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The old-school job interview process can be a headache for recruiting teams and feel even more arduous for roles with naturally high turnover, such as call center agents or retail workers.
What if a tool could make that headache go away? Enter HiringBranch, a Canada-based software company providing an AI-based talent screening assessment platform for call centers. The company has worked with large employers, including IT company Infosys and Bell Canada.
HiringBranch evaluates whether job candidates have the key skills needed to successfully complete the job to which they’ve applied. For example, someone vying for a customer success representative role would sit through a mock customer complaint call, and the AI would assess how well the candidate is able to resolve the issue.
HiringBranch’s platform can evaluate candidates on up to 30 skills—primarily focused on linguistic and soft skills, such as active listening, building rapport, or showing empathy—though it tends to assess candidates for just a handful of skills necessary for a specific role.
“Everyone’s so metric-driven nowadays; you measure everything. And when it comes to hiring, using an interview process, it’s very difficult to measure,” says Stephane Rivard, CEO and cofounder. With HiringBranch, Rivard says companies can capture a real-time assessment of candidates’ skills in as little as 20 minutes, and they’re benchmarked based on an analysis of the company’s current employee base.
“It’s consistent, and it’s standardized, but it really allows you to find repeatedly the employees that drive success,” Rivard adds.
Fundraising Direct, a Canada-based telephone fundraising provider for nonprofits like Unicef, WWF, and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, started using HiringBranch’s platform in 2021.
Previously, time-to-hire for its phonathon callers would take at least two weeks. HiringBranch and Fundraising Direct created a 20-minute automated speaking test that scored candidates on conversational fluency, establishing rapport, and ability to follow instructions. Candidates who score 75% or higher can proceed to onboarding.
Today, the time-to-hire for these roles takes as little as three business days, and more than 90% of the job interview volume for phonathon callers has been cut, says Sarah Wise, director of operations at Fundraising Direct. The company also reduced hiring costs by 1.5 full-time employees’ salaries, the budget for which has been redirected to focus more on coaching and getting new hires on the phone faster.
“As I’m saying the words now, journeying back to 2018 and pre-pandemic, I can’t believe there are literally three steps to our recruitment,” says Wise. “They submit their resume, and we have a look. If we like the look, then we send out that pre-hire assessment. If their score is at least 75%, we send them to training. It’s just that simple.”
Paige McGlauflin
paige.mcglauflin@fortune.com
@paidion
Reporter's Notebook
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Around the Table
A round-up of the most important HR headlines.
- Big-name corporations like Meta and Google have instituted stricter monitoring of employee badge swipes. Some companies are even tracking employee IP addresses and buying chairs with weight sensors to make sure employees are in the office. Wall Street Journal
- The U.S. National Labor Relations Board is accusing the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), an organization that has historically defended free speech and individual rights, of firing an employee who engaged in collective action against the organization. The ACLU claims the employee was fired for “just cause.” Bloomberg
- More white-collar firms are offering extensive parental leave to eliminate gender pay gaps and encourage workers, especially women, to apply and stay with the company. However, men who opt to take their paid paternity leave are sometimes subject to judgment. Financial Times
- Employers plan to cut back on promotions by 1.6% and slow merit-based pay increases by 0.3% in 2024 as the labor market cools off, according to a Mercer survey of more than 900 employers. CNN
Watercooler
Everything you need to know from Fortune.
Tuning out differences. Alex Mahon, the CEO of British television network Channel 4, criticized Gen Z workers at the Royal Television Society in Cambridge last week for lacking the ability to collaborate and conference with people of differing opinions. The TV boss described the trend as “dangerous.” —Orianna Rosa Royle
Online summers. New York City-based hedge fund manager Pershing Square makes its employees come to the office five days a week, but only for 10 months out of the year. In an interview with the New York Post last week, CEO Bill Ackman said employees can work from anywhere during July and August as long as they show up in person if something important comes up. —Steve Mollman
AI necessities. Just as employees adapted to remote work during the pandemic, Microsoft executives hope they'll quickly adapt to using AI-powered assistants like its tool Copilot, which helps users write code or emails, among other activities. —Rachyl Jones
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