavioural components have a major role to play in recruitment. Technological advancements, globalization and the increased use of virtual spaces has driven behavioural assessment. The pandemic has accelerated the pace of incorporation of the behavioural component into virtual assessments.  The information age, coupled with AI integration, will only rationalize these tools in the virtual realm of recruitment and hiring.

Behavioural assessment tools will positively impact the volumes of hiring without any  compromise on the quality. What is more promising is that it extrapolates within the organization to augment skills, training and increase productivity. The virtual space is an infinite  dimension and behavioural assessment opportunities are abundant in the domain of recruitment and hiring. 

Campuses are a treasure trove of young talent, eager to learn and adapt to new environments. That is why most organisations spend time and effort to recruit from campuses, despite the hassle. However, many recruiters feel that campuses are a mixed bag of cards, considering the effort and time required. Quite often, the young recruits might end up not being a right fit and this in turn could lead to low productivity and high attrition. The bane of any hiring team!

The trick is to find the right talent for your needs. Talent that fits your technical requirements and is also a good cultural fit. That is the only way you can be assured of retaining the talent you went to such pains to recruit.

The Elephant in the Room

Why not go ahead and recruit students from the best colleges around the country, based on their academic performance alone? The skill gap is the elephant in the room! As per the 2019 Skills India Report, the Indian workforce is estimated to increase to 600 Million approximately by the year 2022. However, the India Skills Report released in Feb 2021 states that only 45.9% of the graduates in India are employable. This makes it imperative that employers validate the skills of the campus recruits independent of their academic performance.

The Assessment Tools in your Arsenal

There are a variety of assessments available to evaluate candidates. A well planned assessment strategy that focuses on the candidate’s technical capabilities as well as soft skills will empower you to find the right candidate for the job.  Many hiring partners are able to tailor assessments  to meet your organisation’s requirements. Here’s a non-exhaustive list of such assessments:

Man with a brain picture on the sign. Concept of education, intellectual person. Professional is looking for work, brain drain abroad. Lack of specialists workers. Brainstorming, thirst for knowledge

• Personality Test

Personality assessments help you assess important traits such as openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and stability. They also let you judge characteristics such as sociability, leadership orientation, cooperation, consideration, dependability, efficiency, even-temperament, self-confidence, abstract thinking and creative thinking.
Different types of personality assessments have been developed over the years. Here are a few of the more popular ones.

• Big Five Personality Model (OCEAN)

This model measures these five factors of a person’s personality:
Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism.
These factors are further divided into aspects and then into specific facets.

• Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)

The MBTI classifies people into 16 personality ‘types’. These types are extracted from four dichotomies:
Extraversion-Introversion, Sensing-Intuition, Thinking-Feeling, and Judging-Perceiving.

• DISC

The DISC assessment is a behavioural assessment tool, rather than a tool that assesses your personality. It measures four points called behaviour areas:
Dominance, Influence, Steadiness, and Conscientiousness.
It puts individuals into one of 12 profiles.
Personality assessments, done early on in the screening process of candidates, provide valuable insights that enable you to identify ideal candidates.

• Behavioural Assessment

These are assessments that enable you to predict the behaviour of your candidate using a simulated work environment. It helps hiring teams to evaluate whether the candidate will be a good cultural fit, and identify candidates for a specific role. Some of the commonly used behavioral assessment tools are – simulated judgement tests, group discussions, group activities, caselet sets etc.

• Cognitive Ability Test

Higher cognitive ability is correlated by 84% higher job performance. So, it is imperative that you test for cognitive abilities during candidate screening. Most of the tests for cognitive abilities evaluate the candidate’s logical reasoning through induction or deduction. In other words, cognitive ability tests assess a candidate’s ability to apply mental processes to solve on-the-job problems. Reasoning, perception, mathematical ability and verbal ability are some of the attributes associated with cognition and the ability to acquire new job knowledge.

• Coding Tests

If you are in the business of hiring techies then coding tests are a must. You can auto-assess the skills related to backend programming, database programming, data science programming, frontend programming, scripting, and more, using compilers and validated test cases. A hiring partner, such as HirePro, enables you to design the tests for screenings, capability assessments, or hackathons based on your needs. You could also host interactive coding sessions with candidates to accurately assess their technical skills.
Here are some insights which will streamline your selection process:

• Stack rank: rank, percentile, marks
• Code status: compilation status, test case status, time to solve
• Code performance: average memory consumption, average execution time
• Code quality: cyclomatic complexity, lines of code, plagiarism score

• Role-based Tests

Would you give a coding test when trying to hire an account manager for an insurance broker? No, right? You need a role-based or job-specific test to evaluate the competency of a candidate. The test should be able to evaluate whether the candidate has the competency necessary for the role. For example, an account manager for an insurance broker should have a basic understanding of the insurance principles and laws that are applicable. It would also be advisable for the manager to be proficient in the basic principles of statistics, such as probability. You can customize your role-based tests to include tests for advanced quantitative abilities too. This will enable you to hire the best fit for the role.

• Remote Work Assessment

Remote work has become an increasingly pervasive style of working. Soft skills such as communication, time management, self-motivation and responsibility are important traits that affect employee productivity when working remotely. These traits could further influence the efficiency and morale of the entire team. This in turn makes hiring with a keen look out for these traits an essential part of today’s hiring reality. You could use personality and behavioural assessments to validate these traits in an employee. A focus on these traits will enable you to assess employee readiness to ensure business continuity.

• Learning Agility

A World Economic Forum report estimates that by 2025, 85 million jobs may be displaced by machines, but 97 million new jobs may emerge due to a new dynamic between people and technology. Most CEOs agree that the skill gap is one of the biggest threats to business continuity and success. Finding employees with the ability to learn on the job, and apply their knowledge to new situations, is essential for the organisation’s growth. Keep this in mind when designing your campus recruitment assessments. It’s just a matter of tweaking your assessments to include this facet of a candidate’s personality.

• Digital Readiness

The fourth industrial revolution has made digitization an inherent part of life. The remote working requirements that COVID-19 imposed on us have further emphasized the need for digitization and automation. It is imperative that you hire employees who are digitally ready, even if their job profile does not really require this skill set. Hence, even if you are hiring a technician for your laboratory, it would serve you best if you validated the candidate for digital readiness as well. If you doubt this logic, all you need to do is recall the mayhem and confusion that preceded schools moving to a digital classroom structure post the onset of the pandemic. You can easily embed a digital readiness test into your current array of assessments with the help of a capable hiring partner.

• Language Proficiency Test

Every job requires some level of communication. Some more than others, but basic communications skills are essential in any job. This makes language proficiency vital to the candidate’s effectiveness on the job. Language tests can be tailored to a job role so that you do not overwhelm candidates with an unnecessarily tough test.

The assessments you design for your campus recruitment do not just enable you to hire the best candidates. They also help to build your employer brand. An assessment package that keeps candidates engaged will make you more appealing as an employer. Many organisations have now started including elements of gamification in their recruitment assessments. This not only keeps the candidates engaged but also gives you the opportunity to include simulations to judge how well candidates react to work scenarios. The added advantage you now have is the ability to actually do all your recruitment assessments remotely. This helps you save on cost and time while evaluating a larger number of candidates. A well planned and executed assessment schedule for your campus recruitment efforts can result in a higher ROI for your hiring team.

If you want to learn more about customised assessments for campus recruitment, please reach out to us @ +91-80-66560000 or sales@hirepro.in.

Resources

• inc42.com
• indianexpress.com
• economictimes.indiatimes.com

Last year, the pandemic forced organizations to come up with alternative solutions for conducting campus recruitment. Remote technology for conducting interviews gained ground as restrictions on in-person interactions continued to be imposed by governments worldwide. One year on, video interviews are widely accepted as a solution for high-volume campus recruitment. Since virtual campus hiring is now here to stay, this is a good time to look at the efficacy of video interviewing and the advantages it offers. When done correctly, video interviews can be just as effective as in-person interviews.

Convenience for candidates and interviewers

Talented candidates can be approached easily and hiring managers can effectively engage them in a non-committal way. One of the greatest advantages of video interviews is that it is a time-saver as it allows flexibility to schedule interviews according to the convenience of time-pressured candidates. Video interviews also get completed sooner than in-person interviews. For a recruiting organization, this means a greater number of candidates can be screened in less time, so that more time can be spent with the most qualified candidates before hiring.

Cost reduction

Video interviews reduce the travel costs of candidates and interviewers. This is the primary reason for most recruiters to use video interviews. These cost savings are multiplied when international talent/interviewers are involved.

High volume hiring

Companies such as TCS and Wipro hire thousands of students through campus hiring every year. Asynchronous video interviews come in handy when hiring such large volumes, owing to the flexibility they offer to hiring managers and candidates.

Better assessment of skills

Video interviewing enables recruiters to closely observe a candidate’s facial expressions, body language, and overall appearance. These non-verbal clues can help hiring managers to decide if the candidate is a good fit for their company. The visual screening can highlight how well the candidate researched the company based on how he/she dresses for the video interview, the time taken to respond thoughtfully to questions and other aspects which showcase the candidate’s communication skills.

The use of live coding windows allows enhanced assessment of candidates’ technical skills. The use of in-built whiteboarding enables hiring managers to witness candidates’ problems solving skills.

Evaluation of candidates’ command over technology

Video interviews provide a good yardstick for measuring the tech-savviness of the candidates as it will directly affect their remote work productivity. The hiring managers can, for example, discuss the interviewee’s social media profiles, online portfolio, live-work samples, and presentations right alongside the interview discussion. They can also share their own content with candidates while starting discussions, to see how well candidates interact with them in cyberspace.

Connecting with talent across the world

Video interviewing can enable access to international talent efficiently and cost-effectively. This may help the company to bring in a global perspective.

Detect and Control impersonation in interviews

One disadvantage of using remote technology in mass recruitment drives is the risk of impersonation, due to the absence of conventional, one-on-one, in-person interactions with candidates. A dedicated video interviewing platform, however, can get around this problem as it uses AI-powered ID verification to automatically detect if the interviewee is the registered candidate and it functions throughout the video interview process.

With the expected advances in holographic imaging and augmented reality, it is safe to say that the video interview experience will become an integral part of the hiring process in the years to come. While doing video interviews, the abilities of the candidates can be tested through digital assessments and online coding interviews.

At HirePro, we offer video interview solutions to help eliminate an interviewer’s potential biases. Our solutions help hiring managers assess a candidate’s suitability for placement across the company and not just for a specific project/team. We also offer interview services where our interview panelists who are qualified subject matter experts with rich industry experience can present you with a filtered set of candidates. Our expertise thus helps recruiters to enhance their ability to attract critical talent in today’s competitive market. Call us at 080 6656 6000 or write to us at sales@hirepro.in for a demo.

The COVID-19 pandemic that struck last year upended life at work as we knew it. Going to the office in person became impossible for long periods of time in most parts of the world. This accelerated trends that had already existed, with remote work, virtual meetings, virtual recruitment, and video interviews being some of them.
In the current situation, with traditional face-to-face interviews being on hold, many recruiters have been relying on virtual recruitment for high-volume campus hiring. Video interviews, more specifically asynchronous video interviews, offer the much-needed flexibility that recruiters need to evaluate large numbers of graduating students.

What are asynchronous video interviews (AVIs)?

Asynchronous video interview (AVI) is an emerging trend in video interviews where the candidate records video answers to pre-recorded interview questions through the help of a video interview platform. The term “asynchronous” is used since the interviewer is not present at the time the interviewee is recording the answers to questions. These interviews are also called on-demand interviews or one-way interviews.

How do asynchronous (one-way) interviews work?

Recruiters send out URLs for interviews to interviewees. Upon accessing this link, the video interview software intuitively guides the candidate through the interview process. Each question posed to the candidate has a limited response time during which the candidate records answers on the interviewing platform. Once the answers are submitted, they could be reviewed by any number of interviewers or decision makers at the recruiting company.

AVIs making waves!

AVIs are being primarily used by large organizations to take decisions on whether to move candidates to the next interview round. In fact, certain industries such as hospitality, manufacturing, retail, and the BPO sector have shown a higher proclivity to choosing AVIs for their initial screening. Let’s look at some of the benefits offered by AVIs:

• Increases hiring efficiency –

Considering the volumes hiring teams need to deal with during campus recruitments, AVIs are an efficient way to quickly pare down the number of candidates who need to be scheduled for one-on-one live interviews. Not just that, AVIs allow companies to cut travel costs and reach as many meritorious students as possible from a host of campuses.

• Enables a collaborative hiring process –

Finding time slots for interviews that are convenient for both the interviewee as well as the interviewer has been challenging for most recruiters. AVIs lay to rest this issue, giving candidates the flexibility to decide a convenient time for recording their answers, as well as enabling the hiring team to evaluate candidates at its convenience.

• Helps assess communication and soft skills of candidates –

The importance of good communication skills to be successful at work cannot be overemphasised! With AVIs, recruiters get an initial insight into the personality of candidates without the need for scheduling live interviews.

• Standardizes the hiring process and reduces biases –

As a recruiter, you are well aware of the importance of combating biases when making crucial hiring decisions. AVIs allow you to record a standard set of questions for all candidates for a particular job opening. This allows recruitment teams to easily compare candidates and make fast decisions during their recruitment drives.

• Boosts employer brand –

In this era of talent wars for prime candidates, ensuring that potential candidates have an excellent interview experience is a must for talent acquisition teams. Asynchronous video interviews give candidates the flexibility to decide the time for the video interview and avoid interview scheduling barriers, thereby, making their interview experience hassle-free.

The “Ifs and Buts”

Several candidates find interviewing through AVIs less daunting since they do not need to face a live interviewer. On the other hand, for many candidates, the prospect of speaking into a camera and answering questions with no live interviewer at the other end could be an uncomfortable experience. Recruiters often worry that the human disconnect could even put candidates off and prompt them to move on to the next opportunity. Yet, this could be just a case of candidates’ initial hesitation, as AVIs have been only recently adopted by several companies. As a matter of fact, “chatting with a bot” might be the way we will all attend interviews in the not-too-distant future!

Ready for wide adoption

AVIs save time for both employers as well as job seekers. With the advantages of AVI being so apparent, it’s a given that this kind of recruitment method will become more widespread in the days and years to come!

HirePro offers asynchronous video interviews that help you take scheduling issues out of the equation and find candidates that are a best fit for your requirements! Reach out to sales@hirepro.in for a demo.

“People are not your most important asset. The right people are.” In this age when success is measured in terms of resilience and sustainability, these words by Jim Collins, researcher, and consultant focused on business management, are more relevant than ever before. A carefully crafted interview process might be that crucial piece of the puzzle that enables you to hire the right people.

A recruiting partner with a tool to manage campus hiring workflows can get you to the stage of shortlisting relevant talent in a campus recruitment drive. But you need to have a robust interview selection process to find the right candidate. Many organisations are outsourcing the interview process to ensure they hire the best candidates.

Why Outsourcing Interviews is a Good Idea

Traditionally, interviews were conducted by in-house interviewers. Organisations have now moved to outsourcing interviews because of the many advantages they bring to the table.

Yes, your internal panel of expert interviewees will focus on hiring the right talent. They would also be best placed to figure out if the candidate would be a good cultural fit. But, do they have the time to dedicate to the long and gruelling campus interview process?

The other factor is in-depth knowledge to conduct a meaningful interview. You might need to hire talent with expertise in new technology. In such cases, it is quite possible that your panel of in-house consultants does not have the necessary expertise to choose the right candidate. It is best if you outsource the interview process in such a scenario.

Outsourcing Interviews – A Look at the Bright Side

Let’s take a look at some of the benefits of outsourcing interviews.

• Beat the running clock: Campus recruitment requires more time because of the sheer volume of the talent you are trying to hire. Taking away in-house experts from projects to conduct campus interviews will cost you revenue. If your organization runs on lean teams, then this could even affect your project outcomes.
• can schedule an interview, conduct it and provide the results within short well-defined time frames.
• Most candidates expect hiring decisions to be made within a week. If your interview process drags on because of a lack of availability of internal resources to conduct the interviews, it might cripple the entire process. In other words, you might lose the more promising candidates to your competition, just because of the longer interview process. The best technical
• interview solution providers

1.More Bang for your Buck

As you know, time is money. Now when it’s the time of two or three of your in-house experts, you need to calculate what their time will cost in terms of salary as well as in terms of productivity. When you compare that to the cost of outsourcing interviews, you’ll see that you are not incurring a cost but actually saving.

2. Throw Unconscious Bias out of the Window

Internal teams tend to hire people who are similar to them and would be easy to work with. This dilutes your ability to build a diverse team. A good recruitment partner with the ability to conduct interviews on your behalf can ensure that cultural fit is achieved while eliminating unconscious biases related to gender, region, ethnicity, sexual orientation etc.

3. Quality Matters!

Most of the hiring partners who specialise in outsourced interviews have a panel of expert interviewers and a well-defined feedback process. This ensures that the highest quality is maintained while giving the candidate a good interview experience.

Organizations use hiring partners for coding or technical interviews and interviews for specific roles with niche skill sets.

Companies have been outsourcing assessments and interviews for many years now. The outbreak of the pandemic emphasised this mode of hiring as a viable solution that would free up your in-house resources for other strategic roles within the organisation. HirePro offers interview solutions allow you to tap into the expertise of a consultant who would otherwise not be available to you.

To know more, get in touch with us at sales@hirepro.in