Transcript
Mark:
Welcome to PeopleTech, the podcast of the HCM Technology Report, I’m Mark Feffer.
Mark:
Today, I’m speaking with Nicky Garcea, she’s the co-founder and Head of Americas for Cappfinity. They provide assessments in other services designed to help employers develop their talents capability, fit, and potential. We’re going to talk about technology and COVID-9, how the pandemic’s changed some types of candidate and employee behavior, and the challenges employers face in today’s labor market, all on this edition of People Tech.
Mark:
Nicky, thanks for being here.
Mark:
We all keep hearing about the Great Resignation and the impact that it’s had on the labor market, and on business in general. What do you folks see on the ground with the Great Resignation? What do you think is going on?
Nicky:
It’s a great question. And I think also, it’s a global question. So I work predominantly in the US, but have a foot in the UK, and Europe, and Asia-Pac so it’s something that people are experiencing in many jobs globally.
Nicky:
As a psychologist, what I think has definitely happened with the pandemic is it’s evoked a point of pause and questioning. I don’t think everyone is experiencing… Not everyone has had the same experience of the pandemic. And not everyone is having the same experience of the Great Resignation. So some people have left some very, very low paid jobs because they were out of work during pandemic. And they’ve been able to find better paid jobs in call centers, and facilitating work in new areas to them. So, there are parts of our economies which have then, struggled to bring those workers back because they’ve found other roles.
Nicky:
We also, are facing a time, and I about this for maybe some of your audience, where recruitment itself, it’s now overtaken software engineering as the most needed job by organizations, because we simply can’t find enough recruiters. And as people have paused and reflected on what’s happened in the pandemic there is reevaluations going on and that reevaluation, certainly, still from our data at Cappfinity is still driven by salary. This isn’t all just about purpose and meaning.
Nicky:
There is also this point of, actually, if I have the opportunity, and the pandemic might have created a moment of pause, then life is short. I might want to look for jobs, roles, opportunity, and I might simply want change. And many people stayed at home, and didn’t necessarily create big life changes over the pandemic. And we’re now seeing some of that come about. I would say as well that it’s people describe it as the Great Resignation. If you’re in education right now, they’re also talking about the great kind of realignment. People leaving education to go into other jobs as well. So there’s resignation, but there’s also people seeking out completely different work as well.
Mark:
The technology is becoming more and more prevalent within both HR and talent acquisition. And do you think that the products are being built now, especially for recruiting NTA are really making a difference as companies seek new recruiters, and more recruiters, and more employees?
Nicky:
I think on the whole that they are, when we look at the data from some years ago of how predictive was a resume screen, it was about to 10% predictive of job performance. If we look at an unstructured interview, it’s about 30% predictive of job performance. But if we get into more technology led products and also, I would say, it doesn’t have to be technology led just generally more structure in our recruitment, then those prediction levels go up. Work simulation, which we use a lot at Cappfinity, you’re looking at about a 50% prediction of performance in role.
Nicky:
The one thing that I always say about TA technology particularly those used in assessment and helping to fine tune your talent pipeline, it’s really only as good as the data that it’s based on. And so, some of the work that you need to go into to maximize really good technology, certainly, in the assessment and the acquisition of people is really understanding what criteria are you going to assess for that job, for that role from the beginning, and then looking for your technology, looking for your assessment and, quite frankly, your structured interview that’s going to measure exactly what matters in that role.
Nicky:
And I think when we can fuse really good assessment technology, really good training of hiring managers, great structured interviews, and multiple assessment points, and with that good candidate communication, then we get the best of using technology to really support TA do its best work, but it’s not without that foundation step put in place, measuring what matters.
Mark:
Now, do you think this situation is going to go on? Or is it going to kind of go back to where it was before the pandemic?
Nicky:
I think that we’re just in incredibly uncertain times. And if you had asked me that question maybe even two, three weeks ago before what we can see happening in Ukraine right now, I might have said, “Oh, well everything’s cyclical. Everything will bounce back.” But I think that we are definitely impacted by, probably now more than ever, are wider socioeconomic, are wider kind of political forces that surrounding the workplace right now. Do I think that there is definitely six months of Great Resignation left? Absolutely. Do I think there could be 12 months? Yes. Will it start to normalize to pre-pandemic times? I think it will.
Nicky:
But if I give you an example, I work a lot in early in career hiring. And quite a lot of hiring you benchmark what was last year like to the previous year? And what I can tell you is certainly in early in career hiring globally, the data we have on what happened in 2020 is nothing like 2019. The candidate behavior, the volumes that then came forward in 2021 is completely different to what happened in 2020. And right now the 2022 data is different again.
Nicky:
So, it’s not like I can say to you, “Well, we can just go back a couple of years and it’ll go back to that place.” We’ve been in a moment of quite substantial change. And what’s happening in early career hiring right now is graduates and interns are pausing, and not actually applying for jobs. So, you’ve got these different things happening across this Great Resignation piece. And I think in the volume and experienced higher space things will normalize a little. But certainly right now, and this isn’t something I’ve seen in the 20 years that I’ve been practicing, we have people choosing to pause, and not enter the workplace, which is new to me. So, I think there will be a little bit of bouncing back to how things were before. But I think we need to prepare ourselves that there might be another iteration of this that will be unpredictable.
Mark:
Can you talk about how your business has changed in the last few years? How you’re meeting these new conditions?
Nicky:
Yeah, I think so there’s 150 people at Cappfinity and growing. And we work globally, so as a business we were always relatively well set up because my US team works all across the US. We don’t meet face-to-face every day. So, leveraging technology on a personal front was what we were doing anyway.
Nicky:
When it came to, I guess, our solutions, and our product stack, we had a couple of things that were incredibly helpful during this virtual time. And a couple of them were in relation to immersive assessment, so making assessment job related. We had several assessment platforms that would take the job to the candidate. They were like completing mini work experience. And candidates had a really insightful view of what the organization was like, but without having to go on site, and see that organization. So, it would open up with video from recruitment teams. You would be able to see different challenges that you would face, if you were recruited in that job. You could give video responses. You could give tech based responses. And so, that technology did in incredibly well during the pandemic.
Nicky:
What we did then, really double down on was the face-to-face version of that needed a platform to then allow assessment centers to go virtual. And that became quite a big product strand for us. So, taking this narrative-based, immersive assessment that was really strong online to keep that then, so you could still use the technology. We could do it live, but we didn’t have to be face-to-face. So, that’s been a continued iteration.
Nicky:
I think one of the things that we completely lost business on, in the pandemic it stopped overnight was our virtual reality solutions that we were delivering across the US in-person. People were using them at final stages for graduate and intern hiring. And no one was going to put a virtual headset on, no one was meeting face-to-face. And we took that proposition and we made it self-led. So now, you can have a VR headset sent out to you, and you could create… Or, sorry, you could complete a virtual internship on that headset. You could also complete a hybrid version of that virtual internship on that headset. And it could be used for you in the workplace.
Nicky:
So some products did very well, particularly those that were immersive. And then, we had to really extend that level of immersion, so it could live within a completely virtual existence. And now, this hybrid existence as well. And that’s, I think, the greatest challenge now is having the capacity to serve the multiple environments that people want to use that technology in.
Mark:
Well, and it makes me wonder too, how are the users, the candidates, employees responding to this? Is it working for them” or is this one of the things that works better for the employer and everyone else is going along with it?
Nicky:
Yeah, it’s a great question. And we completed a YouGov survey that came out at the beginning of this year across the US. And one of the interesting things within that survey was that 82% of candidates wanted more cultural insight in the recruitment process. So, we feel very positive about adopting technology approaches that provide those cultural insights. It’s definitely what the candidates are saying that they want. They want the people that are applying for to be brought to life. Pre-pandemic, we already had candidate data that was saying that 98% of candidates that went through these virtually, culturally immersive processes perceived them to be fair, that they valued them.
Nicky:
The other thing that candidates are saying is that they were on a greater level of transparency. They want more preparation. They want to understand more what they’re going to be asked during the assessment process. So, as TA professionals, I think we can be very confident in using online assessments, in using assessment that is immersive, but we also need to think about the transparency in how we do that. Sharing what’s being measured. Where giving feedback to candidates, you can do that very well with an automated process. But just being clear with candidates, the steps that they’re going through, I think is the biggest thing.
Nicky:
The one other thing I’d mention was that underrepresented candidates during the pandemic across the US, this comes from data from NACE said that actually they found video interviews to be more inclusive than they had experienced prior to the pandemic. And I think that some of this is that recruiters have widened the pool of talent that they’re going after. And that capacity to widen has been facilitated by using technology. So whereas, historically, there might have been a perception that students don’t like video interviews, actually, there’s a group of unrepresented students who feel like they have been included by virtue of that being an option.
Mark:
Well Nicky, thanks for your time today. It’s been great meeting you and talking with you.
Nicky:
Thanks so much, Mark.
Mark:
My guest today has been Nicky Garcea the co-founder and Head of Americas for Cappfinity. And this has been PeopleTech, the podcast of the HCM Technology Report. We’re a publication of RecruitingDaily. We’re also a part of Evergreen Podcasts. To see all of their programs visit www.evergreenpodcasts.com. And to keep up with HR Technology, visit the HCM Technology Report every day. We’re the most trusted source of news in the HR tech industry. Find us at www.hcmtechnologyreport.com. I’m Mark Feffer.
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