The vendor, HRMC, markets a solution called Acclaim that uses human-controlled artificial intelligence to interview job applicants.
There are several issues with traditional interviewing that include:
- the poor quality questions interviewers use when evaluating candidates
- the expense and lost productive time spent interviewing
- the need to have a complete resume before an initial screening interview has occurred
The approach HRMC scripts the ideal (not average) job qualifications and creates explicit proof points that must be verified by applicants. Applicants can respond to job listings by taking a telephone-based interactive interview over the telephone. An IVR (interactive voice response system) system asks the candidate very relevant questions. Responses are captured for future playback with a recruiter.
What distinguishes this approach are the following characteristics:
- The software asks a qualifying question (e.g., “Have you ever had to fire a poor performer?”)
- If the candidate responds ‘yes’, the artificial intelligence behind the software follows up with one or more behavioral and insightful questions (e.g., “How did you handle this and what would you do differently today?”)
- If the candidate responds ‘no’, the software skips to another line of questioning. If the experience this question relates to is critical to the execution of the job, the interview could be materially shortened and the applicant moved down the scoring list for applicants.
- The very best candidates move to the top of the follow-up list for a face-to-face interview.
This solution is definitely an improvement over prior methods. Recruiters are substantially more efficient as they can play back dozens of candidate responses in the time they would normally spend interviewing just one candidate. Second, the lost time and expense that companies would incur to conduct face-to-face interviews is substantially reduced. This is a good thing in a tough economy. And, the quality of insight that a company gains about the candidates is materially improved.
