Improving Interviews: A Game-Changing Software Platform for Hiring Managers
These days, challenges with hiring and recruiting are hitting virtually every segment of every industry. From top to bottom, companies of all sizes are having difficulty attracting, hiring, and on-boarding great applicants for critical roles. Plus, with remote work as the new norm, competition for candidates isn’t local or regional—it is international.
Old methods aren’t working. Today’s recruiting realities demand an entirely new approach.
That’s the vision of Improving Interviews, a Columbus-based software startup, which equips companies to identify and hire talent faster, while gaining insights from the hiring process. Those insights create a continuing cycle of hiring success for companies that subscribe to Improving Interviews.
Rethinking and Retooling the Hiring Process for Applicants and Employers
As a professional recruiter or hiring manager inside a company, has it ever happened to you that a candidate who looked amazing on paper seemed a mismatch in the job interview? Was that because the candidate identification process was flawed (possible but not likely given the sophistication of candidate identification tools)—or is it because the candidate lacked the “soft” skills to effectively express just how their specific capabilities matched the position that you were trying to fill?
Wouldn’t it be great if that front-end investment in finding excellent candidates resulted in interviews that accurately reflected the job candidates’ abilities and fit?
Improving Interviews Delivers a Model Designed for Today’s Ultra-Competitive Talent Environment
“Many companies bypass applicants who would actually be a very good fit for an open role because those applicants weren’t able to demonstrate in the interview process that they have the capability to do the job,” said Troy Gibson, Co-founder of Improving Interviews.
Gibson and Co-founder Josh Demidovich have experience in executive leadership, brand building, re-engineering—and importantly key account strategic sales. Over their careers each was intrigued with improving the hiring process for individuals and companies.
“As I interviewed more and more people over my career,” Gibson said, “ I saw that people don’t realize that the hiring process is a sales process. That’s where we started with Improving Interviews. We have been surprised about the tools, effort, and money that are put into various parts of the hiring process that don’t have the necessary impact to move the needle in hiring. We make that investment, then when we get to the interviews with candidates, we let them sink or swim.”
How Improving Interviews Works
Improving Interviews’ patent-pending software as a service (SaaS) platform that brings an entirely new approach to applicant’s interview preparation. The platform is a game-changer for hiring managers, human relations departments, recruiting agencies, and even college and trade school placement offices.
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“Interviewing is a skill, and not a skill you use very often,” said Gibson. “We help candidates position themselves in a way that makes sense for the job they are seeking. Enterprises are recognizing that if they can coach candidates to come through the process in a more effective manner, the conversation is easier. We coach candidates on how to not create bias and companies how to eliminate it from the hiring side. It neutralizes a very subjective process.”
The idea is not to slip candidates the “answers to the test,” but to take the guess work out of the information that the job-seeker needs to prepare and convey. It is the opposite of the traditional approach.
“Part of the problem is that no one ever got fired for not hiring someone,” Gibson said, “when the whole purpose of an interview is around understanding how the candidate can do the job. Employers shouldn’t be looking to knock out candidates but to look for ways to make a candidate stronger so they can play on the team.”
For strategically-minded corporations, candidates who can more successfully convey their fit as a potential employee in interviews save hiring managers time by allowing them to fill open roles with appropriate candidates more quickly. After going to the time and expense of developing a short list of interview candidates, the last thing a company should be willing to do is lose a talented and suitable candidate because the interview didn’t go right.
“Normally, to accomplish what we are accomplishing with candidates, would take an employment coach an hour to an-hour-and-a-half,” Gibson said. “We are able to have those one-to-one sessions in 15 to 20 minutes and have a more impactful outcome in that shorter time. Our customers can increase job offers without increasing internal teams.”
Covid-19 has accelerated the way corporations think about the wall between employers and job seekers. That’s another reason for companies to change their approach to talent.
“Going to remote, the gap between open jobs and job-seekers, calls for employers to be more empathetic in the process with new strategies to attract the best talent,” Gibson said. “Talent is not just looking for a job any more, they are looking for a perfect match, and that match includes how they are treated in the hiring process.”
