Hirefully is a hiring coach and applicant tracking system designed to level the playing field.
Hirefully is the product of decades of headhunting experience and a thorough understanding of SMB hiring. Authentic Intuition enhances the quality of inbound recruiting by uncovering outliers that have been overlooked by inexperienced recruiters or cast aside because of long-held recruiting dogma.
Our platform is designed to help Canadian innovators make recruiting a core competency. It is accessible by subscription, or combined with professional services for pipeline management and headhunting. Our ultimate objective is to serve SMBs by providing superior selection to an ecosystem of Canadian companies where talent is shared and internal recruiters are incentivized.
Hirefully invites applicants to tell their story through direct, indirect, and ambiguous questions. To serve a talent-starved market, in-app coaching helps leaders mine applications in search of the markers that indicate hidden potential, talent, and aptitude. The process is candidate-friendly, fosters diversity, minimizes groupthink, and encourages retention by promoting culture and chemistry.
Problem Definition
As global players poach and hoard Canada’s talent, the survival of our domestic SMBs demands a superior approach to hiring.
Startups require exceptional people to help them grow. Startups also have limited resources. This makes hiring particularly difficult for these small teams. Most recruiting technologies are designed and priced for global enterprises with deep pockets and employer-brand recognition. They do not serve emerging companies that struggle to attract applicants and are more sensitive to hiring mistakes.
Competitive Landscape
In the last five to ten years, the talent-crisis gave birth to a number of so-called solutions, very few of which are built specifically for SMBs. The majority of these tools focus on facilitating speed. Many use algorithms and tests to score candidates and alleviate manual labor associated with screening candidates.
The Problem with Algorithms
01
We don’t know how algorithms are built. What do they assess or prioritize? All we see is the end result: a score. The quoted ‘science’ that supports the efficacy of these tests is nearly impossible to find.
02
Algorithms rank individuals the same way, for every job, across every team. So if a candidate applies to multiple companies that all use the same hiring tool, the candidate will be recommended (or not) across the board. For something that is supposed to represent a competitive advantage, this sounds much more like an equalizer. Not to mention how ludicrous it is to recruit without accounting for the team.
03
By using an algorithm to rank candidates, leaders relinquish control of their hiring process. From a candidate’s point of view, this signals a leader’s lack of confidence in making his or her own hiring decisions – what kind of message does that send? Would you want a boss who can’t even handle their own hiring?
These tools prey on HR leaders desperate to leverage metrics and scoring in their hiring process. What HR leaders fail to acknowledge is how these tests are perceived by job seekers. Ranging from 15 minutes to an hour, a common complaint from applicants is that these tests demand a lot of time from candidates in exchange for very little insight into how the results impact their candidacy.
Some applicants expressed a preference for streamlined applications like LinkedIn’s Easy Apply, that allow users to easily share their LinkedIn profile in lieu of an official application. While convenient for job seekers, Easy Apply does little to reduce the workload or improve recruiting on the employer side.
The fundamental flaw with Easy Apply, and other quick-apply methods, is that they rely heavily on the resume, or at least, a synopsis of past experience. This archaic way of evaluating talent is precisely why SMB leaders continue to acknowledge hiring as one of their top challenges.
Personality Assessments
Platforms that aim to categorize test-takers into personality archetypes or score particular traits.
- Myers-Briggs
- Plum.io
Resume Parsing
Platforms using AI to parse resumes and recommend candidates based on skills and experience.
- ZipRecruiter
- Ideal
- Fitzii
Cognitive Tests
Platforms that score a person’s basic reasoning, pattern recognition, and various other basic skillsets.
- Predictive Index
- Workable’s General Aptitude Test
Quick Apply
Platforms that use, or offer the option to use, a pre-existing profile to quickly apply to jobs.
- LinkedIn Easy Apply
- Applicant Tracking Systems (Greenhouse, Jobvite, Lever, Workable)
Video Interviews
Platforms automating the interview process using one-sided video. In some cases, AI is applied to analyze a candidate’s facial movements or speech.
- HireVue
- Spark Hire
User Psychology
A winning hiring process is one that promotes a holistic and humane approach to talent discovery and selection. Most hiring tools fail to acknowledge that job seekers, not employers, are ultimately in control and that the recruiting process must be enjoyable and respectful of both parties.
Addressing Common Hiring Pitfalls
The overarching goal of Hirefully is to help SMBs identify and hire the best talent for their teams. Since hiring is a long process with lots of moving parts, there are a lot of small adjustments that can go a long way towards more successful hiring. Below are some of the smaller, often overlooked, hiring errors we aimed to correct with Hirefully.
Comparing candidates to each other too early in the hiring process.
Hirefully recommends interviewing all qualified candidates. When a candidate is deemed a fit, the Get-in-Touch Prompt helps the user contact the candidate right away, instead of waiting until the other candidates have been reviewed. Candidates should only be compared to each other after the interview.
Ruling candidates out, instead of in.
In addition to an application process that shifts emphasis from the resume to the human, our Interview Feedback form is designed to encourage interviewers to reflect on the positives and potential of candidates, rather than their shortcomings. This mindset shift is crucial for better hiring in today’s talent market.
Recruiter fatigue.
When hiring managers and recruiters are notified about every new applicant, a candidate or two are bound to get lost along the way. Instead, we Batch Deliver Candidates, at most twice a day. Why? Chronobiology. As more time passes since our last refresh, we become less lenient. It’s easy to see what that could mean for an application that gets evaluated at 9am compared to 4pm. By batch delivering candidates we turn recruiting into a daily habit, instead of a ‘when I have time’ task.
Not moving fast enough.
To avoid losing candidates to competing offers, speed is key. Our Interview Scheduler requires three, not one, potential interview times. If two of the three times are not within 7 days of scheduling, we advise the employer to accommodate a tighter timeline by modifying the interview process.
Groupthink
Groupthink isn’t conducive to smart hiring or diverse teams. Hirefully offers collaborative hiring without groupthink by requiring users to provide candidate feedback before accessing their colleagues’ feedback. Candidates are automatically advanced or rejected based on the majority of feedback.
Design System
Since Hirefully was to be coded in React, a component-based language, it made sense to create a design system that followed the same principles. Atoms, molecules, organisms.
Atoms
Hirefully is tool designed to help SMBs hire better, it does this largely through teaching hiring managers and recruiters to identify talent. To keep with the theme of education, we selected a colour scheme that’s a modernized take on the primary colours often found in classrooms.
Molecules
Inputs, buttons, select-lists, oh my!
Organisms
Creating Delight
Let’s be real, hiring is not the most thrilling of tasks. We wanted to ensure that Hirefully kept the tone light and happy. We considered a number of different styles for our iconography and illustrations. Ultimately, we settled on a basic line-icon with playful coloured sections.
Website
Creating promotional and marketing material was one of the most challenging parts of this project. After all, we were essentially introducing the market to a new way of looking at talent, a new way of thinking, and a new way of recruiting.
