Conventional Interview Process

 The conventional process of organizing interview in any organization involves HR recruiter short-listing candidates, scheduling the interview, fixing the venue after checking the mutual convenience and availability of both interviewer and interviewee. In the end, HR recruiter has to roll out offer letter to the selected candidates after duly verifying the records shared, digitally or manually by the interviewer/candidate.

 Online Interview System

The time and effort involved in the conventional interview process is humungous. To overcome the odds stacked against conventional system, online interview system is within reach. In this, HR recruiter does the major task of scheduling the interview effortlessly by just logging into the system and sending out a trigger to both interviewer and interviewee about the entire interview process by mail/SMS/Whatsapp. A reminder is also set for both interviewer and interviewee 15 minutes prior to the scheduled time. To keep it simple, all details pertaining to the interview are shared in encrypted form through all communication channels so that one need not login to the system.

 There is no manual intervention required or requested.

 Interview ChatBot

  In the online system, the time and effort needed to schedule an interview and hire a candidate have considerably reduced compared to conventional process. To further ease up the online process, interview chat bot will be more appropriate and adequate. The primary function of a chat bot is to minimize the work of the HR recruiter by scheduling the interview in shortest possible time and rating the performance of candidates in a few words.

 This chat bot mainly uses Google dialogue flow for creating and configuring the chat bot. It uses node js and MongoDB in the backend for the backend process and persistent storage. It also uses Google analytics for analyzing the users behaviour, pattern and demographic. By introducing the bot, the HR recruiter doesn’t have to go through the rigorous process of logging in and scheduling; instead the bot (programmed using Google Assistant/Web/Telegram/Facebook) will be scheduling the interview by ‘communicating’ in a few words.

 Eg: HR Recruiter opens the bot and says " Please schedule an interview for Aravind with John for the position of Java Developer tomorrow 9 AM for 45 minutes"

 Your bot replies, "Interview scheduled.''

 After the bot has acquired the required information, it triggers a fulfillment request. The bot then sends the acquired information as a filament request to the web hook which is nothing but a server side code. The web hook(api layer) receives the data sent by the bot and validates the following:

-      validates email format

-      validates authenticity of email

-      validates date and time

If all the above data is valid, the data is inserted into the database MongoDB. Then with the help of the received data, an email regarding the interview is sent both to the interviewer and the candidate. Both are provided with a link indicating the date and time of the interview. The link will be activated on the particular date and time.

 The video recorded during the interview process is then stored as an object storage for evaluation purposes. A code gets triggered does the following:

-      evaluates candidate’s confidence level

-      evaluates candidate’s expressions (sentiment)

-      evaluates coding style/erased/rewritten

-      evaluates rate of speech

 The Final

 The final result of interview is stored in the database. In the end, the HR recruiter usually queries the bot about performance of the candidates.

 Example:

The HR recruiter asks "Who performed well the technical round for the position of Java Developer last week?"

Bot responds "It’s Aravind and do you want to hire him?"

 The manager can also retrieve the interview results of a specific candidate. If the manager has a doubt about the best candidate, he can also verify it by asking the bot to show the interview details such as recorded video, audio, codepad, chat and the feedback.

 Benefits

1. The time and effort of the HR recruiter in selecting an associate to the company are significantly reduced.
2. The outcome of the interview process is unbiased.
3. The interviewer may review the interview process multiple times at his/her convenient time.

 Next Step

 The current interview chatbot developed may be upgraded in future with a few more features. The following are some of them-

1. BOT will search CV databases to get candidates who match job profile, not just one but multiple technical streams.
2. BOT will ask a few basic technical/HR questions to the candidates to help in basic filtration process.
3. BOT will administer online programming test
4. BOT will aid in completing the post-offer formalities