Over the years, the idea of rapid-fire dating has gained massive popularity and has spread across the world, due to its fast, easy and somewhat effective nature.
But what about speed hiring?
Similar to speed dating, speed interview is a method that allows hiring managers to meet and assess different candidates together during a short time.
With the COVID-19 outbreak, many employers were left with no choice but to reduce staff costs by laying off employees, cutting salaries, and placing hiring on hold.
As companies continue setting up directories for employees that have been laid off ever since Airbnb showed the way, a group of startups have joined forces to help employees get facetime on the speedinterview platform in Singapore.
Some of the companies who are a part of this initiative include Hireplace, Wantedly, TalentStork, and PeopleStrong.
In an interview with e27, the co-founder of Hireplace Stewart Chen spoke about speed interviews, how it is helping working professionals find jobs during the pandemic, and how to ace one.
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What is the idea behind speed interviews? Is it a tested concept in the corporate world?
Speed interview is a format that has been applied in various recruiting events. I was in one, two years ago, that was meant for full-stack developers. The event completely sold out and there were around 50 candidates and 10 renowned employers. The event was a success with both the employers and candidates coming back for more the next year.
More importantly, it was not a career fair. It was small and intimate and I believe that’s the future of all hiring events. Having said that, career was pretty chaotic and waiting physically in a busy queue was not fun.
So I thought there must be a better way to do it, which is why we decided to have virtual speed interviews.
During COVID-19, what are some challenges surrounding human resource (HR)?
This pandemic has forced closures of many businesses but for those that are still standing, challenges in HR revolve around enabling remote or flexible work (WFH), digitising the HR infrastructure, employee engagement, but the most important issues are layoffs and furloughs.
Almost every day you come across news of layoffs from the smallest to the biggest companies and in Singapore, our jobless rate is at its highest in 10 years. There’s no longer a talent crunch. It’s now a job crunch and even graduates and interns are not spared.
How is Hireplace helping companies or employees during this time?
For companies that are still hiring, the number of applications has skyrocketed and HR might find it hard to cope with the sheer number of shortlisted candidates. I was talking to one of the banks in Singapore recently and they have 500 shortlisted candidates (out of many thousands) waiting to be interviewed.
So how do you do this effectively? You can’t just put three candidates in one call and interview all of them in one shot without irking everybody. So here, we are helping the companies create speed interview sessions with these shortlisted candidates so that everybody gets a slice of 1-on-1 face time with the HR or hiring managers.
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Universities have tens of thousands of students that need to be placed under internships or full-time roles, and traditional virtual career fairs and job portals might not provide results quick enough.
We help some of these universities, such as NUS, by organising Virtual Hiring Events targeted to a specific role, companies and graduating or interning cohorts. These “events” can be completed under an hour like a meeting and employers can screen through 10 students easily from a particular area of study. Students like this as they get to speak to various employers in a short time.
If a company has never tried speed hiring before but want to try it, how can they prepare themselves?
Speed interview can be really effective if the company has many candidates to interview for a role.
If they have that and want to try for their existing pipeline of candidates, they could contact us on hireplace or email us. On the other hand, if they want to attend an existing event hosted on speedinterview they could register their company on the respective event page.
In terms of preparation, they just need to make sure they are on a good internet connection with a working mic and webcam for their laptops. Really it’s just like a normal interview but time-boxed so really focus on the questions you want to ask, keep an open mind, and network!
What do people need to know about making a good first impression during speed interviews?
I think it’s the same way you make a good impression with any stranger. Be curious, interested and courteous.
However, since they could be your potential employer, I think it’s very important to do your research about the company and the role before going into the chat. Make sure you are prepared. It would also help if you have something that they could remember you by, a particular hobby, skill, story or even a cool hairstyle.
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Do you think that speed interviews have some amount of bias in the process?
Firstly, bias is innate in everyone and this affects our actions, thoughts and how we choose our friends. The same bias creeps into systems, business rules, policies etc.
The field of AI which a lot of HR tech is built upon is not spared either. If your resume uses words such as “executed” and “captured” frequently, you might be a favoured applicant in Amazon (once upon a time), and there’s also a high probability that you are a male according to few articles. If algorithms can be biased, how do you expect humans not to be?
There’s no silver bullet to fix this and it’s simply our responsibility to be conscious of our actions as it would hurt those that are discriminated against. And the one thing in common in all job applications is that you need to be interviewed by another person.
We simply speed this process up but it does not introduce new biases that someone might already have.
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Image Credit: Unsplash: Kyle Glenn
The post You’ve heard about speed dating. Here’s what you need to know about speed hiring appeared first on e27.
Brian Cu leaves Grab