Thought Leaders in Cloud Computing: Kurt Heikkinen, CEO of Montage Talent (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: I have a question just based on what you described so far. There is a thought that is coming to my mind that I’d like to get clarified. Does that mean that, in using this kind of remote interviewing technology that you have empowered Disney to use, it opened up a much broader segment of remote candidates whom they finished interviewing in this mode and could move them to Los Angeles or wherever they want them to be located. Is that one of the ways that the process is impacted?

Kurt Heikkinen: That’s exactly right. If you think about the traditional recruiting process, you have recruiters who try to find candidates. They, traditionally, might post a job on a job board or post it on LinkedIn to try and find that talent, but the process is not very candidate-friendly today because the traditional job descriptions are in the written form and there is very little insight in terms of the job opportunity.

I’ll give you one example of Disney’s subsidiary ESPN, where last summer, they were running a project to diversify their on-air talent. They’re located out of Bristol, Connecticut. There’s not as much diversity in Bristol. What they did is they took a link to a landing page, which we call a Montage Foyer, and they socialise that out on Facebook and Twitter across dozens of different countries. In a matter of four weeks, they had over 500 applicants for two positions from 53 different countries.

There was no way they could have sourced that diverse a talent pool from that diverse a group of countries through a traditional mechanism of manual recruiting. It would have just been too time consuming and too costly. They socialised this link and regardless of where you are in the world, you can click on this link, go to this Montage Foyer and learn about the opportunity.

There’s media there where you can hear about the position, understand what the process would be, and then self-select into the interview by clicking on ‘Start Interview’. Therein lies the ability for a candidate, on their own time and schedule, to conduct an asynchronous interview responding to job-specific questions, recording their answers whether it’s written, voice format, or video format, and being able to submit it so that the recruiting team could have access to it.

Sramana Mitra: Interesting. You’re saying that in the asynchronous mode, the candidate is fed the questions and they record the answer to it, and submit it. When somebody is screening the submissions, they have a whole bunch of video recordings to review as opposed to just a sterile text resume.

Kurt Heikkinen: That’s right. For the candidate side, there are many benefits. The candidate can do it on their own time and schedule. Many of the best candidates are working so they’ll do it at night or over the weekend. The candidates have an ability to showcase themselves in a way that traditional resume or CV doesn’t allow them to do.

With the right experience, this Foyer, and other content, the candidate gains much more insight into the opportunity to really compel them to engage. Once they’re completed it, now you can imagine the benefits to the recruiter who’s getting hundreds of responses per requisition. Instead of having to schedule dozens of interviews and maybe conduct a 20 or 30-minute phone interview that takes a lot of time and gives them very little insight into the candidate, they can process dozens of these on-demand or recorded interviews in an hour and quickly prioritise and shortlist the top talent.

There’s the candidate benefit of ease of use. There’s the recruiter benefit and then there’s the quality of higher benefits because now the hiring manager is getting more insights quicker.

This segment is part 2 in the series : Thought Leaders in Cloud Computing: Kurt Heikkinen, CEO of Montage Talent
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