This week Kyle Lagunas and I had the privilege of attending HireVue’s first Digital Disruption conference in Park City, UT. Looking back at HireVue’s journey, “disruption” seems to be the most appropriate word to describe its impact on the talent acquisition market. In a very short period of time, the digital interviewing provider has established itself as a product leader, assembled a talented team of industry gurus, and challenged the way companies recruit. By focusing on interactions rather than transactions, HireVue has redefined traditional models of interviewing and hiring talent.
Customers at the conference shared how video interviewing has impacted areas such as productivity, quality of hire, and overall efficiency. The challenge HireVue faces is determining where they go from here. Will they stay focused on addressing a few critical areas of talent acquisition (particularly interviewing) or will they continue to build capabilities that extend into broader talent acquisition – such as sourcing, branding and onboarding?
For maximum impact, Kyle and I agree that the HireVue team will need to balance their passion for innovation and disruption with an acute understanding of the basic needs of their end users. For example, their acquisition of Reschedge earlier this year tackles an age-old pain point in candidate assessment head-on by automating the scheduling and coordinating of interviews. By offering their clients the ability to do both more and better, HireVue will continue to disrupt the way we engage talent whichever direction they go.
Below are four reasons why we believe HireVue is a disrupter:
- Growth: Ten years ago, video interviewing was not a recognized category in recruitment technology. Companies were beginning to think about video, but it was not yet mainstream. HireVue is one provider that helped to raise awareness for the benefits of video interviewing by building a strong customer base (Boston Red Sox, Hilton Worldwide, Texas Instruments, and Accenture to name a few), significant growth (now at 200 employees) and a demonstrated impact on the business. Under Armour is an example of a customer that struggled with high-volume recruiting needs. Through the use of HireVue, it is now able to post a job on Friday and conduct hundreds of interviews by Monday.
- Mobile: HireVue is doing some very neat things with mobile. CEO Mark Newman, along with CTO Loren Larsen, did a live demo of the newest version of their mobile app Monday morning – and it was pretty impressive. For candidates, the UX was seamless and straightforward, minimizing guesswork for first-time users. For hiring managers, advanced features were balanced with basic functionality (e.g. users could watch videos while taking notes and reviewing the candidate’s resume), making it easy to keep the assessment process moving forward from start to finish.
- Analytics: Recruitment analytics are receiving a lot of hype. HireVue is launching some impressive dashboards and analytics capabilities in mid-June to help companies make better decisions around their hires. Their analytics module (aptly named Insights) takes a distinctly novel approach to talent assessment by evaluating candidates’ language and tone in order to identify key behaviors like distress and engagement. Insights was a primary topic of conversation in our private analyst session, and we’ll be keeping an eye out for further development in this area.
- Military Recruitment: Hiring veterans is a topic that most companies are prioritizing but few have a strategy in place. Even more surprising is that very few providers enable military recruitment efforts. HireVue is helping companies provide a positive candidate experience for veterans and improve their overall military recruitment efforts. They are customizing the interview and making the interactions organizations have with veterans meaningful.
As we continue to conduct research in the area of talent acquisition, video interviewing is one topic we plan to cover extensively. We’ll keep you posted on announcements and trends in this industry but would also love to hear from you.
–Madeline Laurano, Vice President of Talent Acquisition Practice
and Principal Analyst, Brandon Hall Group
@Madtarquin
–Kyle Lagunas, Talent Acquisition Analyst, Brandon Hall Group
@KyleLagunas
