By introducing an AI-driven, competency-based screening interview as a next step of the recruiting process, SOS-Alarm could scale their unyielding commitments to ensure a fair and objective process for all, regardless of applicant volume. As a bonus to keeping bias at a minimum, the time savings were an astonishing 75% compared to the previous process.

SOS-Alarm’s challenges in high volume recruitment
SOS Alarm has an important job in filling all required positions in an effective way and with good results on the hires. For example, the call takers respond to more than 3.4 million calls every year.

The process leading from application to hire has been fine-tuned over the years and is highly appreciated by candidates. Showing the great sense of pride among employers and what daily work life consists of are important parts of the application process for SOS Alarm.

Years of successful employer branding have had a dramatic effect on the way they attract the right talent. For some positions such as call taker, the incoming application volumes have become a challenge in itself as they often add up to 300–400 every month.
To strengthen and match the accomplished process in terms of candidate experience, SOS Alarm now adopts Huberts AI-driven competency-based interviews for the following reasons:

1. Meeting all candidates early and in a personal way
As a reputable brand that stands for reliability and immediate service, applicants expect a professional and timely response. Meeting every candidate in a bias-free way and making sure they take home a good impression is of great importance to keep and reinforce a great employer brand.

2. Efficiency in hiring require out-of-the-box thinking
Large application volumes come at a cost: a massive screening process.
A massive candidate influx is almost always a good thing as the odds of finding the perfect candidate increase. But when screening manually, a compromise is needed to balance benefits with costs.

3. Blunt screening tools
Knock-out questions are an alternative often used when facing high numbers of applicants. But this is a blunt tool that takes little consideration to peripheral factors which limit the screening capacity drastically.
Spending hours on end reading resumes and cover letters can have an impact on overall objectivity and introduce unconscious bias. Additionally, there’s no automated way of measuring important soft/core skills.

Why SOS-Alarm chooses Hubert
The idea behind Hubert is simple; leverage advanced AI to conduct interviews with all applicants and find out who the top candidates are — automatically.
Hubert’s involvement in the process triggers as soon as the application arrives in SOS Alarm’s Applicant Tracking System, TeamTailor.

The candidate receives an invitation to complete the next step in the recruitment process and initiate their interview with Hubert.
The candidate completes a structured interview with Hubert measuring both hard- and soft skills, motivation, values/principles previous experience as well as resolving important questions such as working inconvenient hours, preferred start date, and most important: relevant competencies.

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Hubert has been trained to ask competency-based questions and look for STAR (Situation, Task, Action, Result)-type responses to evaluate how well the candidate’s competencies overlap those needed to perform well in the position.
All responses are then automatically analyzed and compared to the job requirements in order to form an individual score for every candidate.

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After implementing Hubert, SOS Alarm saw the following benefits:

1. Maintaining and reinforcing a strong employer brand

SOS Alarm leveraged Hubert’s AI as a support to the existing recruiting team and to engage every applicant early on. Now, every candidate has a chance to make themselves heard and stand out from the crowd in a personalized interview with Hubert. About 75% of all applicants initiated the interview with Hubert.

→ Outcome 1: Candidate experience metrics improved 21 points on an already great NPS-score

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2. Massive resource savings

Copious amounts of applications are no longer a problem after Hubert was deployed. SOS Alarm can now use their time even more wisely by focusing on the most qualified candidates immediately and offer them a next step within a few days.

→ Outcome 2: Over 75% of resources saved on screening activities.

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3. Qualitative screening

With Hubert, SOS Alarm could add more weight to the individual drive and motivation than the candidate’s formal prerequisites. By combining a wide spectrum of factors, the candidates with the highest probability of succeeding are floated to the surface automatically. The prediction accuracy was close to spot on and even exceeded the expectations.

→ Outcome 3: Hubert automatically placed all hired candidates at the top of the shortlist.

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