Recruitment is evolving where digital improvements could certainly be beneficial to both those hiring and those seeking a job match. This is already happening, as new tools are now available, thanks to some creative start-ups.
What better place to look for those driving the change than at one of the region’s leading start-up summits, Techsauce! In ‘Future of Work and Death of Recruitment: How Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence and Robotics will disrupt Human Resources’ a panel of start-ups presented their services and thoughts: Alexander Kerbo, Executive Director at WorkVenture; Polpat Songthamjitt, Co-founder & Chief Marketing Officer of GetLinks; and Devan Singaram, Founder at Tribehired.com.
Work Venture
Alexander presented Thailand-based Work Venture as a career marketplace. It start as a passion among a group of graduates with the goal to increase the competitiveness of industries in Thailand, better the career opportunities, educational access and quality for the young generation. They have a vision is to become the link between educational institutions and starting students fulfilling careers.
“We have spent two years developing and AI algorithm, using data science and big data. And structured the whole job search experience around it, so creating a more seamless experience around it both for candidates and employers.”
“No doubt you are going to use Work Venture and hire those engineers. What we did, was to create the fastest job search website and brought the Google aspect into job searching. So the most relevant jobs based on your profile will be suggested to you. It also works for employers. Within 48 hours you’ve got the most relevant 15 CV’s, apart from the applications you will get naturally.”
“Why would you search the database today when the technology can do it for you? Like going to the library and going through archives to find a certain article. There’s no need to do that today.”
“Recruitment is not going to die; there’s always a human aspect to it. But technology helps us make it more effective and saves tons of time and money for all organisations, big or small.”
“The paradigm that is going to happen in Thailand is that Human resources will simply spend less time hiring and more time retaining and developing talent, which is not happening supposedly where it should be right now at organisations of sizes.”
Alexander said that in Bangkok where they are based there are lots of micro problems that can be solved right away and save everyone thousands of man hours and get people through the door more efficiently by matching the right kind of talent with the right kind of jobs.
“The biggest culprit is turnover. A McKinsey & Company survey found that 60 per cent of candidates reported they hadn’t found the right job. At the same time 76 per cent of companies think they have wrong candidates coming in, which is quite ironic; how can the problem be so two-sided at the same time every day! So, there is a lack of information, transparency what it’s like to work in an organisation. That brings us to a whole other problem: employer branding. Work Venture is one of the first companies to pioneer that into Thailand. And once you get the right people into the right companies with that culture fit, with the same mind-set and values; then you’re really doing a good job for the economy as a whole.”
“There’s no information that compares the companies. Job seekers have no idea what is the difference. There is no way to peak inside and read up about it; reviews, salary data etc. A survey showed that Thailand was the second highest employee turnover in the world – which is ridiculous.”
GetLinks
GetLinks–so far on the markets in Thailand, Singapore, Vietnam, Hong Kong, India and Korea–is a quality-curated tech-hiring marketplace for Asia aiming at helping the tech talents (developers, designers etc.) in Asia to break into their dream jobs in top innovative companies and start-ups and to help those companies to find the right people to grow their business.
Also under organisations’ digital transformation strategy their service is also crucial in order to get the top talent implementing at the right time, explained Polpat Songthamjitt.
“It’s about advanced creation. Here’s how it impacts life: one third of your time is spent working, so we believe it has been matched randomly in the past. But now with all the technology, and algorithms we developed, we can shorten those times in the creation process. And from the perspective of the employers, for executives and recruiters, it shows them only the relevant candidates. For us the first sector we try to tackle is the technology talent, which we believe are the people that will build the new world.”
Commenting on the role of Artificial Intelligence and machine learning Polpat said: “In face one all these fancy tools will be supporting in terms of optimising recruitment, so it will clean up from bottom to the top. All the admin and documentary work will be wiped out. Two: all the fresh grads and lower tiers hiring, including operation admin, will be taken care of by the system, because AI is already smarter than humans. So it gets smarter than the human and starts to wipe out from the bottom going on to the top. On top of the pyramid there will be lots of astute professionals. That is where, in terms of talent in Asia and around the world you are going to have to position yourself; to have a skill where a robot or AI cannot replace you.”
Addressing the Millennials in the audience he also brought forward what could benefit them: “We believe that the future of work is beyond jobs! So whatever it will be called, it should be something that you love doing, are passionate about and are doing in a purposeful way. So the way things work, the reason we start from technology is because we believe this will create the new types of jobs that help change the world, so it is not about recruiting but about connecting people. I believe people with no purpose will be matched to all the tools where it is chosen for you. But the meaningful thing for me is that you are going to chose yourself; you’ve got to make sure you acquire those skills you want to learn.”
TribeHired
TribeHired is an online social recruitment platform that helps users find jobs within companies in Malaysia and Singapore. The hiring process is made painless, cheaper and without the spam that is typically mixed together with genuine applications.
Every time a company needs to grow, it requires talent. Problem is, good talent is very hard to come by and requires lots of time and effort. TribeHired tries to remove the friction between the company and great talent by offering 20 top new talents on the system every week.
This talent has gone through rigorous filtering process to be pre-packaged for organisations that can quickly see whether they fit requirements and company culture. So this happens prior to any interview.
“We flip the recruitment model; out of a thousand signing up and we approve about 5 per cent of them on to this exclusive marketplace. We get employers to compete in that way,” said Devan Singaram.
“Typically, organisations hire within one week, while previously they were hiring in 3-6 months.”
“Would it not be very cool if within 30 seconds you were to open a URL and book an interview with a programmer who could turn up in your office next week!? And no need to post a job as an employer. You click update button and it will show you the graphic designers, you will view their video so you know they will fit you culturally well, you can see their technical test, you click a button and set a date and they will turn up in your office,” he exemplifies.
For all those who are rejected TribeHired use AI tools to recommend them workshops in their neighbourhood they should attend to improve their skills.
“In many ways it is economically cheaper and a lot more efficient than what people can do so, eventually, if you can build a model and create an algorithm around it then you can replace people, businesses will do it – because it is cheaper,” Devan comments on AI.
