HireVue CEO Kevin Parker Explains How Technology is Democratizing Hiring

Source: HireVue

Kevin Parker is the CEO and Chairman of the Board of HireVue. Previously, he was a Co-Founder and Senior Operating Principal of Bridge Growth Partners, a uniquely structured growth-oriented private equity firm that focuses on investments in the technology and the financial services sectors. He also serves as Chairman of Salient CRGT, a Bridge Growth Partners portfolio company. Parker is a recognized corporate leader in the information solutions and software sectors of the technology industry. 

He most recently served as CEO of Deltek, a leading global provider of enterprise software solutions, where he successfully led the company through an initial public offering. Before joining Deltek, Parker was CFO and later Co-President of PeopleSoft prior to its acquisition by Oracle. He previously held senior management positions at Aspect Communication, Fujitsu Computer Products of America, Standard Microsystems and Toshiba America. Earlier in his career, he was with the accounting firm Price Waterhouse. Parker holds a B.S. in Accounting from Clarkson University.

Vignesh Panchanatham (BT): When you were a college undergrad, where did you see yourself at this point in your life?

Kevin Parker (KP): I was an accounting major, and I worked in public accounting. So I thought my ultimate career goal was to be a partner in an accounting firm.

BT: What drove you to shift companies and career paths?

KP: There were a couple of things, but the thing I remember the most was that I liked the idea of understanding businesses from an accounting perspective and from an audit perspective. But I was very attracted to the idea of being involved in the business itself. Wanting to work towards a common goal with a team drove me to realize that public accounting was probably not the right place for me. 

BT: Following that, what quality do you think has helped you most throughout your career?

KP: Curiosity. The thing that motivates me is insatiable curiosity. We always have to be finding better ways to do things, improving things. It is my relentless desire to always try to make things better that has helped me throughout my career. That, and persistence. Those two characteristics would be the defining part of my career success.

BT: What are you most curious about right now?

KP: As we think about the world around us--and maybe this is what makes me particularly excited about HireVue--we think about hiring and adverse impact and access in ways other companies don’t. We’ve interviewed over 14 million people around the world, and that gives us a unique insight into hiring. It is at its largest scale incredibly unfair and inefficient; the right people don’t have access to jobs for all sorts of reasons, none of which have anything to do with the job itself. So the ability for technology to drive societal change is pretty compelling. In some sense, I think we are at the cusp of getting rid of bias in hiring.

“The fact that you can interview today and be working tomorrow, and do that on your own time and terms, is pretty exciting.”

BT: To build on that, walk me through how HireVue is solving the problems you’re talking about.

KP: We have customers that interview 1,000 people a day for jobs. So to have a process that does that very consistently, very fairly, in a candidate-focused way, is extraordinary. The fact that you can interview today and be working tomorrow, and do that on your own time and terms, is pretty exciting. The scale of the problem is quite unique. If you’re applying, you may get an email or text message. You could do that at any time. In fact, most of our interviews are conducted during out-of-business hours. It breaks down all the time and place barriers to getting a job. And as you’re thinking about different experiences, for a $15 dollar an hour worker--they can’t get time off to interview for a $16 dollar an hour job. So the fact that you can do it at night and on the weekends really opens up opportunities to have access to better jobs. 

BT: How does AI play a role in HireVue’s platform?

KP: The background for this is understanding organizational psychology. What psychologists have said is the best way to hire people is using structured interview questions and tests of general mental ability. The challenge is that most don’t do it. “I know it when I see it,” say most — but this isn’t accurate. What we’ve done is taken 100 years of science and delivered it using on-demand technology. Imagine an interviewer is sitting across a candidate and listening to their answers associated with work, like “are you a good team player?” What we’ve been able to do is, using technology, record those answers and analyze them. And so we’re looking at the words used, the way they express themselves. We understand what the attributes of team work are, so the AI can look for certain word usage and even things like pronoun tense; if I am asking you a question about teamwork, and every other word you say I, then you’re probably not very team-oriented. We’ve [also] developed assessments around workplace competencies, like learning agility, team work, and others. We’ve tested this on very diverse sets of people--in some cases, up to 40,000 people--in terms of gender, race, ethnicities, etc. So in the course of the on-demand interview, I can ask you three or four questions about the job, three or four cognitive games, and get a pretty good sense of who you are as a candidate, as neutral as possible from a gender or race perspective. 

BT: What are the challenges in doing all of this?

KP: We work very hard to ensure we’re not creating adverse impact. Every model we build is thoroughly tested, and we do a lot of compliance work to make sure that we are not creating an adverse impact. That is a very serious responsibility we continuously work on. Another challenge is that we’re not looking for an archetype of a particular person. Every job is unique, and we analyze each job to figure out what that particular job is looking for. The third thing is a general misunderstanding regarding the way AI works. We’re not identifying anything about you, other than understanding how you answer certain questions. Like every new technology, people have concerns. But over the long term, this will revolutionize job access. One of the things we talk a lot about is equally distributed talent but unequally distributed opportunity. So how do we take away the bias and focus on where the talent is? That’s what we do.

“We work very hard to ensure we’re not creating adverse impact... That is a very serious responsibility we continuously work on. Another challenge is that we’re not looking for an archetype of a particular person. Every job is unique, and we analyze each job to figure out what that particular job is looking for. ”

BT: Where do you see artificial intelligence and HR going in the future? And how do you plan to outpace your competitors?

KP: With HR, unlike industry, the process is still pretty manual. The places where we think AI will help HR is with internal mobility. Many of our customers are large employers, and in some cases it is easier for them to go outside their firm to find talent rather than within it. So focusing on internal mobility, and recognizing that the right person may already be working for you — how do we create the ability for companies to find great talent within their organization? And how do we become better at employees finding new opportunities? The AI can help match these two parts. The second thing is that, when you’re entering the job market, you’re going to have a pretty thin resume. there’ll be opportunities to better match experience with jobs. Because in those cases, the resume doesn’t help. So matching algorithms and the ability to look at jobs in a more thoughtful way will be very interesting.

BT: So what direction is HireVue pursuing right now?

KP: We are really focused on the candidate experience. The company was founded 15 years ago to democratize hiring. The other area that is interesting is, “I applied and never heard back.” That is not a great experience. So we are working to accelerate and highlight this process. That is a poor experience for candidates, it is inconsistent, and we’re looking to improve it. When you order pizza, you know where it is every step of the way — we’re more thoughtful about pizza than about jobs! That can’t be right. So we are very focused on the candidate experience and looking at how technology can make hiring more humane.

BT: I want to shift to talking about the benefits your customers are seeing. What are the main things that your customers love about your firm, and what would they like to see in the future?

“We’re also very focused on the outcome: what is the benefit of hiring the right person? Do sales go up? Does retention go up? The process improvement is almost immediate, while the outcome improvement takes longer to measure. But having the right job and the right teammate makes a big difference.”

KP: We divide those benefits into two groups. The first is the process: cutting hiring from six weeks to six days cuts cost and time. We’re also very focused on the outcome: what is the benefit of hiring the right person? Do sales go up? Does retention go up? The process improvement is almost immediate, while the outcome improvement takes longer to measure. But having the right job and the right teammate makes a big difference. One of the things we’re also proud of is the improvement in diversity. They are able to interview more broadly and find hidden talent. Our clients are achieving higher levels of diversity and inclusion, and that by itself is impressive. 

In terms of things customers want to see in the future, there are several. We get duplicate interviews from candidates applying for the same job a lot of the time but, for example, at different locations. This is inefficient. There are also those that apply multiple times because they don’t hear back. So we’ve created the opportunity to use your most recent interview. It’s almost like the Common App — you can submit the same application for multiple opportunities. 

BT: You talked about improving the process for hiring. Where does the time saved go, and how does it get spent?

KP: The time for scheduling, coordinating, and back-and-forth is pretty low-value-adding. By automating that, they have more time to find the right candidate, sell them on the company, and focus on other forms of personal engagement. Cutting the administrative aspects is very beneficial. The role of the recruiter is now more value-added than before.

BT: Is there anything else that our readers should know about HireVue?

KP: It is important to remember we are here to democratize hiring. It is part of our culture and core. Our firm was started 15 years ago by a college student who couldn’t get a job. We were founded in Utah, and not many firms came to recruit. Our roots are very much in helping people find jobs. We’re very motivated by that, and that is going to be the core of our existence for a very long time.

And one last trivia question: do you know who wrote the very first resume? Most people think it was written by Da Vinci in 1493. He applied for a job with the Duke of Milan, and he wrote a letter to him listing all of his abilities. And that is regarded as the very first resume. I read a book about Da Vinci a while ago and I realized, Da Vinci lied: he couldn’t do any of the things he listed. On the very first day, people started lying on resumes. It was a terrible way to find people and hasn’t gotten much better.