Berkeley Start-upsOutdated Job Interview Process has Met its Match
by Tamra Teig
What personal videos have done to boost the effectiveness of online dating sites, Honeit plans to do for internal and external recruiting teams, with their new live Person-to-Person (P2P) interviewing platform.
Founded in June 2014, Honeit overhauls the hiring process. The two-pronged system features an interviewing platform designed for recruiters, and a Pre-Interview Marketplace that enables job seekers to hone their interviewing skills.
Helping hiring managers get to know the person behind the resume
The Honeit Interview Platform for Recruiters refines the candidate screening and submittal process by recording and curating live interview content. The software records live phone or video calls between two people. Recruiters tag skills and time-stamp candidates answers in real-time as they’re talking to them. Hiring managers and interview teams can then review notes, skill tags and listen to any of the 30-second interview excerpts tagged by the recruiter.
Although culture fit and soft skills have become crucial considerations in job placement, employers still decline 90% of candidates based on their resume alone.
“In less than 30 seconds, employers can hear a job applicant’s soft-skills and assess their personality from the pre-interview, without investing time in an interview themselves,” explains Honeit CEO Nick Livingston. “Our goal is to reduce the number of repetitive interviews, increase candidate response rates and help increase placements.”
High-Tech Help for Job Seekers
The Honeit Pre-Interview Marketplace connects job seekers with experienced interviewers who are working professionals with companies like Uber, Tumblr, Salesforce, Apple, Square, GAP and Wells Fargo. They guide job seekers through recorded, practice interviews. Honeit’s interviewers assess a candidate’s talent in their functional role and industry, and provide real-time interview feedback and career advice.
After the recorded pre-interview, job seekers receive a shareable Honeit Candidate Card and personalized URL, where their profiles are added to their resumes and cover letters. The profiles include specific skills verified by the interviewer, conversation highlights that demonstrate a candidate’s soft skills, and interview highlights–all shareable by the job seeker and available for companies to search.
“Our platform helps demonstrate that people are much more than just a resume.”
Founding computer engineers James Craft and Kim Duoung had worked at various companies as software engineers and decided to create Honeit based on their personal frustrations with the hiring process as job seekers. “We started this project initially as a self-help interview marketplace, “ explained Craft, “But we pivoted to a platform where job-seekers can use the results to get hired more quickly, and companies can source the talent pool of interviewed candidates to hire efficiently. “
CEO Nicholas Livingston said he was inspired to come on board as the result of spending over 10 years involved on all sides of the recruiting industry: agency headhunting; corporate recruiting, HR tech companies and start-ups. “Humans are complicated, which makes the talent acquisition business exponentially more complex. I’m excited about changing the recruiting game, and saving job seekers and recruiters time, money and frustration.”
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Note: Co-Founder Nick Livingston attended UC Berkeley’s Haas Business School.
