If you're new to recruitment tools, you may wonder what interview intelligence platforms offer that human intelligence doesn't. After all, isn't human intelligence what makes a good recruiter?

While human intelligence is certainly a valuable aspect of recruitment, there are limitations to what we can do on our own- after all, human intelligence's biggest challenge is overcoming bias. Poor first impressions can quickly change perceptions, and our emotions can cloud judgment. This is where interview intelligence software comes in, helping to streamline and improve the recruitment process.

Interview intelligence software helps recruiters save valuable time by automating mundane tasks such as scheduling interviews and sending follow-up emails. This frees up more time for recruiters to focus on building relationships with potential candidates and making more informed decisions.

We'll get into what interview intelligence is in a moment, but let's start with an analogy. Tesla Motors makes cars with cameras that cover a 360-degree circumference around the outside of the car enabling them to offer nearly autonomous driving modes that closely replicate a human driver's reactions to different road conditions. Now they're not perfect yet, and they still require a small amount of human intervention, but as long as the car is operational the cameras are monitoring the environment. In much the same way, interview intelligence platforms can help recruiters, providing them with a 360-degree view of candidates throughout the recruitment process.

Think of interview intelligence as a multiplier of your own human intelligence. It augments your skills by providing valuable insights and data, allowing for more efficient decision-making, better team feedback on a candidate, and a more holistic approach to hiring - and that's before we get into topics like diversity hiring, cultural fit, and other factors that are the glue behind great companies.

Before we dive into the world of interview intelligence, let's talk about some potential challenges to using a hiring team that relies on human intelligence alone.

One major challenge is the potential for bias in the recruitment process. As humans, we all have our own biases and preferences that can influence our decision-making. This can lead to a lack of diversity within a company, as well as missed opportunities to hire highly qualified candidates from different backgrounds.

Another challenge is the amount of time and resources required for recruiting. With hundreds of resumes and applications to sift through, it can be a daunting task for a hiring team to effectively identify the best candidates. This is where interview intelligence software comes in, helping to streamline and improve the recruitment process.

And finally, the interviewing process is the most important part of hiring, but it has become broken for various reasons. Can you imagine thousands of interviews being conducted within your organization, but you have no idea what’s going on within them? You’re sending untrained interviewers who are often unprepared into candidate interviews, and this is ruining your brand. This is why recording interviews and learning from them is so imperative to delivering a seamless candidate experience.

What Is Interview Intelligence?

So, to answer the original question - "What is interview intelligence software?"  - From an outside perspective it can be described as a technology that empowers recruiters to make better, more informed hiring decisions- and that's true, but it's so much more than that. Interview intelligence technology is a combination of automation tools, AI, machine learning, and LLMs that work together to create a comprehensive view of the candidate and their potential fit for the role.

The best interview intelligence platforms offer features such as real-time analytics, candidate scoring, and personalized insights based on your company's past hiring data. This allows recruiters to quickly identify top candidates, predict job performance, and make data-driven decisions. Additionally, interview intelligence can help mitigate unconscious bias by providing objective insights into interviewer bias. This is one of the key benefits of interview intelligence over human intelligence - it can't be biased in the same ways that humans can.

Now, you may be thinking, "But I thought I saw an article about how Amazon and other big tech companies have scrapped their AI hiring tools because they discriminate against people with a specific trait?" And, you'd be right. Early tools were missing data that is vital to the hiring process. Today though, top interview intelligence platforms use much larger datasets from a variety of sources to ensure that the software is not omitting any significant factors in its analysis.

Take for example Pillar's interview intelligence software. Our team focussed on DEI impact from the beginning so our solution has been able to increase diversity hiring, in some cases by more than 50%, compared to other solutions that didn't account for this variable. That's the power of using comprehensive data sets for interview intelligence - it helps mitigate bias and increase diversity in hiring.

But it's essential to remember that while interview intelligence is powerful, it shouldn't be relied upon as the sole decision-maker. At the end of the day, humans are still responsible for making hiring decisions and should use interview intelligence as a "force multiplier" and not the sole determinant of a candidate's suitability for the role.

Let's switch gears before we get into how to implement interview intelligence tools in your interview process. If you're hiring today, you're probably experiencing huge challenges:

1.) Workforce shortages
2.) Hiring delays
3.) Inconsistent candidate quality
4.) High turnover rates
5.) Poor cultural fit
6.) and more.

I was chatting with a junior HR professional who said she spent up to 1.5 hours a week per candidate just scheduling interviews. This means, that if their company is interviewing 10 or more candidates at a time, she could spend more than a quarter of her week just scheduling interviews- and it made me think, "How many recruiters, HR professionals, and hiring managers waste a dozen or more hours per week in scheduling alone?"

But what if we told you that with interview intelligence, you could address all of these challenges and more? What if scheduling and introductions were automated, AI was doing analytics and scoring behind the scenes, and the primary job of the interviewer was to ask the right questions and pay close attention to the candidate's responses?

With a 360-degree view of candidates, recruiters can make more accurate hiring decisions, leading to better workforce retention and lower turnover rates.

Interview Process

So now that you're familiar with just a few of the benefits of using interview intelligence software, let's talk about implementing interview intelligence into your hiring process.

First, it's essential to choose the right interview intelligence platform for your company's specific needs. As we saw from examples like Amazon and even Google, the first try at creating an interview intelligence platform led to some pretty frightening results. Amazon's platform discriminated against female hires, and Google's algorithm showed bias against Black candidates. These cases highlight the importance of choosing a platform that has been thoroughly tested and validated. Before you consider things like pricing, features, and integrations, make sure the interview intelligence platform you choose has considered diversity and inclusion. If not, you could be facing some PR and reputational challenges.

Next, It's also important to involve key stakeholders in the decision-making process, such as HR professionals, recruiters, and hiring managers so that you know the platform will be used to its fullest potential.

If you're exploring interview intelligence software and would like to see how Pillar is aiding companies in reducing time-to-hire and costs-per-hire while boosting crucial metrics like diversity hiring and decreasing employee turnover, book a demo today! We'd love to show you how we can make your job just a little easier.

Now that we've covered what interview intelligence tools are great at and some potential weaknesses, let's talk about how your hiring process can benefit from tools like Pillar.

One of the most powerful benefits of interview intelligence software is that it can provide candidate analytics and scoring based on the job requirements and company culture rather than a company representative's "feelings" about the candidate. This helps recruiters quickly identify top candidates, saving time and resources by eliminating those who may not be a good fit for the role.

The next benefit of using interview intelligence in your interview process is automation. Tasks like interview scheduling and candidate/ interviewer introductions take hours - and sometimes those hours are wasted with candidates who are "no-shows," or worse, show up not being a good fit for the role. Interview intelligence software automates these tasks and ensures that interviews are scheduled efficiently with minimal no-shows. These systems can also send reminder emails the day of or hours beforehand so that candidates are less likely to miss their interviews.

Finally, let's cover candidate experience (CX). Providing a positive candidate experience is crucial in today's competitive job market. With so many review sites to create transparency in the interview and hiring process, companies are more incentivized than ever to provide a great candidate experience. When candidates have a good experience throughout the hiring process, it reflects positively on your company and can attract top talent.