A Quicker, More Effective Hiring Solution Is on the Way
Hiring the right employees is a challenge in any discipline. Given the ever-increasing demand for the right software talent, this problem is even more prominent in the IT world.
Ensuring the data repository for resumes is up to date and that prospective employees’ backgrounds have been adequately checked is easier said than done. The job market is highly volatile, so even if you take the effort to do all of this right the first time, the information soon becomes obsolete and must be maintained on an ongoing basis. This involves a lot of data synchronization and processing, to ensure the system is robust enough.
Another more practical challenge is to assess the fit of a prospective employee in the organization. The effectiveness of interviews is always in question, with an open conundrum of whether the individual was evaluated well from all the required angles to ensure his alignment with the employer. And studies show that interviews alone are inadequate to effectively evaluate a candidate.
Consequently, in addition to the interviewee, the interviewer also has a very important role to play. This is why organizations prefer several types of interviews to be performed by many people—so the varied sides of the prospective employee can be evaluated. A person’s traits and interview performance still leave a lot up to subjectivity, and every hire that is a made is a bet the organization takes.
But imagine there is a system that helps bring objectivity into this entire process, from data collection to skill assessment to prospect evaluation. This is a system that will not do away with the personal evaluation process, but will aid the manual side with some initial automation and impartiality in making time-critical hiring decisions more effectively.
This idea is what designated EdRepublic the winner at GeekWire Startup Day 2015, a contest where venture capitalists judge pitches from tech startups. EdRepublic is a cloud platform that, according to GeekWire, “evaluates software development skills using analytics that calculate a suitability index for recruiters.” The solution assigns a job applicant a score based on data from platforms like GitHub and LinkedIn, and it also has a built-in way to test development skills, which can help recruiters find new employees based on a range of criteria.
While this is exciting, EdRepublic will have to keep evolving this idea on an ongoing basis, as hiring is growing in complexity by the day. Parameters such as global recruiting, relocations and moves, data availability across varied repositories, validating what the prospect has claimed about his skill set, etc., will require updated algorithms and analytics.
Once the idea takes shape, there surely will be other players that come into the mix with their solutions. But it looks like EdRepublic’s cloud-based offering will be the first to help employers in their task of finding qualified talent quickly and effectively.
