An Exclusive Interview with Pasupathi Sankaran, Chief Operating Officer, HirePro

HirePro is the only organization in India that has been providing a complete campus hiring solution. It started off as a recruitment consulting and operations firm, and then automation took over, followed by digitization leading the show. Pasupathi Sankaran is the COO of HirePro and Analytics Insight has engaged in an exclusive interview with him.

1. Kindly brief us about the company, its specialization, and the services that your company offers. With what mission and objectives, the company was set up? In short, tell us about your journey since the inception of the company?

We offer technology-led talent solutions with the sole aim of enabling frictionless hiring for organizations. In today's hiring scenario, automation is key to effective management of the diverse phases of the recruitment supply chain. Our AI-enabled platform helps global organisations to source, screen, assess, interview, select, and onboard the best talent.

Assessments play a significant role in the talent acquisition process. We provide customizable, proctored assessment solutions to organizations for both campus and lateral hiring.

The advent of automation changed the game altogether. When we started in 2004, campus recruitment was strictly confined to college campuses. Recruiters from organizations would visit colleges and conduct the entire recruitment process on the campus. But automation made remote, high-volume hiring possible. Thus began our journey from providing in-campus recruitment solutions to offering cutting-edge remote hiring solutions.

Our mission is to remove friction in hiring through automation and enriched humane connect. Campus hiring trends are ever-evolving and undergo a complete transformation every three to five years. Over the years, we have helped organizations redefine their hiring strategy and align their processes with the developments in campus hiring.

Currently, organizations across the globe are dealing with a talent crisis. We have remote hiring solutions to help them assess, interview, and onboard the best talent, swiftly and at scale. We also offer interviews and assessments as a service for times when organizations lack the necessary expertise, resources, or infrastructure in-house.

2. Mention some of the awards, achievements, recognitions, and clients' feedback that you feel are notable and valuable for the company.

We have been managing campus hiring for large global BFSI and IT services companies ever since they came to India. We have been driving their campus recruitment strategies and providing our automation platform to run their assessments for over a decade.

A client's recent feedback has been that "HirePro is the only organization that can provide deep insights into campus hiring. The company's automation-driven campus hiring solution meets our needs throughout the hiring cycle and their consulting service is a huge differentiator for us. We have been able to hire the best talent by leveraging HirePro's customized assessment solutions. They have helped us to scale our hiring by providing the best of the interviewers who were at par with our internal panel."

Amazon Web Services (AWS), a dominant leader in the cloud computing platforms, published a case study on HirePro's frictionless virtual hiring solutions. HirePro leverages AWS' on-demand compute power to run its AI algorithms for monitoring fraudulent practices by candidates. The platform instantly detects impersonation and cheating, thereby enabling fraud-proof assessments, video interviews, and the onboarding of candidates.

Last year, Pearson, a leading learning company that provides content, assessment, and digital services to learners, educational institutions, employers, governments, and other partners globally, partnered with HirePro. The association enabled Pearson to conduct, record, and monitor their Versant English tests remotely through online proctoring. HirePro's AI-enabled deep proctoring abilities equipped Pearson to offer a secure, cheat, and fraud-proof test platform to its clients.

Freya Thomas Monk, SVP – English Assessment at Pearson, said, "We are proud to have partnered up with HirePro on our new versant + remote monitoring solution, which offers the reliability of the Versant English tests with the flexibility of a secure offsite testing experience. This will enable corporations to expand their talent pool and advance only the most qualified candidates".

3. Brief us about the Founder/CEO/COO of the company and his/her contributions towards the company and the industry.

Pasupathi Sankaran, COO at HirePro, has over two decades of experience in the recruitment industry. His expertise in recruitment consulting, recruitment setup and implementation, change management, compliance, automation, metrics, and training, has helped shape HirePro into a unique and comprehensive hiring technology and solutions company.

Driven by the mission of transforming talent acquisition supply chain management into a mature science, he has created a strong edge for the service platform in the market. Prior to HirePro, Pasupathi worked with SAP Labs India for 7 years.

4. What is your biggest USP that differentiates the company from competitors?            

Currently, the organizations in this space are catering to only parts of the problem. Our capability to provide the complete solution to address customers' problems is what differentiates us from the rest of the players in the space. We are a group company that has been in the recruitment business for the past 22 years, and we understand the big picture. When we design assessments, we gauge the talent pool that comes in, and factor in elements such as – our client's expectations from the new hire(s), the candidate's behavior, aspirations, etc. Our solutions are bolstered by the industry expertise of a 22-year-old recruitment solutions firm.

We offer automation for the entire hiring life cycle. Organizations prefer using solutions that can manage the complete process rather than relying on separate solutions for each process.

Our AI-powered hiring platform enables employers to

• Successfully handle heavy volumes of hires, rejection ratios, pipeline management and streamline communication with multiple stakeholders on a single platform.
• Save the time, cost, and effort consumed by mundane tasks such as resume screening, scheduling, and tech screening.
• Ensure consistency and compliance in recruiting candidates regardless of the scale.

Our comprehensive solution brings several specialized recruitment solutions under one roof, making us a single destination for managing the entire recruitment process.

5. How is AI evolving today in the industry as a whole? Why AI screening has become the latest trend in the recruitment industry across the globe?

AI is trying to solve some of the real-world problems of hiring at scale by automating the screening process and providing insightful data analytics. Our solution is not looking to replace the role of human hiring. Instead, we focus on leveraging AI to enable humans to make better decisions, instead of letting AI run the show. For example, during proctoring if malpractice is detected the AI would flag it to the person monitoring the session rather than making a call on its own.

AI is being used to solve simple problems in the recruitment process that, if left unaddressed, create challenges downstream. For example, when a candidate is registering for a job and they have to submit ID proof, our AI ensures that the details entered in the form match with the details on the ID proof. AI provides an enhanced candidate experience by assisting them throughout the registration process.

While AI helps candidates during registration, it enables better decision-making for recruiters by providing useful data, thereby making the entire screening process more efficient.

6. Please brief us about the products/services/solutions you provide to your customers and how do they get value out of it.

The unprecedented hiring volumes that organizations are witnessing today are not a passing trend but a global phenomenon that's expected to continue till December 2022. With the hiring process going virtual without domain and geographical restrictions and limited talent in the market, organizations are facing two challenges. While the stiff competition for talent is one, the means and technology to hire remotely in high numbers are the other. This is where we come into the picture.

Branding and visibility: In today's remote recruitment scenario, hiring has become faceless. Employers have difficulty building their employer brand among students and candidates. We help employers build their brand and engage with candidates by offering end-to-end support for custom websites, and conducting virtual events and hackathons.

Automating campus hiring workflow: Hiring the right talent in large numbers makes it imperative for organizations to act swiftly and make the right hiring decisions. Our AI-enabled platform solves this issue by automating the entire workflow – right from sourcing and screening candidates, to selecting the best talent, to releasing offers and onboarding them. Automation effectively tackles the looming issues of malpractices and impersonation by candidates during the hiring process. It also ensures compliance, and accuracy in assessments and feedback.

Interview and assessment services: Organisations have varying talent requirements. They might not necessarily have the bandwidth or in-house expertise, especially when hiring candidates with niche skill sets. We offer sharp, well-designed, and effective assessments and interview outsourcing services to ensure that only the best talent is hired. With our vast experience in providing recruitment solutions, we are thorough with the nuances of hiring criteria and help companies to hire the right entry-level talent at scale.

Recruitment consulting: The dynamic and seamless hiring scenario today lacks set market standards for compensation. We focus on long-term strategies and offer compensation advisory based on economic and opportunity costs.

Pre-assessed talent pool: Our ready pool of pre-assessed candidates helps organizations move more candidates down the funnel, faster. We also provide objective data on candidates so they can ensure the right talent fitment.

7. How do you see the company and the industry in the future ahead? What are your growth plans for the next 12 months?

Organizations are increasingly adopting the new means of hiring and will continue hiring remotely. Employers will continue using assessments to evaluate talent and outsource interviewing to scale hiring. Employers will continue using recruitment processes that are powered by automation.

While automation was being adopted before the COVID-19 crisis as well, the paradigm shift to remote hiring has accelerated its adoption. Earlier, recruiters were reluctant to take the leap because they were comfortable with traditional alternatives. Recruiters' mindset was focused on getting the job done rather than automating it. When the pandemic hit us, traditional hiring methodologies failed and recruiters had no other option but to rely on technology. With the entire recruitment lifecycle happening remotely, the adoption of automation was inevitable.

Today, we see a good number of recruitment departments across the globe looking at solutions made in India as they are able to cater to elements of scale and complexity much better. Given the complexities and nuances of the hiring scenario in India, including the volume of hires, rejects, dropouts, and candidates indulging in cheating, automation is here to stay for long.

We have witnessed almost 60 to 70 percent growth since last year, and the trend is going to continue. This is just the beginning of our growth journey as the adoption rate of technology for remote recruitment is at an all-time high. We are continuously evolving in terms of bringing out smarter products in the industry, acquiring more customers, and growing our presence geographically across India as well as globally.

8. How is your company helping customers deliver relevant business outcomes through the adoption of the company's technology innovations?

The pace at which the global economy has bounced back after the pandemic-induced recession is unprecedented in our times. Businesses across industries and geographies are doing well. However, an organization's growth in the near future rests on its ability to hire the right talent at scale. Talent will be a major differentiator for an organization's growth. A company's evaluation is a direct function of the number of software engineers that it has. The stronger and bigger the engineering team, the better the growth. Any organization that is able to hire talent in today's cutthroat competitive recruitment scenario is assured of success. We are here to help companies in managing their hiring processes through our tech innovation drives solutions and services.

9. Can you throw light on the latest employment trends in the big data and analytics industry?

The big data and analytics industry continues to grow with the rising trend of digitization. Consumers across the globe are increasingly using the internet to shop, carry out financial transactions, book services, etc. This has paved the way for big data and analytics to become a key criterion for organizations to make decisions and define business strategies accordingly. Being a relatively new field, there is a prominent demand-supply gap when it comes to talent. A hiring spike is inevitable and there is a huge scope for growth in the industry.