How to achieve hiring success with HireVue and SmartRecruiters

In my role as a Solution Architect at HireVue I am fortunate that I get to work with some of the world’s most innovative brands and understand some of the best recruitment technology on the market. Some vendors are experts in designing their solutions from the ground up with the candidate, recruiter and the business’s needs in mind.

SmartRecruiters is one of those technologies. It integrates seamlessly into other hiring technologies, which is my main focus here at HireVue. We’ve partnered with SmartRecruiters to provide a completely self-service integration between our platforms which can be set up, enabled and configured into workflow within hours — not in days or weeks as with a traditional integration project. Your own super users across both HireVue and SmartRecruiters can administer and support the integration.

During my career I have run a team of implementation consultants and became a certified SI partner of the SmartRecruiters product, helping over 50 clients in my time go-live with an innovative, well-designed recruitment process that aided the recruiter and supported them in the hiring workflow. I’ve seen so many technology trends in the past 20+ years. 

The big move 10 years ago was to have an ATS very much embedded into the core HRIS and part of the same suite, the target aspiration of “Total Talent” and even REQless recruitment. I do, however, see a return of point solutions, and, specifically, some clients turning towards an independent ATS vendor and integrating it into the core HCM stack — with many turning to SmartRecruiters to help them power their hiring, at scale.

I help SmartRecruiters Recruiting customers integrate HireVue’s solutions to enhance their processes even further, giving their recruiters and hiring managers the opportunity to work from within their system of record, to automate manual tasks, and deliver a standout candidate experience that helps them find the best talent in a fair and equitable way.

Below are some of my career lessons on how to create a seamless hiring experience using SmartRecruiters and HireVue.

1. Identify the right partner (not just another vendor)

There are some essential criteria that you should look for when searching for hiring technology to enhance SmartRecruiters Recruiting. Choosing the wrong partner can lead to unnecessary time and resources being wasted on your integration project and leave you with a process that delays rather than delights.

• Technology: Minimize risk and delays by selecting a proven vendor that has experience within your industry and is able to reference the solutions they have provided in similar projects.
  • At HireVue, we use the combination of SmartRecruiters and HireVue to power our own Talent Acquisition process. This helps us to quickly engage, assess and hire the best, most diverse talent to keep our business firing.
• Team: You want an experienced project team that is open to looking beyond the product roadmap with you and who proactively pushes you to optimize each step in your process. A project team consisting of the Professional Services Team on the vendor’s side, combined with both HR and IT on the client’s side, will ensure that you have a diverse project team and a successful integration.
• SmartRecruiters Certified Partner: Aside from the vendor solving your pain points and their project teams delivering outstanding service, make sure the technology you integrate is fully-aligned and partnering with SmartRecruiters to ensure a truly customer-centric investment.
  • HireVue has partnered closely to build a 100% self-service connection between our platforms. This has negated the need for implementation projects, 3rd party resource overhead for clients, professional service costs from vendors, and can be done in under an hour.

2. Attract and empower candidates 

Expanding the reach of your recruitment process will help attract and engage as much diverse talent as possible. Although not all candidates will be successful, projecting your EVP and providing a quality experience will ensure your company is thought of positively by your talent of tomorrow.

• AI: Use the power of AI and chatbots to learn about a candidate’s skills and surface job opportunities to them which the candidate may have previously filtered themselves out of. This is a more engaging experience and also gives the candidate an element of control — which is important.
• Empowerment: Enable candidates to ask questions using AI or a chatbot. This will help them understand more about the role, your culture, and reduce the risk of a new starter exiting the business early.
• Application: Bolster your core application format of contact details, career history, and CV upload by adding engaging assessments, scored questions, realistic job previews, and asynchronous interviewing to give recruiters better stack ranking and screening capability from within the application.

3. Supercharge your hiring

Many companies are now seeking to create a fully-digital end-to-end hiring journey. Often initially driven by a desire for greater efficiency, these projects also improve candidate experience and provide a consistent and science-backed way to find the best talent. A robust screening and interview process sits at the heart of your journey, the latest integrations now automatically push data into applications like SmartRecruiters Recruiting so that your teams can spend their time working from within one system.

• Assessments: Game-based assessments enable hiring managers to better predict candidate performance, while minimizing bias. You can assess a candidate's potential and job fit through gameplay linked solely to job-relevant competencies. This can also be used for internal mobility and leadership potential.
• On-demand video: Your candidates want the ability to conduct a video interview at a convenient time, location, and at their own pace. Similarly, you want to review the interviews on your terms and bring colleagues into the process, helping you improve quality and reduce bias. By making the process more flexible for all, you will also increase hiring speed, as you no longer need to schedule telephone interviews.
• Job previews: On-demand technology can also be used to share videos that give a realistic preview of a job and the culture of your company. You then ask candidates questions on what they have seen.
• Live video interview: Web conferencing tools like Teams or Zoom are great for seeing people remotely but are not a substitute for an interviewing platform. Solutions Like HireVue provide validated on-screen candidate questions to support fairness and reduce bias. They underpin data compliance for interview feedback and provide an ability to collaborate with colleagues on an interview. It’s also about how you want to show up in the market. By using an interview platform, you will also be able to present a much more branded experience to candidates and enable them to self-schedule interviews from times that you make available. 

“HireVue’s Live and OnDemand video interviewing solutions, alongside HireVue Builder, are ideal additions for customers who want to accelerate recruiting efficiency and achieve Hiring Success. We’ve seen how quickly organizations have been able to improve candidate engagement and decrease time to hire when they add HireVue to their existing workflow.”

Jerome Ternynck, Founder and CEO of SmartRecruiters

4. The offer

In today’s business landscape, experienced hires might come with a 1-3 month notice period. Graduate hires might receive an offer up to 1 year before they start a role. So it’s essential that you keep in regular dialogue with your new hires and use this time wisely to share and capture information as part of their onboarding.

• One system: One of the benefits of using the SmartRecruiters system in partnership with HireVue is that you have all of your data in one place. You can gather data via text in order for background checks, deliver training, or just to keep the candidate warm and engaged. This guarantees a more seamless experience without having to ask the candidate to login or search for information.
• Automation: Use the capability of the latest hiring technology to take care of manual tasks which often fall to hiring managers, or to provide prompts. This will allow your teams to focus on more high-value activities.
• Text-powered: Make it easy to stay in touch with your candidates by being where they are – SMS or WhatsApp. This can be used to stay in touch or gather references. Changing jobs is a defining moment in people’s lives, so even if it is minimal, maintaining contact and giving the best first impression of your company is now a “must have.”

“HireVue allows us to evaluate 5000 applicants globally each year. We use online video interviews to engage a large and diverse talent pool, and gamified tests to evaluate applicants quickly and fairly. HireVue helps us remain agile and adapt to the constantly changing world of recruitment.”

Vanessa Naicker, Head of Early Talent, Anglo American

For more information on the HireVue for SmartRecruiters integration and to speak with a Solution Consultant about enhancing your SmartRecruiters Recruitment capability, please visit us here.