Why Interview Management Systems are a "Must Have" for any Organization
With the growth of Interview Management Systems (IMS), they are now becoming the dominant player in the Talent Acquisition Technology Space. With what started out as simply as tools where hiring managers could interview candidates online, IMSs today offer much much more. With the challenges that the Talent Acquisition and Human Resources departments face, especially in the emerging markets, the IMSs have had to offer many more functions as the need arose, which today have made them a must have for any organization.
Candidate Engagement
Using Application Programming Interfaces (APSs), an IMS can connect with various different messaging and emailing apps and send out relevant messages to candidates. This can also be done by creating specific apps which the candidates can download too. Once the IMS receives data from about a candidate, this process can be kicked off and contact initiated. If the candidate is not responsive to the various messages, the HR or TA function can deduce that perhaps the candidate in question is not interested in taking his or her candidature forward. Then they can either follow up with a phone call or drop the candidate all together.
Candidate Skills Assessment, including Psychometric Testing
Gone are the days where the interviewer[i] asked a few questions online to check whether the candidate knows what he or she is talking about. Now organizations are relying on online assessments to verify whether the candidate is actually proficient in the skills they being interviewed for. This can include either “coding†tests where the candidate can actually write code on a coder pad and then the code be actually compiled. Or it can even be multiple choice tests, and in some cases candidates can be asked to answer essay type questions. Plus is required, Psychometric tests can also be carried out via the IMS. Any good IMS offers these functionalities inbuilt today, and the exact details can be configured based on the requirements gathered.
Biometric Identification
The problem of candidate impersonation is on the rise[ii], wherein the business recognizes that the person working for them is not the candidate they had interviewed. And this has become more prevalent during and post covid when candidates were being hired remotely and were working remotely. Using the right IMS today, enables a business organization to verify the candidates’ identity when they join by matching their face and voice using the data stored in the IMS.
AI Generated Interview Feedback
In many cases one finds that the feedback from the interviewer is incomplete or biased. Using AI, the Next Gen IMSs can generate the interview feedback, which is quite comprehensive and unbiased. ?Using Machine Learning (ML), the IMS can capture the interview conversation, match that to interviews that it has in its database, and rank the answers based on the performance of the previous interviewers.
AI Based Candidate Assessment
Using ML, the AI based IMS can also share feedback about the candidates’ technical skills, knowledge about the subject, communication skills and so on. This is part of the interview feedback, but is more focused on the candidate, and this feedback is also unbiased. This functionality also enables the IMS to match the candidate to other openings that the business organization has.
领英推è
Candidate Onboarding
Once a candidate has been selected, the latest IMSs allow them to upload all their documents, which can be verified using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) or even manually. These can then be sent over to any HR system that the organization might be using. Post verification, the offer letter can also be generated from the IMS. And when the candidate does come to join, their identity can be then verified using the biometric information stored in the IMS.
Reports & Analytics: Total Talent Management Metrics[iii]
IMSs are usually integrated with many different systems as more and more organizations aim for streamlined workflows involving their talent acquisition ecosystem. This includes Vendor Management Systems (VMSs) like Fieldglass or Beeline, you can also have Applicant Tracking Systems like Taleo, Freshteam, Bullhorn, Zoho Recruit. Aling with the forementioned systems, the IMS can be integrated with the Organizations website, or Job Boards and even LinkedIn. All the candidate profiles coming via these mediums can be passed on to the IMS where the data can be parsed and then interview invites shared with the candidates. After the interview has conducted, in the AI based IMSs, the candidate assessment can be auto generated, reports shared and the data stored.
Summary
With the enhancement in their capabilities, IMSs offer much more functionality than before. Due to the fact the IMS can be integrated with many different systems and is able to pull data from these, it can act us a “Unified†Data Warehouse of sorts and provide wholistic reporting. In the recent past, whereas organizations had to use different systems for each of the steps involved in the hiring life cycle, today an IMS can manage many of these functions, leading to significant reduction in the manpower requirements and also offer a smooth and streamlined user experience. We should see significant deployment of IMSs in the future, and I am sure that the IMS will only increase their repertoire of functions, offering great value to organizations, leading to significant benefits realization.
[i] By Interviewer, I am referring to the Hiring Manager, HR Personnel or someone from the Talent Acquisition Team. Basically, it can be any person who interviews a candidate.