Equitas’ voice-led interview software is the fairest and most efficient way to interview and assess candidates, with the tools to continuously improve the process and provide a clear strategic advantage when it comes to hiring.
People power
A popular adage is that people are a company’s greatest asset, and whether you agree with that or if you think there is another area that is just as important, there is no denying that employees, and the teams they compose, do play a vital role in the success of your business.
Therefore, companies should be investing in their people and teams as much as they invest in other parts of the business, if not more, in order to ensure their success. A large part of this investment should focus on attracting, identifying and hiring the best people for the job, in the most fair and efficient way.
Fairness and Diversity
This fairness in the hiring process is critical, as each candidate should be given an equal opportunity to demonstrate their skills, abilities and why they would be right for the role and the company. By basing hiring on this, companies will also be improving their diversity, as there is no reason why demographics should impact their ability to perform a role. Furthermore, candidates want to work in diverse teams, which is reflected in the fact that more employers are focusing on diversity, equity and inclusion. There is a clear strategic advantage in making diversity a priority and it should be part of the strategy for hiring and the business as a whole.
Diversity in the workplace can be affected in many ways throughout the recruitment process, but a large impact comes from bias in decision making. By using informal interview processes with no structure, trying to reduce time and cost per hire and basing hiring decisions on guesswork and gut instinct, companies are having a negative effect, or no effect at all, on diversity in the workplace and ending up with the wrong people being hired.
The cost of hiring the wrong candidate can be up to $250k, with some estimates putting this at 30% of that employee’s annual salary. This is a huge amount of cost, as well as further effects on employee engagement, productivity and creativity. When it comes to diversity, a 2020 study by CitiGroup has shown that racism and inequality in the US has cost the economy $16tn over the last 20 years.
So not only are companies incurring costs from hiring the wrong candidates, their lack of action in addressing a lack of diversity, equity and inclusion is affecting their ability to succeed in the long run.
The fairest way to hire
To address these challenges, Equitas has developed the next generation of voice-led interview and assessment capability. We have combined our technology and approach to offer companies the fairest and most efficient way to deliver interviews.
Companies spend a lot of time and money on creating frameworks, materials and questions that will allow them to identify the best candidates, and this structure has been shown to still be one of the most effective ways to predict success. This is why our remote interview software facilitates structured interviews consistently, across all sessions and interviewers, providing each candidate with an equal opportunity to answer and prove why they should be hired, based on having received the same information and time in which to answer.
Equitas’ features also allow for more engagement with candidates in the delivery of interviews, so that interviewers can have better conversations with candidates and spend more time on assessing them.
This engagement is carried on in the evaluation of candidates post-interview. Detailed scoring criteria create quantitative data to develop a more accurate picture of candidates, from which to make a decision. Feedback is easier and quicker to create with feedback assist acting as a starting point for interviewers to provide constructive feedback for candidates. This has a massive impact on candidate engagement and company brand, which is covered in greater depth here.
Data, the key to reducing bias
When it comes to harnessing data to reduce bias, initially Equitas puts the focus on candidate content. By basing scoring on what the candidate has said, there is a much higher likelihood that they are being assessed and hired based on their skills, abilities and whether they will be a good fit for the role. These evidence-based decisions are more reliable than gut instinct or intuition and should therefore be relied upon for hiring decisions.
Beyond scoring, data is used to analyse the performance of a company’s interview process. Currently it’s difficult to know how your interview process is performing, where bias is occurring or where there are issues that could be stopping the best candidates from being hired.
As we have seen, this can be a costly mistake. In context, if you knew that delays in your supply chain were costing you $250k per year, you would immediately take steps to address this. You would analyse the data, identify what the issues are and where they are occurring and then determine the actions to mitigate them. So why not do this to your interview process.
Our remote interview software analyses key performance indicators from interviews, overlaid with demographic data, to identify where bias has occurred, or could occur in future, as well as areas for improvement in the process. The insights this drives are then used to continuously improve the interview and hiring process, to reduce bias and hire the best candidates.
So why choose Equitas?
We want to work with you to help you deliver your interviews in the fairest and most efficient way possible, allowing you to focus more on candidates and hire the best people for the job.
However, where we will help you the most is in the insights and continuous improvement of your interview process. Through this combination of best practice approach and analytics, we will help you to optimise your hiring process and build more diverse teams.
