Where innovation meets insight. Explore expert perspectives, emerging tech trends, and real-world stories in coding, hiring, AI, and hackathons. Whether you're building, hiring, or learning — this is your go-to hub for sharp insights and practical knowledge from across the global developer ecosystem.
Featured and trending
Stay Ahead with the HackerEarth Blog
Dive into the latest in tech innovation, industry updates, and thought leadership. Discover what’s shaping the future — one post at a time.
Vibe coding is a new method of using natural language prompts and AI tools to generate code. I have seen firsthand that this change makes software more accessible to everyone. In the past, being able to produce functional code was a strong advantage for developers. Today, when code is produced quickly through AI, the true value lies in designing, refining, and optimizing systems. Our role now goes beyond writing code; we must also ensure that our systems remain efficient and reliable.
From Machine Language to Natural Language
I recall the early days when every line of code was written manually. We progressed from machine language to high-level programming, and now we are beginning to interact with our tools using natural language. This development does not only increase speed but also changes how we approach problem solving. Product managers can now create working demos in hours instead of weeks, and founders have a clearer way of pitching their ideas with functional prototypes. It is important for us to rethink our role as developers and focus on architecture and system design rather than simply on typing c
The Promise and the Pitfalls
I have experienced both sides of vibe coding. In cases where the goal was to build a quick prototype or a simple internal tool, AI-generated code provided impressive results. Teams have been able to test new ideas and validate concepts much faster. However, when it comes to more complex systems that require careful planning and attention to detail, the output from AI can be problematic. I have seen situations where AI produces large volumes of code that become difficult to manage without significant human intervention.
AI-powered coding tools like GitHub Copilot and AWS’s Q Developer have demonstrated significant productivity gains. For instance, at the National Australia Bank, it’s reported that half of the production code is generated by Q Developer, allowing developers to focus on higher-level problem-solving . Similarly, platforms like Lovable enable non-coders to build viable tech businesses using natural language prompts, contributing to a shift where AI-generated code reduces the need for large engineering teams. However, there are challenges. AI-generated code can sometimes be verbose or lack the architectural discipline required for complex systems. While AI can rapidly produce prototypes or simple utilities, building large-scale systems still necessitates experienced engineers to refine and optimize the code.
The Economic Impact
The democratization of code generation is altering the economic landscape of software development. As AI tools become more prevalent, the value of average coding skills may diminish, potentially affecting salaries for entry-level positions. Conversely, developers who excel in system design, architecture, and optimization are likely to see increased demand and compensation. Seizing the Opportunity
Vibe coding is most beneficial in areas such as rapid prototyping and building simple applications or internal tools. It frees up valuable time that we can then invest in higher-level tasks such as system architecture, security, and user experience. When used in the right context, AI becomes a helpful partner that accelerates the development process without replacing the need for skilled engineers.
This is revolutionizing our craft, much like the shift from machine language to assembly to high-level languages did in the past. AI can churn out code at lightning speed, but remember, “Any fool can write code that a computer can understand. Good programmers write code that humans can understand.” Use AI for rapid prototyping, but it’s your expertise that transforms raw output into robust, scalable software. By honing our skills in design and architecture, we ensure our work remains impactful and enduring. Let’s continue to learn, adapt, and build software that stands the test of time.
Ready to streamline your recruitment process? Get a free demo to explore cutting-edge solutions and resources for your hiring needs.
In a digitally-native hiring landscape, online assessments have proven to be both a boon and a bane for recruiters and employers.
The ease and efficiency of virtual interviews, take home programming tests and remote coding challenges is transformative. Around 82% of companies use pre-employment assessments as reliable indicators of a candidate's skills and potential.
Online skill assessment tests have been proven to streamline technical hiring and enable recruiters to significantly reduce the time and cost to identify and hire top talent.
In the realm of online assessments, remote assessments have transformed the hiring landscape, boosting the speed and efficiency of screening and evaluating talent. On the flip side, candidates have learned how to use creative methods and AI tools to cheat in tests.
As it turns out, technology that makes hiring easier for recruiters and managers - is also their Achilles' heel.
Cheating in Online Assessments is a High Stakes Problem
With the proliferation of AI in recruitment, the conversation around cheating has come to the forefront, putting recruiters and hiring managers in a bit of a flux.
The problem becomes twofold - if finding the right talent can be a competitive advantage, the consequences of hiring the wrong one can be equally damaging and counter-productive.
As per Forbes, a wrong hire can cost a company around 30% of an employee's salary - not to mention, loss of precious productive hours and morale disruption.
The question that arises is - "Can organizations continue to leverage AI-driven tools for online assessments without compromising on the integrity of their hiring process? "
This article will discuss the common methods candidates use to outsmart online assessments. We will also dive deep into actionable steps that you can take to prevent cheating while delivering a positive candidate experience.
Common Cheating Tactics and How You Can Combat Them
Using ChatGPT and other AI tools to write code
Copy-pasting code using AI-based platforms and online code generators is one of common cheat codes in candidates' books. For tackling technical assessments, candidates conveniently use readily available tools like ChatGPT and GitHub.
Using these tools, candidates can easily generate solutions to solve common programming challenges such as:
Debugging code
Optimizing existing code
Writing problem-specific code from scratch
Ways to prevent it
Enable full-screen mode
Disable copy-and-paste functionality
Restrict tab switching outside of code editors
Use AI to detect code that has been copied and pasted
Enlist external help to complete the assessment
Candidates often seek out someone else to take the assessment on their behalf. In many cases, they also use screen sharing and remote collaboration tools for real-time assistance.
In extreme cases, some candidates might have an off-camera individual present in the same environment for help.
Ways to prevent it
Verify a candidate using video authentication
Restrict test access from specific IP addresses
Use online proctoring by taking snapshots of the candidate periodically
Use a 360 degree environment scan to ensure no unauthorized individual is present
Using multiple devices at the same time
Candidates attempting to cheat often rely on secondary devices such as a computer, tablet, notebook or a mobile phone hidden from the line of sight of their webcam.
By using multiple devices, candidates can look up information, search for solutions or simply augment their answers.
Ways to prevent it
Track mouse exit count to detect irregularities
Detect when a new device or peripheral is connected
Use network monitoring and scanning to detect any smart devices in proximity
Conduct a virtual whiteboard interview to monitor movements and gestures
Using remote desktop software and virtual machines
Tech-savvy candidates go to great lengths to cheat. Using virtual machines, candidates can search for answers using a secondary OS while their primary OS is being monitored.
Remote desktop software is another cheating technique which lets candidates give access to a third-person, allowing them to control their device.
With remote desktops, candidates can screen share the test window and use external help.
Ways to prevent it
Restrict access to virtual machines
AI-based proctoring for identifying malicious keystrokes
Use smart browsers to block candidates from using VMs
Future-proof Your Online Assessments With HackerEarth
HackerEarth's AI-powered online proctoring solution is a tested and proven way to outsmart cheating and take preventive measures at the right stage.
With HackerEarth's Smart Browser, recruiters can mitigate the threat of cheating and ensure their online assessments are accurate and trustworthy.
Secure, sealed-off testing environment
AI-enabled live test monitoring
Enterprise-grade, industry leading compliance
Built-in features to track, detect and flag cheating attempts
Boost your hiring efficiency and conduct reliable online assessments confidently with HackerEarth's revolutionary Smart Browser.
Former employees who return to work with the same organisation are essential assets. In talent acquisition, such employees are also termed as ‘Boomerang employees’. Former employees are valuable because they require the least training and onboarding because of their familiarity with the organization’s policies. Rehiring former employees by offering them more perks is a mark of a successful hiring process. This article will elaborate on the talent acquisition strategies for rehiring former employees, supported by a few real-life examples and best practices.
Why Should Organizations Consider Rehiring?
One of the best ways of ensuring quality hire with a low candidate turnover is to deploy employee retention programs like rehiring female professionals who wish to return to work after a career break. This gives former employees a chance to prove their expertise while ensuring them the organization’s faith in their skills and abilities. Besides, seeing former employees return to their old organizations encourages newly appointed employees to be more productive and contribute to the overall success of the organization they are working for. A few other benefits of rehiring old employees are listed below.
Reduced Hiring Costs
Hiring new talent incurs a few additional costs. For example, tasks such as sourcing resumes of potential candidates, reaching out to them, conducting interviews and screenings costs money to the HR department. Hiring former employees cuts down these costs and aids a seamless transition process for them.
Faster Onboarding
Since boomerang employees are well acquainted with the company’s onboarding process, they don’t have to undergo the entire exercise. A quick, one-day session informing them of any recent changes in the company’s work policies is sufficient to onboard them.
Retention of Knowledge
As a former employee, rehired executives have knowledge of the previous workflows and insights from working on former projects. This can be valuable in optimizing a current project. They bring immense knowledge and experience with them which can be instrumental in driving new projects to success.Starbucks is a prime example of a company that has successfully leveraged boomerang employees. Howard Schultz, the company's CEO, left in 2000 but returned in 2008 during a critical time for the firm. His leadership was instrumental in revitalizing the brand amid financial challenges.
Best Practices for Rehiring Former Employees
Implementing best practices is the safest way to go about any operation. Hiring former employees can be a daunting task especially if it involves someone who was fired previously. It is important to draft certain policies around rehiring former employees. Here are a few of them that can help you to get started.
1. Create a Clear Rehire Policy
While considering rehiring a former employee, it is essential to go through data indicating the reason why they had to leave in the first place. Any offer being offered must supersede their previous offer while marking clear boundaries to maintain work ethics. Offer a fair compensation that justifies their skills and abilities which can be major contributors to the success of the organization. A well-defined policy not only streamlines the rehiring process but also promotes fairness within the organization.
2. Conduct Thorough Exit Interviews
Exit interviews provide valuable insights into why employees leave and can help maintain relationships for potential future rehires. Key aspects to cover include:
Reasons for departure.
Conditions under which they might consider returning.
Feedback on organizational practices.
Keeping lines of communication open during these discussions can foster goodwill and encourage former employees to consider returning when the time is right.
3. Maintain Connections with Alumni
Creating and maintaining an alumni association must be an integral part of HR strategies. This exercise ensures that the HR department can find former employees in times of dire need and indicates to former employees how the organization is vested in their lives even after they have left them. This gesture fosters a feeling of goodwill and gratitude among former hires. Alumni networks and social media groups help former employees stay in touch with each other, thus improving their interpersonal communication.Research indicates that about 15% of rehired employees return because they maintained connections with their former employers.
4. Assess Current Needs Before Reaching Out
Before reaching out to former employees, assess all viable options and list out the reasons why rehiring is inevitable. Consider:
Changes in job responsibilities since their departure.
Skills or experiences gained by other team members during their absence.
It is essential to understand how the presence of a boomerang employee can be instrumental in solving professional crises before contacting them. It is also important to consider their present circumstances.
5. Initiate an Honest Conversation
When you get in touch with a former employee, it is important to understand their perspective on the job being offered. Make them feel heard and empathize with any difficult situations they may have had to face during their time in the organization. Understand why they would consider rejoining the company. These steps indicate that you truly care about them and fosters a certain level of trust between them and the organization which can motivate them to rejoin with a positive attitude.
6. Implement a Reboarding Program
When a former employee rejoins, HR departments must ensure a robust reboarding exercise is conducted to update them about any changes within the organization regarding the work policies and culture changes, training them about any new tools or systems that were deployed during their absence and allowing them time to reconnect with old team members or acquaint with new ones.
7. Make Them Feel Welcome
Creating a welcoming environment is essential for helping returning employees adjust smoothly. Consider:
Organizing team lunches or social events during their first week.
Assigning a mentor or buddy from their previous team to help them reacclimate.
Providing resources that facilitate learning about any organizational changes.
A positive onboarding experience reinforces their decision to return and fosters loyalty.
Real-Life Examples of Successful Rehiring
Several companies have successfully implemented these strategies:
IBM: The tech giant has embraced boomerang hiring by actively reaching out to former employees who possess critical skills in emerging technologies. IBM has found that these individuals often bring fresh perspectives that contribute significantly to innovation7.
Zappos: Known for its strong company culture, Zappos maintains an alumni network that keeps former employees engaged with the brand. This connection has led to numerous successful rehiring instances, enhancing both morale and productivity within teams6.
Conclusion
Rehiring former employees can provide organizations with unique advantages, including reduced costs, quicker onboarding, and retained knowledge. By implementing strategic practices—such as creating clear policies, maintaining connections, assessing current needs, and fostering welcoming environments—companies can effectively tap into this valuable talent pool.
As organizations continue navigating an ever-changing workforce landscape, embracing boomerang employees may be key to building resilient teams equipped for future challenges. By recognizing the potential benefits and following best practices outlined above, businesses can create a robust strategy for rehiring that enhances both employee satisfaction and organizational performance.
Tech Hiring Insights
HackerEarth Blogs
Gain insights to optimize your developer recruitment process.
Thank you! Your submission has been received!
Oops! Something went wrong while submitting the form.
Are you thinking of Chappie, Terminator, or Lucy? Sentient, self-aware robots are closer to becoming a reality than you might think. AI focuses on developing software or machines that exhibit human-like intelligence. Simply put, AI is the study of computer science aimed at creating intelligent systems.
Of course, there’s more to it. AI spans a range of applications—from simple calculators to self-steering technology, with the potential to radically transform the future.
Goals and Applications of AI
AI aims to enable machines to reason, represent knowledge, plan, process natural language, learn, perceive, and manipulate objects. Long-term goals include creativity, social intelligence, and achieving general (human-level) intelligence.
AI is embedded deeply in every industry. Ray Kurzweil notes that thousands of AI applications are part of our global infrastructure. John McCarthy, one of AI’s founders, remarked, “as soon as it works, no one calls it AI anymore.” According to recent statistics, the global AI market is expected to reach $305.9 billion by 2024.
Source: Bluenotes
Types of AI
AI can be categorized based on its capabilities:
Weak AI (Narrow AI): Focuses on specific tasks with no self-awareness. Example: Siri, which combines multiple weak AI techniques to function.
Strong AI (True AI): Exhibits human-level intelligence, capable of performing any intellectual task a human can do. This includes fictional examples like Matrix or I, Robot.
Artificial Superintelligence: Described by Nick Bostrom as “an intellect that is much smarter than the best human brains in practically every field.” This is the type of AI that raises ethical and existential concerns among experts like Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk.
How Can You Get Started?
Start by learning a programming language—Python is recommended due to its machine learning libraries.
Once comfortable with a programming language, dive into machine learning. In Python, explore libraries such as Scikit-learn, NLTK, SciPy, PyBrain, and NumPy. Knowledge of advanced math will also be essential. AI-powered tools can even help you learn math effectively, like those listed here.
Studies show that hackathons seem to be the most effective method to acquire and engage developer talent for open APIs.
Introduction
The star working behind the scenes, connecting devices, databases, and applications, application programming interfaces (APIs) are super-efficient “messengers” vital to organizations across sectors; for reuse in useful, interesting apps (tools and widgets), APIs allow these organizations to open their databases, backend systems, and information assets.
A simple definition of an API could be this: “An API is the messenger that delivers your request to the provider that you’re requesting it from and then delivers the response back to you.” For example, say you order an anorak from an e-retailer such as Amazon. The website will send your credit card details to PayPal, a payment processor, your shipping information to FedEx, a delivery partner, and then, validate your address using another API. Did you notice that all you needed to know was what to click and how to send a “request” and wait for the “response,” which could be payment status, shipping charges, etc.? (If you think about it, the function of an API closely mirrors that of a waiter at a restaurant.)
Programmers communicate with an application, such as Accuweather or Candy Crush, use this common interface, which acts like a go-between. “API is a precise specification written by providers of a service that programmers must follow when using that service. It describes what functionality is available, how it must be used and what formats it will accept as input or return as output. In recent years, the term API colloquially is used to describe both the specification and service itself, e.g., the Facebook Graph API,” says API Chapter Manager at Sprout Social, Kevin Stanton.
Uses of APIs
According to John Musser, co-founder of Programmable Web, an API can be used to create value in several ways, including the following:
APIs as product
Marketing/Distribution channel
User/Content acquisition
Drive innovation/traffic
Accelerate internal projects
Partner/Upsell opportunities
Lead generation/ Business development/Increase footprint
Extend product/Device and Mobile support
Increase stickiness
New line of business
Three P’s of an API program
Developing an API program comprises three stages1 — Plan, Productize, and Promote.
From the snapshot below, you can see that attracting and engaging developers are core activities for a successful API strategy. With a well-designed API program with skilled developers and open APIs, companies can extend their reach significantly by enabling market adoption, accelerating innovation by crowdsourcing, and maintaining a constant revenue cycle.
For an organization, its value chain will have its assets, the APIs that open up these assets, developers who use these assets through APIs to create value, apps the developers build and end users.
Source: Software AG
Promoting your API
Once a product is good to go, it is ready to enter the marketing cycle. This is true for APIs as well.
Just like you would design any marketing strategy, segment your audience, target accessible, differentiable, and substantial developer segments to enter, and position the API to effectively address specific challenges of the target segments.
Indulge in influencer marketing; create advocates and get buy-in from great developers. Instead of talking at the developer community, listen to their feedback and advice.
Give the influencers leeway; let them work for you.
You need a great demo that talks about your company and the product, how it generates business value, and a live demo showing some code or what you can build on top of the API.
With a scalable, practical, and reliable API, developers can innovate, happily too if rewards and recognition are assured. Remember that developers target different environments, platforms, operating systems, languages, services, etc. Companies work with developer evangelists, support developer events, and launch an outstanding developer portal to better position the interface.
Call it marketing or call it raising awareness. Either way, your developers need to know this API exists. Public Relations managers can ensure that the information that is disseminated about your API is accurate while highlighting its unique features. You can reach developers through social channels, at events, and through other developer communities.
Remember to define your metrics. (Go here for a good post on API metrics.)
*The first two steps—acquisition and activation, come under the marketing umbrella.
**The other three—retention, revenue, and referral depend on many factors such as the quality of your API.
Provide forums and interactive, up-to-date documentation to engage and educate the developers
In his talk on API adoption, marketing expert Adam DuVander presented results from a survey on API adoption, where developers rated these factors as most important on a scale of 1–4. Complete and accurate documentation tops the list with a rating of 3.5. DuVander says, “You can also help your marketing department to speak ‘developer,’ and part of that is making sure your documentation is great and accessible.” To plug into the API, “Not only show them what’s possible, but show them how to do it using your API.” (With sample apps or tutorials). Forums allow developers to have stimulating and informative discussions on code examples, best practices, etc.
Create an all-encompassing API portal
This portal will be the go-to place for developers to “register, explore, and learn” about your API, including seamless payment link integrations. A registration process that’s easy to use should give them an API key for example. An API console or ready code will help developers test the functionality without having to write any code; make sure it is impressive. Offer the right devkits or SDKs, with installation and packaging standards. Ensure you offer adequate support services; a little hand holding is always appreciated. Present developers with great uses cases with sample code and your SDKs. Your links to external resources must include announcements/updates and any information that will be useful (e.g. standards). Tools such as APIfy will help to build and manage such a central repository.
Driving API adoption through hackathons
A well-marketed and well-executed hackathon can get you 1500 developers and 3000+ for big names such as IBM. And you can get anywhere between 20–40 decent applications. All this can be done over a course of 4 weeks. “From a marketing standpoint, the developer acquisition is cost is very low.” Hackathons are an excellent example of viral marketing.
Specifically, a hackathon:
Gives you maximum air time to pitch your API to the developers
Gives you the opportunity to put your product (API) in the hands of passionate developers and get them to use it
Gets you valuable feedback from the developers to improve your product
*Hackathons are different from developer conferences and meetups. “A simple analogy would be that a hackathon is an internship, while a developer conference is a classroom.”
Points to remember for API providers hosting hackathons for marketing
Online hackathons are better suited Note that online hackathons could be a better bet as you get rid of all constraints related to venue selection and logistics. They also allow you to reach out to developers around the world. Keep the submission phase of the hackathon open for a longer duration, ideally for about two months.
Support at the hackathon Provide support and know-how via webinars, walkthrough, videos, tutorials, and examples of similar applications built using the API.
Post-hackathon engagement Support developers who could support only half-built applications as well; invite the developers for a symposium, follow up with them via emails and social channels for their feedback, and engage with them regularly. These people will form your talent pipeline.
**For all the finer details about how to organize a hackathon, download this ebook.
Conclusion
According to Philipp Schöne, Product Manager at Axway, “hackathons are a great way to learn what external people think about your offering… start with smaller groups and go bigger if you get more confident with your offering.”
You don’t always need to host a hackathon. You could participate or be a partner for smaller events. “Too often people think building a community means running a hack event, we found that running our own hack events didn’t fit our API, however attending and participating (as a team vs API vendor) in hack events was invaluable for building out a community. The best thing you can do is roll up your sleeves and get involved,” says Keran McKenzie, a platform evangelist at MYOB.
If companies find it hard reaching out to the developer community, then they can partner with vendors such as HackerEarth to leverage its 1.5 million+ developer community and use its hackathon management software.
Innovation was the focal point of IndiaHacks 2017, the fourth edition of HackerEarth’s country-wide event, conducted in partnership with IBM and Honeywell. The two-day event dedicated to programming was conducted on the 8th and 9th of September 2017 in Bangalore.The two-day event included a hackathon, two online programming challenges, and a tech conference. The event had over 55,000+ registrations with tech talks from some of the most prominent leaders in the IT sector.
Highlights of IndiaHacks 2017
The best hacks of the event
45 teams of programmers, designers, and project managers came together to build epic products at the offline hackathon event which had 3 main tracks – Internet of Things, Fintech, and AI. Submissions were received in areas including smart wearables, smart medical devices, smart driving experience, financial advisory, security, personal finance, blockchain, document life cycle management, recommendation systems, chatbots, and language processing systems.
Here are some of the best hacks of the event:
1) License integrated safety device
The license integrated safety device is a UUID-based vehicle tracking system which addresses the growing need for delivering effective safety, traffic control, and pollution control on roads. The technology can serve as a first responder management service in smart cities.
2) Real-time assistant for badminton players
The real-time assistant is a wearable device that enables players to know their fitness level, and match readiness by analyzing their “smash” profile. This profile has fitness details such as calorie intake, fluid intake, workout before sessions, and performance levels.
3) GPS- and IoT-based soldier tracking and health indication system
The low cost, IoT-based wearable device is equipped with biosensors. The device offers a reliable system to guard the lives of soldiers. The system can help locate and monitor the health of soldiers in combat.
4) TechnoFin: a simpler solution for managing financial problems
With time-series modelling and predictive analysis, TechnoFin serves as a full-fledged financial recommendation engine. It addresses all the problems related to investing in stock market, real-estate, gold, and banking.
5) Money multiplier
Money multiplier, an app integrated with Watson Conversation, aims to educate the financially illiterate. The app helps in the analysis of monthly account statements, monthly limit for savings, and helps users understand the Net Asset Value(NAV) of mutual funds.
6) Security for financial transactions
The ML-based security software aims to make transactions safer by identifying and tracking user behavior. Using Apache Lucene-based Elastic search or Solr engine, the software stores transactional data and identifies user pattern.
7) Smart Courses
The smart online learning software uses an image recognition recommendation system to evaluate facial expressions of students and operates accordingly. The system can be equipped with a smart assistant or chatbot to answer user queries.
8) Genre-switching music recommendation system
The recommendation software specializes in giving a good mix of genres based on the correlation established between the tapped genres using reinforcement learning.
9) Bot104
BOT 104 tracks the number of beds available in nearby hospitals and allows users to book hospital beds easily. The software also has a feature to auto-generate bills using custom QR codes.
IndiaHacks Tech Conference 2017
The IndiaHacks tech conference had many insightful sessions by some amazing tech leaders. The conference had 9 tech talks, 2 panel discussions, and 16 tech huddles on topics related to various tech domains like machine learning , artificial intelligence, APIs, and cloud computing. Speakers from IBM, ThoughtWorks, Honeywell, RBS, Credit Suisse, and other sponsoring companies shared their insights on various topics such as blockchain, chatbots, big data, and fintech.
IndiaHacks Conference 2017
With the increasing dominance of technology in every aspect of our life from banking to healthcare, there is greater pressure on software makers to meet commercial and consumer expectations. The tech conference featured discussions on industry trends, research, and latest innovation to build and maintain revolutionary, scalable software. The event also had an exhibition area, where sponsoring companies showcased their latest software products and services. The exhibition area was abuzz with interactive activities that included insightful demos, creative games, and contests.
With an outreach of over 2 Million, IndiaHacks 2017 was one of biggest nationwide tech events of the year. The event provided a platform for industry leaders, investors, and some of the most talented programmers of the country to come together, and share their knowledge to tackle some of the biggest challenges in the software industry.
“Love brunch? Have we got a job for you? Live for brunch, drink an Aperol Spritz®, look great, and collect a paycheck — it’s a hard job but, hey, someone’s got to do it.” This job description for Chief Brunch Officers sounds too good to be true, doesn’t it?
But it is true. In 2014, Campari launched a wonderful social media campaign for Aperol lovers to spread the happiness of the delicious Italian aperitif, which has been touted as the most fashionable drink of 2017. Sigh! Although such dream roles are few, we’d settle for good jobs that at least sound appealing.
Job descriptions are what your applicants see before all else. It can accomplish so much if done right.
And, this is especially true in case of tech jobs.
When you ask for team players, whatever do you mean?
Do you mean they shouldn’t ideally question authority? Heaven, forbid.
Or, “Works with minimal supervision” means what? That if anything goes awry, he or she gets the blame possibly? Or it could just mean what it says: your manager is too busy to keep after you and expects you do your job.
Point being made: Enough with the meaningless, ambiguous job descriptions already!
It is really up to you how you want potential hires to perceive your organization and responsibilities that go with the roles.
Like The Adler Group CEO, Lou Adler, says, “It seems obvious that if a company wants to hire people who are both competent and motivated to do the work required, they need to start by defining the work required. Yet somehow this basic concept is lost when a new job opens up. Instead of defining the job, managers focus on defining the person. The end result is not a job description at all, but a person description.”
Most JDs demand you be a team player, be innovative, take initiative, show leadership skills and a willingness to learn, perform in a fast-paced environment, etc. Which applicant is actually going to admit a lack of these skills which you can’t test until much later anyway? How are these relevant in your very first advertisement of an open position? According to a Monster survey, 57% of applicants broke into a run the minute they spotted phrases such as “ninja,” “penetrate the market,” “rockstar developer,” “hit the ground running,” and “self-starter” in the JD.
When will they stop with the ill-defined job requirements?
Courting candidates is quite the order of the day now. A time when big companies could command as they wished is no longer possible. Today, highly skilled workers are in the driver’s seat. They get to choose who they want to work for and negotiate a lot more than they did before. So, companies really can’t afford to mess up while recruiting.
After analyzing best-performing job listings for a 6-month period, Stackoverflow found that “the average apply rate for the high-performing group was 30.9%, and the average for the lower was 3.2%.” One of the main reasons for their high performance was a clear and comprehensive JD.
Seriously outdated job descriptions
You know what is really irksome? Employers using antiquated job descriptions (JDs) that should have been binned a long time ago… If you can remember your job description for your current role, then take a bow. Not many of us remember what it said; it was so lackluster and generic. Half the time, it bears no resemblance to what we are doing now.
Incomplete, vague job postings
What’s the point in advertising for abstract skills instead of telling them how they will grow or what they will own, learn, and improve? Tell them what skills are absolute must-haves. Don’t ask them if they are going to be committed. (Like you’ll believe them anyway.)
Answer these questions before keying in the JD.
What is in it for the candidate?
Why should a developer feel excited about the company/role?
Are you describing enough about what your product is trying to achieve?
How is your product impacting the globe? (Developers will find one more reason to join you if they feel their work in the company has a larger agenda.)
Confusing Ruby with a stone that’s red and shiny
Techies get it that a job role is more than a job. They get it that a job encompasses all sorts of qualities that are conventionally deemed non-job specific. However, they’d appreciate it if the recruiter knew if just knowing Java, and not Python, could jinx their chances. Talking to talent acquisition personnel who are clueless about the job requirements can’t be a whole lot of fun.
Unrealistic expectations
Companies advertise for developers who must know a string of programming languages. The tendency is to stuff the JD with many programming languages but, in general, a programmer is likely adept at not more than two or three. And what happens with the “over-optimization” of JDs is that some programmers use the languages as keywords in their resume. And eventually, this comes to bite the hiring managers when they go out to source and find that most programmers know almost half the languages on the planet. Over-optimization takes the fun away from life! Haven’t you seen this video – I miss the mob?
Ridiculous, impossible requirements
What’s really strange is when firms demand experienced professionals for jobs that are fairly new in the market. For example, if you advertise for programmers with 7 years of experience in a language that was introduced only 5 years ago, who exactly do you expect to get?
Also, before creating a JD, a recruiter should know the demographics and the sizable pool of a skill/requirement in a particular region. This sets realistic expectations and the JD will have more clarity.
Unheard of job titles
The Monster survey also found that 64% of the respondents were unlikely to apply for a job if the job title was not easy to understand. (Here’s an interestinginfographic about the dilemma of job descriptions.)
According to an Australian Employment Office poll, 48% of employees say the role they were hired for isn’t the job they’re doing. For people in IT-related fields, misleading job titles are nothing new. How horrible it is when you sign on to be a project manager of an “entire group” and all you end up doing is leading a team of two (including yourself)! (It happens.) If you want a Technical Lead for Windows/Cloud, then say that and list the major skills instead of saying Technical Lead and giving a bunch of vague tasks.
How can bad job descriptions harm you?
With badly defined roles that helped you hire “talent,” you can expect to see poor productivity, higher absenteeism and turnover, and unhappy employees later on. Also, a survey showed that78% of IT job postings are guilty of using meaningless jargon.
Rather than looking for Ivy League degrees, focus on the skills you need and tell them how they can grow with the company. It is ok to talk about the culture and the company, but not at the cost of a concise, clear, and comprehensive summary of key responsibilities. Culture and swag may win you good people, but you do need top quality talent to get the numbers going.
Sometimes, even imaginative JDs can translate into something awful or funny (if you’ve got a sense of humor). Jeff Bertolucci gave a Craigslist Wanted Ad a funny twist: Wanted: Skilled app developer who “will be paid from the profits of the app/business with a percentage stake in the company.” Translation: Until then, enjoy living out of your car. The point being that no-nonsense and clearly defined descriptions are a safer bet.
In today’s candidate-driven market, it pays to be savvy about every aspect of hiring. This makes streamlining their tech recruitment strategies imperative for hiring managers, talent acquisition officers, and recruiters. It doesn’t matter whether it’s something as high up the list as using online automated evaluation tools or crafting an attractive, realistic job description. It’s got to be well-designed if you want to have your share of great programmers in such a competitive industry.
On a side note, just what is arockstar developer, a digital prophet, or a data science ninja?
The effect of poorly written job descriptions on tech hiring
Attracting the wrong candidates: Poorly crafted job descriptions can attract applicants who do not align with the actual requirements or expectations of the role, leading to an influx of unqualified candidates.
Missing out on high-quality candidates: Top talent may be deterred by vague, unrealistic, or overly complex job descriptions. Clear and realistic descriptions are key to attracting skilled professionals.
Inefficiency in the hiring process: When job descriptions are not clear or accurate, it leads to a longer hiring process as recruiters and hiring managers spend time sifting through unsuitable applications.
Damage to employer brand: Ambiguous or misleading job descriptions can harm a company’s reputation, as candidates may share their negative experiences with others or on social media.
Diversity issues: Overly specific or unnecessarily stringent requirements can unintentionally exclude a diverse range of candidates, reducing the inclusivity of the hiring process.
Increased turnover: If the role does not match the expectations set in the job description, new hires are more likely to become dissatisfied and leave the position, leading to higher turnover.
Tips to make your tech job descriptions better
Be specific and clear: Clearly define the role, responsibilities, and required skills. Avoid jargon and overly technical language that might be unclear to potential applicants.
Realistic requirements only: List only essential qualifications and skills. Overstating requirements can deter good candidates who might assume they’re underqualified.
Highlight growth and learning opportunities: Mention opportunities for professional development, as many candidates in tech value continuous learning and career growth.
Include information about company culture: Share insights into the company culture, values, and work environment. This helps candidates assess their cultural fit.
Be inclusive: Use inclusive language to encourage a diverse range of applicants. Avoid gender-coded words and be mindful of language that may unintentionally exclude certain groups.
Provide a clear application process: Outline the steps involved in the application process. This transparency helps set expectations for candidates.
Salary and benefits: If possible, include a salary range and a summary of benefits. This transparency can be a significant factor in attracting candidates.
Keep it concise: Avoid lengthy descriptions. A concise, well-structured job description is more appealing and easier to comprehend.
Use a friendly tone: A conversational and friendly tone can make the job description more engaging and approachable.
Get feedback: Before publishing, get feedback on the job description from current employees in similar roles to ensure it accurately reflects the position and your company culture.
PS: For more such insights on tech recruitment, we invite you to join our LinkedIn group – “Yours Truly HR”
“The human workforce is valued at $ 1.2 quadrillion, compared to $ 521 trillion value of physical Assets,”
says Korn Ferry, an executive search, and recruiting firm. With such value being placed on people, resources that typically appreciate over time, there really is little need to underline the need for top quality talent if organizations hope to walk confidently into the future.
We couldn’t agree more.
Changing perceptions and technological advances have redefined the role of Human Resources. In the realm of talent management, HR is no longer confined to tasks such as screening, interviewing, and hiring candidates. HR Managers are transforming into Talent Acquisition Managers, Happiness Officers, People’s Operation Managers, and a lot more. They have now become the harbingers of change in dynamic business models.
What is a talent assessment tool?
A talent assessment tool is a software application used by HR professionals to evaluate candidates’ skills, abilities, and potential for specific job roles. These tools use various methods, such as psychometric tests, cognitive assessments, and skills evaluations, to provide a comprehensive understanding of a candidate’s qualifications.
Talent assessment tools use data-driven insights to help organizations make informed hiring decisions, identify high-potential employees, and tailor development programs. They enhance the recruitment process, ensuring a better match between job requirements and candidate capabilities, ultimately leading to improved organizational performance.
What challenges do they need to overcome?
“Human resources are like natural resources; they’re often buried deep. You have to go looking for them, they’re not just lying around on the surface. You have to create the circumstances where they show themselves.” (Ken Robinson)
When it comes to talent acquisition, be it a Fortune 500 company or a startup, their hiring concerns are quite similar. Apart from struggling to find skilled, committed workers, they have to deal with so much more. One in four candidates complaints about bad recruiting experiences and that hampers the brand image considerably. With companies like PepsiCo adopting location-free work arrangements to retain talent and companies like Panasonic touting ‘Learn, Live, Achieve’ as their core philosophy, job seekers now demand a better recruitment experience. The HR personnel is expected to make this happen and deal with any fallout. (Read: 7 ways recruiters can increase the offer to joining ratio & avoid drop off)
Instead of leaving you to wonder how you can get the most suitable talent for the job roles you advertise, we’ve got a near-perfect solution for you. Switch to a talent assessment tool that can resolve the fundamental concerns of managing volumes of applicants while ensuring you shortlist the right technical candidates.
Why are talent management tool important for human resource?
Newspaper advertisements and paper-based job applications are a thing of past. Brick-and-mortar offices are changing into work-from-anytime-anywhere business models. You no longer have tons of skilled candidates, and struggles of ‘talent hunts’ are real. Millennials are the “new adventure” for HR managers as they don’t often stick to a place for long anymore. Employees now demand real-time feedback and innovative recruitment campaigns.
These changes need new kinds of approaches, out-of-the-box thinking, and more. This shift in the role of HR has compelled the industry to think of technology solutions that not only help HR managers understand the right skill set easily but also help them retain and encourage the right resources while ensuring candidates enjoy personalized experiences and regular constructive feedback.
For example, to deal with a deluge of applicants and find the brightest software developer, Microsoft included a small test at the time of application. Those who had the requisite know-how and a mathematical bent of mind easily cracked a cryptic phone number in the test and were shortlisted for further rounds. A gamification of this sort increased the volume of quality candidates and helped the company reject candidates with a concrete reason, hinting at a scope for improvement.
Talent assessment tools track the applicants through their performance on a coding platform like HackerEarth and other sources and help the HR to build a personalized experience for the candidates based on their performance in each challenge they have participated. This includes mapping their journey from the time they apply for a job to their joining and service with the company.
When do you need a talent assessment tool?
More than 60% millennials believe in proper background research on organizations and the job roles they’re applying for.
HR has to make the company look good. Negative reviews can do serious damage.
This has made the job of HR managers tougher. The one-shoe-fits-all approach needs to change and they’re now responsible for painting a better picture of the organization and ensure complete transparency.
To showcase the best of company culture, Twitter did a “Join the Flock”recruitment campaign. It was a hack week for employees as they were challenged to make the best/worst recruiting video. The campaign culminated in a video that featured the company CEO, Dick Costolo, who shared the hiring information and at the same time mocked the outdated workplace and their training material. A campaign of this sort leads to better employee engagement and also gets the message across interestingly.
Managers can no longer reject candidates without giving them concrete answers. Talent management assessment tools, empowered with predictive and prescriptive analytics, empower HR with the right recommendations to aid decision-making while selecting candidates.
How do you find the best talent assessment tool?
That’s a tricky question. HR personnel is constantly dealing with the dilemma of deciding to buy a tool or develop it in-house. Most of the time, the latter case gets ruled out due to limited technical knowledge in HR departments. The right approach is to rely on experts with proven experience in the HR-tech domain. It’s important to hire vendors who understand your business models and the needs of the job profiles.
Tools using Machine Learning and BigData Analytics are considered better and more reliable as compared to tools which lack data analysis and in depth candidate report. Organisations can use Social Media Analytics and other forms of data analysis to get an in-depth knowledge of candidate behavior. These tools give you solutions like work samples and simulations, cognitive ability tests, personality, or conscientiousness tests, structured interviews, unstructured interviews and a lot more effective forms of candidate examination. (Read: How to pick right assessment tool?)
5 best talent assessment tools
HackerEarth HackerEarth is a comprehensive coding assessment platform that helps organizations identify and evaluate technical talent through coding challenges, hackathons, and real-world projects. Its user-friendly interface and robust features make it a popular choice for both recruitment and employee development. The platform offers automated grading, anti-cheating measures, and detailed analytics, ensuring accurate and fair assessments. Additionally, it provides real-world projects that simulate on-the-job tasks, helping to assess practical skills and problem-solving abilities.
Criteria Corp Criteria Corp offers a wide range of pre-employment tests designed to measure cognitive aptitude, personality, and skills. Their scientifically validated assessments help organizations predict job performance and ensure a good fit between candidates and roles. The platform’s user-friendly interface and detailed reporting make it a valuable tool for HR professionals.
SHL SHL provides a variety of talent assessment solutions, including cognitive ability tests, personality assessments, and situational judgment tests. Their tools are backed by extensive research and are used globally to improve hiring decisions, identify high-potential employees, and support talent development initiatives.
iMocha iMocha is an advanced skills assessment platform that offers a wide range of tests covering technical, cognitive, and soft skills. It features an AI-powered proctoring system, automated grading, and detailed analytics to ensure comprehensive and unbiased assessments. The platform supports over 500 skill assessments, making it versatile for various industries.
Mettl Mettl is a robust online assessment platform that provides a suite of tools for pre-employment testing, employee development, and certification. It offers customizable assessments, real-time proctoring, and detailed reporting. Mettl’s platform is highly scalable and supports a wide range of assessment types, including cognitive, technical, and behavioral tests.
How do HR analytics technologies help?
According to PwC’s Global HR Tech survey 2017, only 14% employers are very satisfied with the HR analytics technologies they have on board. This throws open massive opportunities for HR managers and domain experts to come up with viable solutions for talent management. Here are a few recommendations to improve your HR technology support and planned implementations.
Draft a report which gives insights beyond basic operational and compliance statistics
Do not be afraid to integrate data from external resources
Select the right metrics and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and place them in easy to understand dashboards
Invest in applying Big Data concepts
Leverage Cloud Technology to safeguard data for predictive and prescriptive analytics
Increase the use of analytics and data-driven decisions
What are the benefits of talent assessment tools?
Like we said earlier, talent assessment tools are the need of the hour. Technology is now the key enabler in businesses and helps in strategic decision making. The biggest benefit is that these tools help you counter the volume of applicants with a lot more ease. Machine Learning algorithms shortlist the best candidates on the parameters you want and leave you with results that are to the point. This also confers a global mindset to the organizations by ensuring the best applicant experience for their potential candidates.
Real-time feedback, which you get from talent assessment tools, plays a crucial role in ensuring an employee’s progress and loyalty. Gamification is another advantage as it helps employers up their game in terms of employee engagement. The best example of gamification for recruitment and employee engagement possibly comes from Marriott Hotels. The global hotel chain designed virtual tours and video games on their website to attract potential employees through their websites. The players completing some of the “tasks” were shortlisted and later called for interview.
What is the next step?
The future belongs to those who will lead the change and that can happen only if you acquire and retain the right talent. Join the bandwagon of change and get your talent assessment tool today to see your organization scale up in your quest for transformation.
Signing off with a thought from industry leader Jay Samit, Independent Vice Chairman of Deloitte Digital:
“To thrive, all businesses must focus on the art of self-disruption. Rather than wait for the competition to steal your business, every founder and employee need to be willing to cannibalize their existing revenue streams in order to create new ones. All disruption starts with introspection.”
HackerEarth Recruit – A talent Assessment Platform
Over 80% of the Fortune 100 companies conduct hackathons.
There are over 1000+ hackathons conducted every year around the world and 48.5% of them are conducted by private companies. Yet, hackathon is still an underutilized tool when it comes to corporate innovation.
When asked what a hackathon is, the common definition you get is something along these lines.
“It is an event where a bunch of programmers come together to collaborate and code on a project lasting several days, typically 48 hours.”
While it is true in the literal sense, it is like saying,
“People paying $1000 to live in the middle of a desert for a couple of days and finally burning a wooden effigy while trying to adhere to some principles is what Burning Man is about.”
There is more to hackathons than meets the eye, especially from a company’s perspective. So why exactly do companies conduct hackathons and what do they aim to get out of it?
Here are 6 different reasons why companies conduct hackathons.
Crowdsourcing ideas and solutions for your business
Let us break this down a bit.
When to conduct crowdsourcing hackathons
When you have identified the problem and don’t have a well-defined solution or when you have a major insight or idea but do not have a full-fledged vision of the product, crowdsourcing is your best bet.
Let’s take blockchain, for example. It is an emerging technology and there is no denying that it is going to change the landscape of transactions as we know it. The applications range from digital identity to distributed cloud storage to cryptocurrency. However, the complete potential of blockchain is not yet realized. It is still anybody’s game to win.
Traditionally, a company would assign the responsibility of exploring this technology and the task of coming up with a killer product to a handful of people, their R&D division/Innovation departments that work in silos.
The problem here is by the time the R&D team comes up with a workable prototype or two, there could be five other similar products in the market.
Not convinced yet?
The famous and “anonymous” Satoshi Nakamoto conceptualized Blockchain in the year 2008. In the 9 years since there have been over 900 cryptocurrencies in the market and four major players.
IBM and Microsoft are two companies that leverage hackathons in this space. IBM launched Hyperledger Fabric Version 1.0 and Microsoft unveiled its open-source blockchain framework Coco. But beforethis, both these companies conducted or sponsored many blockchain hackathons, including the world’s biggest event— the Dutch blockchain hackathon.
Although innovation is still thekey responsibility of R&D/ Innovation departments, the hackathon approach enables the entire organization to embrace innovation. With this approach, the team primarily responsible for innovation works with the entire organization to synthesize ideas, proof of concepts, and, finally, take the shortlisted ideas for development under its wing.
Would you like to get updates once a month on our latest articles? We won’t spam, we promise. Subscribe now to The HackerEarth Blog!
Why crowdsourcing hackathons
Shorten the innovation cycle
Get a diverse set of quality ideas
Incur lesser costs compared to traditional innovation models
An API can be used for a number of purposes, from driving innovation to developing a new line of business. Here is a snapshot of different ways APIs are used.
The more the active developers, the more the quality applications we can expect. More active users lead to more API calls, which could then translate into revenue.In other words, you need to get your product (API) to developers and get them to use it (say, use it to build great applications).
So, how do you acquire more quality developers and activate them? Here is a typical developer acquisition funnel.
Just like you would market any other product, there are plenty of ways, such as developing SDKs, posting on GitHub, and answering developer queries, to market an API. You should be carrying out a number of these activities in parallel and an API hackathon should be on the top of your list.
Even companies with a billion API calls still conduct hackathons. For instance, to celebrate its 10-year anniversary, Google Maps took a cross-country road trip from San Francisco to New York to meet developers and creators who are building the map of today.
Here is a pretty cool video of one of their hackathon pit stops during the road trip.
Why conduct API hackathons?
A well-marketed and well-executed hackathon can get you easily 1500 developers and 3000+ for big names such as IBM, Google, etc.
Here is an interesting case study of how Flock drove API adoption using hackathons.
Flock is a collaboration tool. It is a lesser-known alternative to Slack and Microsoft Team. Flock found that vendors have been trying to layer collaboration tools on top of platforms that were designed for individual users.To facilitate that, Flock recently launched its API known as FlockOS for developers to build apps and bots using Java and node.js software development kits (SDKs).
To drive API adoption, Flock decided to organize a series of 9 hackathons over a course of 12 months. Each hackathon is hosted with a specific theme and problem statement in different cities.
So far Flock has completed 3 of the 9 hackathons. With these 3 hackathons, Flock was able to acquire 3600+ developers and build 70+ new applications. A scale of this kind of acquisition is not possible through any other approach.And, you can get anywhere between 20 and 40 decent applications. All this is done over a course of just 4 weeks.
In short, an API hackathon:
Gives you maximum air time to pitch your API to the developers
Gives you the opportunity to put your product (API) in the hands of passionate developers and get them to use it
Gets valuable feedback from the developers to improve your product
Drive innovation internally
Hackathons are one of the best ways to drive innovation internally by engaging with your employees. It provides a platform for your employees to collaborate with other business functions and showcase their talent.
In an interview with New York Times, CEO of Shutterstock, Jon Oringer explains the significance of internal hackathons for his company:
“We have hackathons, which are pretty fun. A lot of people get really excited about them, and they can build whatever they want for the company — it could be crazy, practical, whatever. We actually wind up implementing a lot of those things throughout the year. It pushes a lot of thinking. It’s pretty amazing what people can get done in 24 hours. Sometimes we talk about a new product feature and it can take three months to build. Then someone will prototype it overnight.”
And no topic about hackathons is complete without the Facebook hackathons. When it comes to using these events to drive innovation and employee engagement internally, there are not many companies who can do it better than Facebook.
Facebook organizes one hackathon per quarter and has done 50 major hackathons and 80+ small events around the world.
Many of the Facebook products created at the hackathons end up being rolled out to customers or they become internal tools within weeks. The Like button, Timeline, and Chat were all created at FB’s internal hackathons. Talk about sustained innovation!
It is estimated that by 2020 we will have produced 40 zettabytes of data. To put this in perspective, that’s 5.2 Terabytes of data for every person on this planet.But as of now, only 0.5% of this data is being analyzed and used by companies.
One of the recent emerging trends is Big Data/Machine Learning hackathons. Over 6% of the hackathons conducted worldwide are Big Data/ML hackathons.
A lot of companies are opening up their data sets to developers to build effective predictive models. Especially, BFSI companies, which produce massive amounts of data every day, use this data to gain insights and better understand their customers by building predictive models.
Societe Generale, the French multinational bank, built predictive models from its data by conducting a Machine Learning hackathon, which saw over 1800+ developers and data scientists participate.
Not just banks, Exotel, a cloud-based telephony platform, is one of Southeast Asia’s largest companies. With over 1300 customers, Exotel powers more than 3 million customer conversations every day and has processed 1.2 billion calls in the past 5 years.
For Exotel, emotion detection from audio was an unsolved problem. The company decided to conduct a Machine Learning hackathon. It provided developers with large volumes of voice samples to decipher the sentiment.
In just 18 days, the company got some impressive models, built by 2000+ developers using ML and Natural language processing (NLP), which could detect emotion from audio and flags conversations based on sentiments, such as, happiness, sadness, anger, etc.
If you are wondering what a powerful developer community can do for your business, listen to what Eric Migicovsky, Pebble’s founder, and CEO, says.
“Our developer community rivals any of the competition since we came from the community itself, with over 27,000 developers building apps and watchfaces for Pebble. We’ve demonstrated that even a small group of committed individuals can launch an entirely new computing platform from scratch.”
Hackathons can be a great tool to create brand advocates from a developer community. Once you successfully host or sponsor hackathons, you build a community of developers who are a simple marketing channel that is cost effective; these developers/designers/thinkers help in ideation for the future, review of beta products, and creation of revenue or brand awareness by API adoption.
“Developers engage in community in an effort to discover tools, exchange knowledge, and solve problems,” said Sarah Jane Morris, former Developer Community Manager at Mashery (Intel).
Putting together a vibrant hacker community is easy with these innovation-focused events that provide amazing networking opportunities. Remember to keep them engaged. It is nothing but some give and take!
Employer branding and Identifying tech talent
An employer branding hackathon is a highly targeted branding activity. It allows a company to let potential employees know what the company stands for, the challenging projects it works on and communicates its values to them.
For instance, say your company uses a Django/ Python framework. By conducting a targeted hackathon for Django and Python developers, you will be able to let the developer community know about your company and the technology stack you use. It also allows companies to build a talent pipeline.
Another case would be companies conducting women-only hackathons to attract female talent by positioning themselves as an attractive brand to the female workforce.
Hackathon, a tool for sustained innovation
Novelty + Commercialization = Innovation
Hackathon is the only tool that covers 70% of the innovation journey. It starts with discovery, idea generation, and ends with idea conceptualization.
And best of all, it is cost-effective and can be done on a regular basis to create a culture of sustained innovation. The stronger the insight and problem statement, the better the outcome of the hackathon.
Hackathon is to innovation what 3D printing is to manufacturing.
It allows you to rapidly prototype an idea, determine the quality of the idea, spot flaws, reiterate, scale it, and roll it out to the masses.
Get to know the experts behind our content. From industry leaders to tech enthusiasts, our authors share valuable insights, trends, and expertise to keep you informed and inspired.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) has permeated virtually every industry, transforming operations and interactions. The tech recruitment sector is no exception, and AI’s influence shapes the hiring processes in revolutionary ways. From leveraging AI-powered chatbots for preliminary candidate screenings to deploying machine learning algorithms for efficient resume parsing, AI leaves an indelible mark on tech hiring practices.
Yet, amidst these promising advancements, we must acknowledge the other side of the coin: AI’s potential malpractices, including the likelihood of cheating on assessments, issues around data privacy, and the risk of bias against minority groups.
The dark side of AI in tech recruitment
The introduction of AI in recruitment, while presenting significant opportunities, also brings with it certain drawbacks and vulnerabilities. Sophisticated technologies could enable candidates to cheat on assessments, misrepresent abilities and potential hiring mistakes. This could lead to hiring candidates with falsifying skills or qualifications, which can cause a series of negative effects like:
Reduced work quality: The work output might be sub-par if a candidate doesn’t genuinely possess the abilities they claimed to have.
Team disruptions: Other team members may have to pick up the slack, leading to resentment and decreased morale.
Rehiring costs: You might have to let go of such hires, resulting in additional costs for replacement.
Data privacy is another critical concern
Your company could be left exposed to significant risks if your AI recruiting software is not robust enough to protect sensitive employee information. The implications for an organization with insufficient data security could be severe such as:
Reputational damage: Breaches of sensitive employee data can damage your company’s reputation, making it harder to attract clients and talented employees in the future.
Legal consequences: Depending on the jurisdiction, you could face legal penalties, including hefty fines, for failing to protect sensitive data adequately.
Loss of trust: A data breach could undermine employee trust in your organization, leading to decreased morale and productivity.
Financial costs: Besides potential legal penalties, companies could also face direct financial losses from a data breach, including the costs of investigation, recovery, and measures to prevent future breaches.
Operational disruption: Depending on the extent of the breach, normal business operations could be disrupted, causing additional financial losses and damage to the organization’s reputation.
Let’s talk about the potential for bias in AI recruiting software
Perhaps the most critical issue of all is the potential for unconscious bias. The potential for bias in AI recruiting software stems from the fact that these systems learn from the data they are trained on. If the training data contains biases – for example, if it reflects a history of preferentially hiring individuals of a certain age, gender, or ethnicity – the AI system can learn and replicate these biases.
Even with unbiased data, if the AI’s algorithms are not designed to account for bias, they can inadvertently create it. For instance, a hiring algorithm that prioritizes candidates with more years of experience may inadvertently discriminate against younger candidates or those who have taken career breaks, such as for child-rearing or health reasons.
This replication and possible amplification of human prejudices can result in discriminatory hiring practices. If your organization’s AI-enabled hiring system is found to be biased, you could face legal action, fines, and penalties. Diversity is proven to enhance creativity, problem-solving, and decision-making. In contrast, bias in hiring can lead to a homogenous workforce, so its absence would likely result in a less innovative and less competitive organization.
When used correctly, AI in recruitment can take your hiring to the next level
How do you evaluate the appropriateness of using AI in hiring for your organization? Here are some strategies for navigating the AI revolution in HR. These steps include building support for AI adoption, identifying HR functions that can be integrated with AI, avoiding potential pitfalls of AI use in HR, collaborating with IT leaders, and so on.
Despite certain challenges, AI can significantly enhance tech recruitment processes when used effectively. AI-based recruitment tools can automate many manual recruiting tasks, such as resume screening and interview scheduling, freeing up time for recruiters to focus on more complex tasks. Furthermore, AI can improve the candidate’s experience by providing quick responses and personalized communications. The outcome is a more efficient, candidate-friendly process, which could lead to higher-quality hires.
Let’s look at several transformational possibilities chatbots can bring to human capital management for candidates and hiring teams. This includes automation and simplifying various tasks across domains such as recruiting, onboarding, core HR, absence management, benefits, performance management, and employee self-service resulting in the following:
For recruiters:
Improved efficiency and productivity: Chatbots can handle routine tasks like responding to common inquiries or arranging interviews. Thereby, providing you with more time to concentrate on tasks of strategic importance.
Enhanced candidate experience: With their ability to provide immediate responses, chatbots can make the application process more engaging and user-friendly.
Data and insights: Chatbots can collect and analyze data from your interactions with candidates. And provide valuable insights into candidate preferences and behavior.
Improved compliance: By consistently following predefined rules and guidelines, chatbots can help ensure that hiring processes are fair and compliant with relevant laws and regulations.
Cost saving: By automating routine tasks for recruiters, chatbots can help reduce the labor costs associated with hiring.
Additionally, candidates can leverage these AI-powered chatbots in a dialog flow manner to carry out various tasks. These tasks include the following:
Personalized greetings: By using a candidate’s name and other personal information, chatbots can create a friendly, personalized experience.
Job search: They can help candidates search for jobs based on specific criteria.
Create a candidate profile: These AI-powered chatbots can guide candidates through the process of creating a profile. Thus, making it easier for them to apply for jobs.
Upload resume: Chatbots can instruct candidates on uploading their resume, eliminating potential confusion.
Apply for a job: They can streamline the application process, making it easier and faster for candidates to apply for jobs.
Check application status: Chatbots can provide real-time updates on a candidate’s application status.
Schedule interviews: They can match candidate and interviewer availability to schedule interviews, simplifying the process.
For hiring managers:
These can also be utilized by your tech hiring teams for various purposes, such as:
Create requisition: Chatbots can guide hiring managers through the process of creating a job requisition.
Create offers: They can assist in generating job offers, ensuring all necessary information is included.
Access requisition and offers: Using chatbots can provide hiring managers with easy access to job requisitions and offers.
Check on onboarding tasks: Chatbots can help track onboarding tasks, ensuring nothing is missed.
Other AI recruiting technologies can also enhance the hiring process for candidates and hiring teams in the following ways:
For candidates:
Tailor-made resumes and cover letters using generative AI:Generative AI can help candidates create custom resumes and cover letters, increasing their chances of standing out.
Simplifying the application process: AI-powered recruiting tools can simplify the application process, allowing candidates to apply for jobs with just a few clicks.
Provide similar job recommendations: AI can analyze candidates’ skills, experiences, and preferences to recommend similar jobs they might be interested in.
For recruiters:
Find the best candidate: AI algorithms can analyze large amounts of data to help you identify the candidates most likely to succeed in a given role.
Extract key skills from candidate job applications: Save a significant amount of time and effort by using AI-based recruiting software to quickly analyze job applications to identify key skills, thereby, speeding up the screening process.
Take feedback from rejected candidates & share similar job recommendations: AI can collect feedback from rejected candidates for you to improve future hiring processes and recommend other suitable roles to the candidate.
These enhancements not only streamline the hiring process but also improve the quality of hires, reduce hiring biases, and improve the experience for everyone involved. The use of AI in hiring can indeed take it to the next level.
Where is AI in recruitment headed?
AI can dramatically reshape the recruitment landscape with the following key advancements:
1. Blockchain-based background verification:
Blockchain technology, renowned for its secure, transparent, and immutable nature, can revolutionize background checks. This process which can take anywhere from between a day to several weeks today for a single recruiter to do can be completed within a few clicks resulting in:
Streamlined screening process: Blockchain can store, manage, and share candidates’ credentials and work histories. Thereby speeding up the verification and screening process. This approach eliminates the need for manual background checks. And leads to freeing up a good amount of time for you to focus on more important tasks.
Enhanced trust and transparency: With blockchain, candidates, and employers can trust the validity of the information shared due to the nature of the technology. The cryptographic protection of blockchain ensures the data is tamper-proof, and decentralization provides transparency.
Improved data accuracy and reliability: Since the blockchain ledger is immutable, it enhances the accuracy and reliability of the data stored. This can minimize the risks associated with false information on candidates’ resumes.
Faster onboarding: A swift and reliable verification process means candidates can be onboarded more quickly. Thereby, improving the candidate experience and reducing the time-to-hire.
Expanded talent pool: With blockchain, it’s easier and quicker to verify the credentials of candidates globally, thereby widening the potential talent pool.
2. Immersive experiences using virtual reality (VR):
VR can provide immersive experiences that enhance various aspects of the tech recruitment process:
Interactive job previews: VR can allow potential candidates to virtually “experience” a day i.e., life at your company. This provides a more accurate and engaging job preview than traditional job descriptions.
Virtual interviews and assessments: You can use VR to conduct virtual interviews or assessments. You can also evaluate candidates in a more interactive and immersive setting. This can be particularly useful for roles that require specific spatial or technical skills.
Virtual onboarding programs: New hires can take a virtual tour of the office, meet their colleagues, and get acquainted with their tasks, all before their first day. This can significantly enhance the onboarding experience and help new hires feel more prepared.
Immersive learning experiences: VR can provide realistic, immersive learning experiences for job-specific training or to enhance soft skills. These could be used during the recruitment process or for ongoing employee development.
To summarize, AI in recruitment is a double-edged sword, carrying both promise and potential problems. The key lies in how recruiters use this technology, leveraging its benefits while vigilantly managing its risks. AI isn’t likely to replace recruiters or HR teams in the near future. Instead, you should leverage this tool to positively impact the entire hiring lifecycle.
With the right balance and careful management, AI can streamline hiring processes. It can create better candidate experiences, and ultimately lead to better recruitment decisions. Recruiters should continually experiment with and explore generative AI. To devise creative solutions, resulting in more successful hiring and the perfect fit for every open role.
“Every hire is an investment for a company. A good hire will give you a higher ROI; if it is a bad hire, it will cost you a lot of time and money.”
Especially in tech hiring!
An effective tech recruitment process helps you attract the best talents, reduce hiring costs, and enhance company culture and reputation.
Businesses increasingly depend on technical knowledge to compete in today’s fast-paced, technologically driven world. Online platforms that provide technical recruiting solutions have popped up to assist companies in finding and employing top talent in response to this demand.
The two most well-known platforms in this field are HackerEarth and Mettl. To help businesses make wise choices for their technical employment requirements, we will compare these two platforms’ features, benefits, and limitations in this article.
This comparison of Mettl alternative, HackerEarth and Mettl itself, will offer helpful information to help you make the best decision, whether you’re a small company trying to expand your tech staff or a massive organization needing a simplified recruiting process.
HackerEarth
HackerEarth is based in San Francisco, USA, and offers enterprise software to aid companies with technical recruitment. Its services include remote video interviewing and technical skill assessments that are commonly used by organizations.
HackerEarth also provides a platform for developers to participate in coding challenges and hackathons. In addition, it provides tools for technical hiring such as coding tests, online interviews, and applicant management features. The hiring solutions provided by HackerEarth aid companies assess potential employees’ technical aptitude and select the best applicants for their specialized positions.
Mettl
Mettl, on the other hand, offers a range of assessment solutions for various industries, including IT, banking, healthcare, and retail. It provides online tests for coding, linguistic ability, and cognitive skills. The tests offered by Mettl assist employers find the best applicants for open positions and make data-driven recruiting choices. Additionally, Mettl provides solutions for personnel management and staff training and development.
Why should you go for HackerEarth over Mercer Mettl?
Because HackerEarth makes technical recruiting easy and fast, you must consider HackerEarth for technical competence evaluations and remote video interviews. It goes above and beyond to provide you with a full range of functions and guarantee the effectiveness of the questions in the database. Moreover, it is user-friendly and offers fantastic testing opportunities.
The coding assessments by HackerEarth guarantee the lowest time consumption and maximum efficiency. It provides a question bank of more than 17,000 coding-related questions and automated test development so that you can choose test questions as per the job role.
As a tech recruiter, you may need a clear understanding of a candidate’s skills. With HackerEarth’s code replay capability and insight-rich reporting on a developer’s performance, you can hire the right resource for your company.
Additionally, HackerEarth provides a more in-depth examination of your recruiting process so you can continuously enhance your coding exams and develop a hiring procedure that leads the industry.
HackerEarth and Mercer Mettl are the two well-known online tech assessment platforms that provide tools for managing and performing online examinations. We will examine the major areas where HackerEarth outperforms Mettl, thereby proving to be a great alternative to Mettl, in this comparison.
HackerEarth believes in upgrading itself and providing the most effortless navigation and solutions to recruiters and candidates.
HackerEarth provides various tools and capabilities to create and administer online tests, such as programming tests, multiple-choice questions, coding challenges, and more. The software also has remote proctoring, automatic evaluation, and plagiarism detection tools (like detecting the use of ChatGPT in coding assessments). On the other side, Mettl offers comparable functionality but has restricted capabilities for coding challenges and evaluations.
Test creation and administration
HackerEarth: It has a user-friendly interface that is simple to use and navigate. It makes it easy for recruiters to handle evaluations without zero technical know-how. The HackerEarth coding platform is also quite flexible and offers a variety of pre-built exams, including coding tests, aptitude tests, and domain-specific examinations. It has a rich library of 17,000+ questions across 900+ skills, which is fully accessible by the hiring team. Additionally, it allows you to create custom questions yourself or use the available question libraries.
Mettl: It can be challenging for a hiring manager to use Mettl efficiently since Mettl provides limited assessment and question libraries. Also, their team creates the test for them rather than giving access to hiring managers. This results in a higher turnaround time and reduces test customization possibilities since the request has to go back to the team, they have to make the changes, and so forth.
Reporting and analytics
HackerEarth: You may assess applicant performance and pinpoint areas for improvement with the help of HackerEarth’s full reporting and analytics tools. Its personalized dashboards, visualizations, and data exports simplify evaluating assessment results and real-time insights.
Most importantly, HackerEarth includes code quality scores in candidate performance reports, which lets you get a deeper insight into a candidate’s capabilities and make the correct hiring decision. Additionally, HackerEarth provides a health score index for each question in the library to help you add more accuracy to your assessments. The health score is based on parameters like degree of difficulty, choice of the programming language used, number of attempts over the past year, and so on.
Mettl: Mettl online assessment tool provides reporting and analytics. However, there may be only a few customization choices available. Also, Mettle does not provide code quality assurance which means hiring managers have to check the whole code manually. There is no option to leverage question-based analytics and Mettl does not include a health score index for its question library.
Adopting this platform may be challenging if you want highly customized reporting and analytics solutions.
HackerEarth: The security and privacy of user data are top priorities at HackerEarth. The platform protects data in transit and at rest using industry-standard encryption. Additionally, all user data is kept in secure, constantly monitored data centers with stringent access controls.
Along with these security measures, HackerEarth also provides IP limitations, role-based access controls, and multi-factor authentication. These features ensure that all activity is recorded and audited and that only authorized users can access sensitive data.
HackerEarth complies with several data privacy laws, such as GDPR and CCPA. The protection of candidate data is ensured by this compliance, which also enables businesses to fulfill their legal and regulatory responsibilities.
Mettl: The security and data privacy features of Mettl might not be as strong as those of HackerEarth. The platform does not provide the same selection of security measures, such as IP limitations or multi-factor authentication. Although the business asserts that it complies with GDPR and other laws, it cannot offer the same amount of accountability and transparency as other platforms.
Even though both HackerEarth and Mettl include security and data privacy measures, the Mettle alternative, HackerEarth’s platform is made to be more thorough, open, and legal. By doing this, businesses can better guarantee candidate data’s security and ability to fulfill legal and regulatory requirements.
Pricing and support
HackerEarth: To meet the demands of businesses of all sizes, HackerEarth offers a variety of customizable pricing options. The platform provides yearly and multi-year contracts in addition to a pay-as-you-go basis. You can select the price plan that best suits their demands regarding employment and budget.
HackerEarth offers chat customer support around the clock. The platform also provides a thorough knowledge base and documentation to assist users in getting started and troubleshooting problems.
Mettl: The lack of price information on Mettl’s website might make it challenging for businesses to decide whether the platform fits their budget. The organization also does not have a pay-as-you-go option, which might be problematic.
Mettl offers phone and emails customer assistance. However, the business website lacks information on support availability or response times. This lack of transparency may be an issue if you need prompt and efficient help.
User experience
HackerEarth: The interface on HackerEarth is designed to be simple for both recruiters and job seekers. As a result of the platform’s numerous adjustable choices for test creation and administration, you may design exams specifically suited to a job role. Additionally, the platform provides a selection of question types and test templates, making it simple to build and take exams effectively.
In terms of the candidate experience, HackerEarth provides a user-friendly interface that makes navigating the testing procedure straightforward and intuitive for applicants. As a result of the platform’s real-time feedback and scoring, applicants may feel more motivated and engaged during the testing process. The platform also provides several customization choices, like branding and message, which may assist recruiters in giving prospects a more exciting and tailored experience.
Mettl: The platform is intended to have a steeper learning curve than others and be more technical. It makes it challenging to rapidly and effectively construct exams and can be difficult for applicants unfamiliar with the platform due to its complex interface.
Additionally, Mettl does not provide real-time feedback or scoring, which might deter applicants from participating and being motivated by the testing process.
According to G2, HackerEarth and Mettl have 4.4 reviews out of 5. Users have also applauded HackerEarth’s customer service. Many agree that the staff members are friendly and quick to respond to any problems or queries. Overall, customer evaluations and feedback for HackerEarth point to the platform as simple to use. Both recruiters and applicants find it efficient.
Mettl has received mixed reviews from users, with some praising the platform for its features and functionality and others expressing frustration with its complex and technical interface.
May the best “brand” win!
Recruiting and selecting the ideal candidate demands a significant investment of time, attention, and effort.
This is where tech recruiting platforms like HackerEarth and Mettl have got you covered. They help streamline the whole process.Both HackerEarth and Mettl provide a wide variety of advanced features and capabilities for tech hiring.
We think HackerEarth is the superior choice. Especially, when contrasting the two platforms in terms of their salient characteristics and functioning. But, we may be biased!
So don’t take our word for it. Sign up for a free trial and check out HackerEarth’s offerings for yourself!
Let’s face it—cheating on tests is quite common. While technology has made a lot of things easier in tech recruiting, it
has also left the field wide open to malpractice. A 2020 report by ICAI shows
that 32% of undergraduate students have cheated in some form on an online test.
It’s human nature to want to bend
the rules a little bit. Which begs the question, how do you stay on top of cheating, plagiarism, and other forms of
malpractice during the assessment process?
How do you ensure that take-home assessments and remote interviews
stay authentic and credible? By relying on enhanced virtual supervision, of course!
HackerEarth Assessments has
always been one step ahead when it comes to remote proctoring which is able to capture the nuances of candidate
plagiarism. The recent advancements in technology (think generative AI) needed
more robust proctoring features, so we went ahead and built The HackerEarth Smart
Browser to ensure our assessments remain as foolproof as ever.
Presenting to you, the
latest HackerEarth proctoring fix - The Smart Browser
Our Smart Browser is the chocolatey version of a plain
donut when compared to a regular web browser. It is extra effective and comes packed with additional remote proctoring capabilities to
increase the quality of your screening assessments.
The chances of a candidate cheating on a HackerEarth technical assessment are virtually zero with
the latest features! Spilling all our secrets to show you why -
1. Sealed-off testing environment makes proctoring
simpler
To get started with
using the Smart Browser, enable the Smart Browser setting as shown above. This setting is available under the test
proctoring section on the test overview page.
As you can see, several other proctoring settings such as disabling
copy-paste, restricting candidates to full-screen mode, and logout on leaving the test interface are selected
automatically.Now, every candidate you invite to take the assessment will only be able to do so through the Smart
Browser. Candidates are prompted to download the Smart Browser from the link shared in the test invite mail.When the
candidate needs to click on the ‘start test’ button on the launch test screen, it opens in the Smart Browser. The
browser also prompts the candidate to switch to full-screen mode. Now, all candidates need to do is sign in and attempt
the test, as usual.
Also read: 6
Ways Candidates Try To Outsmart A Remote Proctored Assessment
2. Eagle-eyed online test monitoring leaves no room for error
Our AI-enabled Smart Browser takes frequent snapshots via the webcam, throughout the assessment.
Consequently, it is impossible to copy-paste code or impersonate a candidate.The browser prevents the following
candidate actions and facilitates thorough monitoring of the assessment:
Any candidate actions attempting to switch tabs with the intent to copy-paste or use a generative AI like ChatGPT
are shown a warning and captured in the candidate report.HackerEarth’s latest proctoring fixes
bulletproof our assessment platform, making it one of the most reliable and accurate sources of candidate hiring in the
market today.
Also read: 4 Ways
HackerEarth Flags The Use Of ChatGPT In Tech Hiring Assessments
Experience reliable assessments with the Smart Browser!
There you have it - our newest offering that preserves
the integrity of coding assessments and enables skill-first hiring, all in one go. Recruiters and hiring managers, this
is one feature that you can easily rely on and can be sure that every candidate’s test score is a result of their
ability alone.Curious to try out the Smart Browser? Well, don’t take our word for it. Head over here to check it out for
yourself!
We also love hearing from our customers so don’t hesitate to leave us any feedback you might
have.
In today’s fast-paced world, recruiting talent has become increasingly complicated. Technological advancements, high workforce expectations and a highly competitive market have pushed recruitment agencies to adopt innovative strategies for recruiting various types of talent. This article aims to explore one such recruitment strategy – headhunting.
What is Headhunting in recruitment?
In headhunting, companies or recruitment agencies identify, engage and hire highly skilled professionals to fill top positions in the respective companies. It is different from the traditional process in which candidates looking for job opportunities approach companies or recruitment agencies. In headhunting, executive headhunters, as recruiters are referred to, approach prospective candidates with the hiring company’s requirements and wait for them to respond. Executive headhunters generally look for passive candidates, those who work at crucial positions and are not on the lookout for new work opportunities. Besides, executive headhunters focus on filling critical, senior-level positions indispensable to companies. Depending on the nature of the operation, headhunting has three types. They are described later in this article. Before we move on to understand the types of headhunting, here is how the traditional recruitment process and headhunting are different.
How do headhunting and traditional recruitment differ from each other?
Headhunting is a type of recruitment process in which top-level managers and executives in similar positions are hired. Since these professionals are not on the lookout for jobs, headhunters have to thoroughly understand the hiring companies’ requirements and study the work profiles of potential candidates before creating a list.
In the traditional approach, there is a long list of candidates applying for jobs online and offline. Candidates approach recruiters for jobs. Apart from this primary difference, there are other factors that define the difference between these two schools of recruitment.
AspectHeadhuntingTraditional RecruitmentCandidate TypePrimarily passive candidateActive job seekersApproachFocused on specific high-level rolesBroader; includes various levelsScopeproactive outreachReactive: candidates applyCostGenerally more expensive due to expertise requiredTypically lower costsControlManaged by headhuntersManaged internally by HR teams
All the above parameters will help you to understand how headhunting differs from traditional recruitment methods, better.
Types of headhunting in recruitment
Direct headhunting: In direct recruitment, hiring teams reach out to potential candidates through personal communication. Companies conduct direct headhunting in-house, without outsourcing the process to hiring recruitment agencies. Very few businesses conduct this type of recruitment for top jobs as it involves extensive screening across networks outside the company’s expanse.
Indirect headhunting: This method involves recruiters getting in touch with their prospective candidates through indirect modes of communication such as email and phone calls. Indirect headhunting is less intrusive and allows candidates to respond at their convenience.Third-party recruitment: Companies approach external recruitment agencies or executive headhunters to recruit highly skilled professionals for top positions. This method often leverages the company’s extensive contact network and expertise in niche industries.
How does headhunting work?
Finding highly skilled professionals to fill critical positions can be tricky if there is no system for it. Expert executive headhunters employ recruitment software to conduct headhunting efficiently as it facilitates a seamless recruitment process for executive headhunters. Most software is AI-powered and expedites processes like candidate sourcing, interactions with prospective professionals and upkeep of communication history. This makes the process of executive search in recruitment a little bit easier. Apart from using software to recruit executives, here are the various stages of finding high-calibre executives through headhunting.
Identifying the role
Once there is a vacancy for a top job, one of the top executives like a CEO, director or the head of the company, reach out to the concerned personnel with their requirements. Depending on how large a company is, they may choose to headhunt with the help of an external recruiting agency or conduct it in-house. Generally, the task is assigned to external recruitment agencies specializing in headhunting. Executive headhunters possess a database of highly qualified professionals who work in crucial positions in some of the best companies. This makes them the top choice of conglomerates looking to hire some of the best talents in the industry.
Defining the job
Once an executive headhunter or a recruiting agency is finalized, companies conduct meetings to discuss the nature of the role, how the company works, the management hierarchy among other important aspects of the job. Headhunters are expected to understand these points thoroughly and establish a clear understanding of their expectations and goals.
Candidate identification and sourcing
Headhunters analyse and understand the requirements of their clients and begin creating a pool of suitable candidates from their database. The professionals are shortlisted after conducting extensive research of job profiles, number of years of industry experience, professional networks and online platforms.
Approaching candidates
Once the potential candidates have been identified and shortlisted, headhunters move on to get in touch with them discreetly through various communication channels. As such candidates are already working at top level positions at other companies, executive headhunters have to be low-key while doing so.
Assessment and Evaluation
In this next step, extensive screening and evaluation of candidates is conducted to determine their suitability for the advertised position.
Interviews and negotiations
Compensation is a major topic of discussion among recruiters and prospective candidates. A lot of deliberation and negotiation goes on between the hiring organization and the selected executives which is facilitated by the headhunters.
Finalizing the hire
Things come to a close once the suitable candidates accept the job offer. On accepting the offer letter, headhunters help finalize the hiring process to ensure a smooth transition.
The steps listed above form the blueprint for a typical headhunting process. Headhunting has been crucial in helping companies hire the right people for crucial positions that come with great responsibility. However, all systems have a set of challenges no matter how perfect their working algorithm is. Here are a few challenges that talent acquisition agencies face while headhunting.
Common challenges in headhunting
Despite its advantages, headhunting also presents certain challenges:
Cost Implications: Engaging headhunters can be more expensive than traditional recruitment methods due to their specialized skills and services.
Time-Consuming Process: While headhunting can be efficient, finding the right candidate for senior positions may still take time due to thorough evaluation processes.
Market Competition: The competition for top talent is fierce; organizations must present compelling offers to attract passive candidates away from their current roles.
Although the above mentioned factors can pose challenges in the headhunting process, there are more upsides than there are downsides to it. Here is how headhunting has helped revolutionize the recruitment of high-profile candidates.
Advantages of Headhunting
Headhunting offers several advantages over traditional recruitment methods:
Access to Passive Candidates: By targeting individuals who are not actively seeking new employment, organisations can access a broader pool of highly skilled professionals.
Confidentiality: The discreet nature of headhunting protects both candidates’ current employment situations and the hiring organisation’s strategic interests.
Customized Search: Headhunters tailor their search based on the specific needs of the organization, ensuring a better fit between candidates and company culture.
Industry Expertise: Many headhunters specialise in particular sectors, providing valuable insights into market dynamics and candidate qualifications.
Conclusion
Although headhunting can be costly and time-consuming, it is one of the most effective ways of finding good candidates for top jobs. Executive headhunters face several challenges maintaining the g discreetness while getting in touch with prospective clients. As organizations navigate increasingly competitive markets, understanding the nuances of headhunting becomes vital for effective recruitment strategies. To keep up with the technological advancements, it is better to optimise your hiring process by employing online recruitment software like HackerEarth, which enables companies to conduct multiple interviews and evaluation tests online, thus improving candidate experience. By collaborating with skilled headhunters who possess industry expertise and insights into market trends, companies can enhance their chances of securing high-caliber professionals who drive success in their respective fields.
The job industry is not the same as it was 30 years ago. Progresses in AI and automation have created a new work culture that demands highly skilled professionals who drive innovation and work efficiently. This has led to an increase in the number of companies reaching out to external sources of recruitment for hiring talent. Over the years, we have seen several job aggregators optimise their algorithms to suit the rising demand for talent in the market and new players entering the talent acquisition industry. This article will tell you all about how external sources of recruitment help companies scout some of the best candidates in the industry, the importance of external recruitment in organizations across the globe and how it can be leveraged to find talent effectively.
Understanding external sources of recruitment
External sources refer to recruitment agencies, online job portals, job fairs, professional associations and any other organizations that facilitate seamless recruitment. When companies employ external recruitment sources, they access a wider pool of talent which helps them find the right candidates much faster than hiring people in-house. They save both time and effort in the recruitment process.
Online job portals
Online resume aggregators like LinkedIn, Naukri, Indeed, Shine, etc. contain a large database of prospective candidates. With the advent of AI, online external sources of recruitment have optimised their algorithms to show the right jobs to the right candidates. Once companies figure out how to utilise job portals for recruitment, they can expedite their hiring process efficiently.
Social Media
Ours is a generation that thrives on social media. To boost my IG presence, I have explored various strategies, from getting paid Instagram users to optimizing post timing and engaging with my audience consistently. Platforms like FB an IG have been optimized to serve job seekers and recruiters alike. The algorithms of social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram have been optimised to serve job seekers and recruiters alike. Leveraging them to post well-placed ads for job listings is another way to implement external sources of recruitment strategies.
Employee Referrals
Referrals are another great external source of recruitment for hiring teams. Encouraging employees to refer their friends and acquaintances for vacancies enables companies to access highly skilled candidates faster.
Campus Recruitment
Hiring freshers from campus allows companies to train and harness new talent. Campus recruitment drives are a great external recruitment resource where hiring managers can expedite the hiring process by conducting screening processes in short periods.
Recruitment Agencies
Companies who are looking to fill specific positions with highly skilled and experienced candidates approach external recruitment agencies or executive headhunters to do so. These agencies are well-equipped to look for suitable candidates and they also undertake the task of identifying, screening and recruiting such people.
Job Fairs
This is a win-win situation for job seekers and hiring teams. Job fairs allow potential candidates to understand how specific companies work while allowing hiring managers to scout for potential candidates and proceed with the hiring process if possible.
Importance of External Recruitment
The role of recruitment agencies in talent acquisition is of paramount importance. They possess the necessary resources to help companies find the right candidates and facilitate a seamless hiring process through their internal system. Here is how external sources of recruitment benefit companies.
Diversity of Skill Sets
External recruitment resources are a great way for companies to hire candidates with diverse professional backgrounds. They possess industry-relevant skills which can be put to good use in this highly competitive market.
Fresh Perspectives
Candidates hired through external recruitment resources come from varied backgrounds. This helps them drive innovation and run things a little differently, thus bringing in a fresh approach to any project they undertake.
Access to Specialized Talent
Companies cannot hire anyone to fill critical roles that require highly qualified executives. This task is assigned to executive headhunters who specialize in identifying and screening high-calibre candidates with the right amount of industry experience. Huge conglomerates and companies seek special talent through external recruiters who have carved a niche for themselves.
Now that you have learnt the different ways in which leveraging external sources of recruitment benefits companies, let’s take a look at some of the best practices of external recruitment to understand how to effectively use their resources.
Best Practices for Effective External Recruitment
Identifying, reaching out to and screening the right candidates requires a robust working system. Every system works efficiently if a few best practices are implemented. For example, hiring through social media platforms requires companies to provide details about their working environment, how the job is relevant to their audience and well-positioned advertisements. The same applies to the other external sources of recruitment. Here is how you can optimise the system to ensure an effective recruitment process.
Craft Clear and Compelling Job Descriptions
Detail Responsibilities: Clearly outline the key responsibilities and expectations for the role.
Highlight Company Culture: Include information about the company’s mission, values, and growth opportunities to attract candidates who align with your organizational culture.
Leverage Multiple Recruitment Channels
Diversify Sources: Use a mix of job boards, social media platforms, recruitment agencies, and networking events to maximize reach. Relying on a single source can limit your candidate pool.
Utilize Industry-Specific Platforms: In addition to general job boards, consider niche job sites that cater to specific industries or skill sets
Streamline the Application Process
Simplify Applications: Ensure that the application process is user-friendly. Lengthy or complicated forms can deter potential candidates from applying.
Mobile Optimization: Many candidates use mobile devices to apply for jobs, so ensure your application process is mobile-friendly.
Engage in Proactive Sourcing
Reach Out to Passive Candidates: Actively seek out candidates who may not be actively looking for a job but could be a great fit for your organization. Use LinkedIn and other professional networks for this purpose.
Maintain a Talent Pool: Keep a database of previous applicants and strong candidates for future openings, allowing you to reach out when new roles become available.
Utilize Social Media Effectively
Promote Job Openings: Use social media platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter to share job postings and engage with potential candidates. This approach can also enhance your employer brand
Conduct Background Checks: There are several ways of learning about potential candidates. Checking out candidate profiles on job boards like LinkedIn or social media platforms can give companies a better understanding of their potential candidates, thus confirming whether they are the right fit for the organization.
Implement Data-Driven Recruitment
Analyze Recruitment Metrics: Track key metrics such as time-to-hire, cost-per-hire, and source effectiveness. This data can help refine your recruitment strategies over time. Using external hiring software like HackeEarth can streamline the recruitment process, thus ensuring quality hires without having to indulge internal resources for the same.
Use Predictive Analytics: In this age of fast paced internet, everybody makes data-driven decisions. Using predictive analytics to study employee data will help companies predict future trends, thus facilitating a productive hiring process.
Conclusion
External sources of recruitment play a very important role in an organization’s talent acquisition strategy. By employing various channels of recruitment such as social media, employee referrals and campus recruitment drives, companies can effectively carry out their hiring processes. AI-based recruitment management systems also help in the process. Implementing best practices in external recruitment will enable organizations to enhance their hiring processes effectively while meeting their strategic goals.
The Progressive Pre-Employment Assessment is a crucial step in the hiring process, as it evaluates candidates through various dimensions including cognitive abilities, personality traits, and role-specific skills.
While employers and recruiters have this in the palm of their hand, candidates who master it will successfully navigate the assessment and have a higher chance of landing that dream job. But what does it entail in the first place?
Candidates can expect to undergo tests that assess verbal, numerical, and work style capabilities, as well as a personality assessment. Hence, understanding the structure and purpose of the Progressive Pre-Employment Assessment can give candidates a competitive edge. But before one tackles online tests, we must first dissect what this assessment is and what it consists of.
The evolution of pre-employment assessments
Pre-employment assessments have undergone significant changes over the decades, from rudimentary tests to sophisticated, modern evaluations. Let’s put the two side by side.
Traditional methods:
Initially, pre-employment assessments focused on basic skills and educational qualifications. These paper-based tests primarily assessed cognitive and verbal abilities, without any conclusions about the candidates’ output in very specific situations.
Modern techniques:
Today, online assessments are prevalent, evaluating a variety of dimensions, including cognitive skills, personality traits, and behavioral evaluations. These tools offer a more comprehensive view of a candidate's job performance potential, while, at the same time, saving precious time for both parties involved.
In today’s competitive job market, progressive pre-employment assessments play a crucial as they not only measure technical skills and knowledge but also provide insights into a candidate's ethical bias, cultural fit, and communication skills.
Likewise, assessment tests have evolved to include situational judgment tests and culture fit analyses, which are pivotal in assessing the suitability of a candidate for specific roles. And this isn’t just in terms of skillsets—they help in identifying candidates who align well with the company's values and working environment.
This is mainly for the tests’ ability to accurately gauge a candidate's interpersonal skills and emotional intelligence, which are essential for roles that require teamwork and client interactions.
What are progressive pre-employment assessments?
Progressive pre-employment assessments are structured evaluations designed to judge a candidate’s abilities and fit for a role at Progressive Insurance. Unlike traditional aptitude tests, these assessments encompass various elements such as cognitive abilities, situational judgments, and personality traits.
These tests typically include verbal and numerical reasoning sections, as well as work style assessments that gauge behavioral tendencies. Through this merger of multiple dimensions, Progressive seeks to understand not just the skills and knowledge of the candidate, but also their ethical perspectives and communication skills.
Components of a progressive assessment strategy
What sets progressive assessments apart? Well, as most employers just focus on the basic credentials and competencies, the comprehensive assessment strategy at Progressive includes several key components:
Cognitive evaluations: These tests measure candidates' logical reasoning and problem-solving capabilities through verbal, numerical, and abstract reasoning questions.
Personality assessments: These tests evaluate traits and tendencies to understand how a candidate might behave in various workplace scenarios. They aim to provide insight into their ethical bias and interpersonal skills.
Behavioral evaluations: These sections analyze how candidates might act in specific situations, ensuring a good cultural fit and alignment with Progressive's values.
Role-specific skills tests: These assessments focus on the specialized skills required for the position, ensuring the candidate has the necessary technical knowledge and expertise.
Implementing progressive assessments
Successful implementation of Progressive Assessments in the hiring process requires designing an effective assessment process and following best practices for administration. This ensures accuracy, better data security, and reliable decision-making. In particular, the implementation hinges on the feasibility of the original design.
Step 1 --- Designing the assessment process
Designing an effective Progressive Assessment involves understanding the specific needs of the role and the company's approach to hiring. Each test component — verbal, numerical, and work style — must align with the desired skills and personality traits for the role.
HR teams need to define clear objectives for each assessment section. This includes establishing what each part aims to evaluate, like the problem-solving or personality assessments. Incorporating legal and policy guidelines ensures the assessments are fair and non-discriminatory, which is crucial for avoiding legal issues.
Likewise, everaging online assessment tests provides flexibility and efficiency. These tests allow candidates to complete them remotely, easing logistics and scheduling concerns. Ensuring security is also essential, and implementing testing and other recruitment tools can help enhance data security and accuracy.
Step 2 --- Best practices for assessment administration
Administering assessments effectively revolves around consistency and fairness. Establish structured guidelines for the administration process to ensure each candidate undergoes the same conditions, promoting reliability. This includes standardizing the timing, environment, and instructions for all assessments.
Training HR representatives is vital. They should be well-versed in handling the assessments, from initial candidate interactions to evaluating the results. Regular training updates ensure the team remains knowledgeable about best practices and any new tools used in the assessment process.
Administering assessments also involves maintaining better data security and accuracy. This is achieved by utilizing secure online platforms and ensuring that only authorized personnel have access to sensitive data. Leveraging top API penetration testing tools is one approach to securing candidate data and preserving the integrity of the assessment process.
Implementing consistent feedback mechanisms for candidates can also improve the process. Providing insights on their performance helps candidates understand their strengths and areas for growth, which reflects positively on the company’s commitment to candidate experience.
Benefits of progressive assessments
Progressive assessments offer significant advantages in the hiring process, such as improving the accuracy of hiring decisions and enhancing the overall candidate experience. These benefits help companies find better-fitting candidates and reduce turnover rates.
1. Improved hiring accuracy
Progressive pre-employment assessments allow companies to evaluate candidates more comprehensively. By assessing personality traits, cognitive abilities, and ethical biases, employers can identify individuals who align with the company’s values and have the necessary skills for the job.
For example, personality assessments can pinpoint traits like empathy, communication, and problem-solving abilities. This helps employers select candidates who are not only qualified but also fit well within the team. Evaluating these qualities ensures that new hires can thrive in customer service roles where empathy and effective communication are crucial.
Moreover, using tools like the DDI Adaptive Reasoning Test helps to simulate real job tasks. This gives employers deeper insights into a candidate's capability to handle job-specific challenges. As a result, the company is more likely to experience lower turnover rates due to better candidate-job fit.
2. Enhanced candidate experience
A well-structured assessment process can significantly enhance the candidate experience. Clear instructions,fair testing procedures, and timely feedback create a positive impression of the company. Candidates appreciate transparency and feel valued when the process is designed with their experience in mind.
Implementing assessments that reflect actual job roles and responsibilities gives candidates a realistic preview of the job. This reduces later dissatisfaction and turnover. Additionally, personality assessments that highlight traits such as confidence and empathy provide a more engaging candidate experience.
Companies can also strengthen their employer brand by showcasing their commitment to a fair and comprehensive hiring process. Providing resources like practice tests helps candidates feel better prepared and less anxious about the assessment, leading to a more positive perception of the company.
Common pitfalls in progressive assessments
Candidates often struggle with the cognitive abilities section, which requires strong analytical skills and problem-solving capabilities. The situational judgment tests can also be tricky as they assess empathy, decision-making, and customer service scenarios. Personality assessments can pose challenges as well, especially for those unsure how to present their personality traits aligned with the job role.
A significant issue is also misinterpretation of the test's format and expectations. Many find it daunting to navigate through various sections, such as verbal, numerical, and work style assessments. Lastly, some candidates might overlook the legal nuances of personality assessments or document redaction protocols, leading to compliance issues.
Strategies to overcome challenges
To tackle cognitive abilities assessments, candidates should engage in consistent practice with sample questions and mock tests. This helps enhance their analytical and problem-solving skills. For situational judgment tests, it is essential to practice empathy and customer service scenarios to develop a better understanding of role-specific challenges.
In personality assessments, being honest while demonstrating relevant personality traits like being a team player is crucial. Seeking guidance from study materials such as Job Test Prep can provide a realistic testing environment.
Understanding legal considerations, such as those around document redaction, is important for compliance. Utilizing a document redaction SDK can ensure adherence to required policies. Familiarity with each section's format will aid in navigating the assessments confidently and effectively.
Trends and innovations in employee assessments
There is a growing emphasis on AI-powered assessments —these tools analyze vast amounts of data to predict a candidate's job performance, ensuring a more objective and efficient selection process.
Personality assessments are evolving to include metrics like empathy and communication skills, which are crucial for roles in customer service and other people-centric positions.
Additionally, gamified assessments, which make the evaluation process engaging, are gaining popularity. They not only assess problem-solving skills but also gauge how candidates perform under pressure.
Organizations can prepare for the future by integrating cutting-edge technologies into their hiring processes. Investing in training for evaluators to accurately interpret new assessment metrics is crucial. This involves
Moreover, companies should stay updated on legal requirements to maintain compliance and ensure fair assessment practices.
Encouraging candidates to focus on developing their personality traits, such as being team players and showing confidence, can also better prepare them for progressive assessments that look beyond technical skills.
The strategic value of progressive assessments
Progressive pre-employment assessments rigorously evaluate candidates on multiple fronts, including cognitive abilities, situational judgment, personality fit, and role-specific skills. This multifaceted approach not only helps in identifying the best match for specific roles but also reduces the risk of bad hires.
By investing in these assessments, companies can significantly enhance their recruitment processes. Consistent use of these tools leads to more informed decision-making, reducing turnover rates and ensuring employee retention.
Appropriate preparation and implementation of these assessments can streamline the hiring pipeline, saving time and resources. Furthermore, this approach bolsters team performance and aligns employee roles with their strengths, promoting a culture of efficiency and productivity. While Progressive is far from the only company using this approach, they’ve set a standard in terms of looking at candidates holistically and making sure they’re truly ready for the job.
Frequently Asked Questions
This section covers common inquiries related to the Progressive Pre-Employment Assessments, including differences from psychometric tests, benefits for small businesses, legal considerations, and the role of technology.
How do progressive assessments differ from psychometric testing?
Progressive assessments typically examine a candidate's ethical bias and personality traits. In contrast, psychometric tests focus on cognitive abilities and personality dimensions. The Progressive Pre-Employment Assessment includes verbal, numerical, and work style components, offering a broader evaluation spectrum.
Can small businesses benefit from implementing progressive assessment strategies?
Small businesses can gain significant advantages from adopting progressive assessment strategies. These assessments help identify candidates that align closely with the company’s values and culture, reducing turnover rates. Additionally, they provide insights into a candidate's ethical stance and work style, which are crucial for cohesive team dynamics.
What are the legal considerations when using pre-employment assessments?
Legal considerations include ensuring compliance with equal employment opportunity laws and avoiding discrimination based on race, gender, or disability. It is essential to validate the assessment tools and ensure they are scientifically proven to be fair. Companies must also maintain transparency about the purpose and usage of the assessments.
How can technology enhance the effectiveness of progressive assessments?
Technology can streamline the assessment process by allowing candidates to complete the tests remotely. Advanced analytics help in the accurate interpretation of results, ensuring a better match between the candidate and the job role. Many platforms offer practice tests that mirror the actual assessment, aiding in preparation and reducing test anxiety.
Our AI-enabled Smart Browser takes frequent snapshots via the webcam, throughout the assessment.
Consequently, it is impossible to copy-paste code or impersonate a candidate.The browser prevents the following
candidate actions and facilitates thorough monitoring of the assessment:
