“So with us, we source candidates through smart job simulation tests. We measure their competencies online before the first application and connect them to companies based on their competencies. That creates this funnel where companies interview only relevant candidates.” 

Intro:
Welcome to the Agile Digital Transformation podcast, where we explore different aspects, specs of digital transformation and digital experience with your host, Tim Butara, content and community manager at Agiledrop. 

Tim Butara: Hello everyone. Thank you for tuning in. I'm joined today by Maya Huber, CEO of the recruitment platform TaTiO, which helps companies streamline the hiring process. Our topic for today is digital transformation in the field of HR, and we'll be discussing topics such as AI, the future of work, and more in this context. Maya also telling us a little bit more about TaTiO and how it's changing the game for this industry. So Maya, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for joining us today. It's great to have you as our guest. 

Maya Huber: Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited for this call. 

Tim Butara: Me as well. I think that this is one topic that it's actually weird that we haven't covered it on our podcast yet, but you are the first one that we're speaking about this with.

Maya Huber: I’m up for the challenges.

Tim Butara: Awesome. And I definitely think that you're the right person to speak with about this. I'm excited to learn more about your views, your experiences in this field, and also more about TaTiO. But first, I want to start off with this. What would you say is the most important tech innovation for HR? 

Maya Huber: I think first of all, the HR tech space is crowded with technology. But what I found most interesting is the field of skill based hiring. This is a great movement that you see in the last decade, and we try to push it a bit ahead, talking about competency. And also there are solutions out there that I really love about candidate engagement as well. So those are the main top interests from my perspective. 

Tim Butara: So I guess that these technologies are also so prominent because they respond to certain major issues in the field of HR. And I'm interested, what are these major issues and what other tech can help solve them? How is it doing that? 

Maya Huber: Okay, so let's talk a bit about the space. I guess, the last two decades, there are so many solutions out there in terms of HR tech. Those type of solutions try to target either trying to create an unbiased process of hiring. This is the main struggling for companies to make sure that the hiring processes are not biased, to stroking out the field to everyone. So there's a lot of AI, but also tools that analyze resume, try to reduce bias on that aspect of the recruiting process. 

Also, there are a lot of solutions out there that try to assess or qualify candidates to make sure that the people we hire are the right ones and the fit for the job. Also, a lot of tools that are CRM, giant CRMs, like what happened in the past with Salesforce, the processes those company entered the market. 

So imagine the enormous amount of data that recruiting teams and HR teams are dealing with, right? So there is a lot of technology, commonly ATS – applicant tracking systems or other platform, maybe for payroll as well, to help HR team manage data and to create better decision making while hiring. And inside the organization as well for upskilling, reskilling, making sure that we collect the right data points, right? And make hiring more efficient. 

Because the resources of hiring, it’s not about– when you think about hiring, commonly people think about, that the only cost is the salary of the person you hire. But the resources the company needs to invest hiring those people, retrain them, retain them inside the organization, are enormous. And remember, company is all about its people, right? Just the people. So, creating a more effective hiring process is the main goal of all of technology tools in HR. 

Tim Butara: And how does TaTiO fit into the picture? So tell us more about TaTiO. What is it, how does it work? And most crucially, how does it change the game for HR? 

Maya Huber: So, what is the classic process with the hiring, right? You as a recruiter, you publish an ad, right? You pull candidates, you source through dozens or hundreds of resumes or application form, right? And then you interview. Sometimes you interview another time, but the first is call, then it's video, maybe a personal meeting. Sometimes you use assessment to qualify those skills of the person. And actually, simulation is more evident only in high tech industry as well. 

And then a person is hired, you train them, commonly only after 90 days you know if it's good for a job, right? What we try to do, TaTiO, is to reverse engineer the process and connect companies and job seekers based on competencies alone, the assessment process, as the first step of application. So with us, we source candidates through smart job simulation tests. We measure their competencies online before the first application and connect them to companies based on their competence. That creates a funnel where companies interview only relevant candidates. 

Of course it's way more efficient, but also that way we can attract untapped pool of candidates. They will not apply based on the resume, either because they're not qualified – the resumes, they mean, not the candidates, or they do not understand what the job requires. And that happens more and more, right? With those so many opportunities out there and the creation of new opportunities every day in the workforce, people do not know how jobs look like. So with us, they experience a job and judged by their competencies before they even interview. 

Tim Butara: This is actually very interesting because we've talked about, on a few episodes, we talked about company culture and in the context of HR, in that context, we spoke about how you need to hire for culture fit. So it's really interesting to get this perspective, which might seem counterintuitive to the people who have listened to the previous episodes and who maybe agreed with the culture fit point. But can you tell us more about competencies based recruiting and kind of its benefits? 

Maya Huber: Sure. So I like to explain competencies by testing skills within their context. So I can ask you about your skills, you can share everything you want, basically. Right. You can tell me that you are a creative person, but creativity is defined by its concepts. Right. It can be creative with arts and creative with amazing drawing, but not creative in the way I do operation, right? Or decision making. 

Or, I love to explain it with Excel. Imagine Excel skills. I can have brilliant Excel skills, but put me in an office which is crowded as a secretary and people ask me a question at that time, my competency will be reduced. Right? So this is what we try to do. We simulate the core task of any job. Our simulation are real life experiences, as much as we can on a PC or a mobile, where you experience the core task of a job. It's not popping balloons, it's not answering questionnaires, it's not comparing squares in a circle. It's doing the job, you do the work. 

So if you are a sales rep, you will see a pipeline in a CRM and you will need to qualify those leads and close three deals within 20 minutes. If you are picker in a warehouse, you will need to pick items, collect them, wrap them into boxes and follow instructions. It's a bit of a gamification experience, but it's not childish in any way. It’s really respectful of the job and its requirement. You interact with that and we analyze your performance online. 

So we collect 150 data points throughout the whole simulation. It's a combination of performance in terms of time, accuracy, speed, the content of what you said, tone of voice, English literacy, et cetera. First of all, by the end of the simulation, you as a job seeker, get feedback and report about your performance. If you cross the bar and found suitable for the job and also met the companies we have ready open positions on our platform, if you met their general requirements, you will consider a qualified candidate. Of course, you need to approve that, and the data will be sent to the company database. 

So by that, first of all, you experience the job, you get a better understanding of what the job requires. And we love it when people say, you know what, it's not for me, I pull back my application. And we also, based on your competencies, we will connect you to relevant job opportunities that might be there but that you didn't consider. 

So let's say you did the sales simulation, right? And your proactive behavior was not good enough, was moderate, not brilliant. I will offer you to do some other back office, maybe customer care representative position, customer success, something that do not require proactive behavior. 

Tim Butara: So TaTiO serves kind of like a bridge between job seekers and recruiters? 

Maya Huber: Absolutely. Bridge that is made of competency. Not words, not stories. The real deal. 

Tim Butara: So these were the smart job simulation tests that you mentioned, right? And one other thing that I wanted to ask about this is – how do these assignments for specific roles get produced? Does TaTiO take care of this or is it a collaboration with certain companies? How does it work? 

Maya Huber: Great question. So this is actually our secret sauce, our deep tech. We have a patent back technology that enable us, with our own editor, to create simulation for any job within hours to days without writing a code. So we basically have product team leads who are job and analysis experts who use our platform. 

This is a drag-and-drop platform, and they create simulation from scratch, from the creative side of it – they take UI features and play with them in order to create those scenarios that we test, all the way to the analytics. That enable us to source through simulation, to use the simulation as a sourcing tool, and also to be up to speed and to adjust to the changes in the market. 

Tim Butara: That sounds super cool. I assume you're using artificial intelligence in some sense?

Maya Huber: Yeah, we use it in a couple of ways. First of all, inside the algorithms of the simulation, the analytics, we use AI when we use NLP to take what you said to the fake conversation with a client or prospective people you sell or provide services. So we track your voice, we convert it into text and then analyze the text. 

So this is one, but the deep AI we use is with a feedback loop that learn the result of each company's hiring feedback. So if a candidate eventually got hired or not, if they’re considered to be qualified candidate or not, and we create this classification of the good enough employee to fit a specific job. And then we make sure that those type of people with those type of scoring will be there over and over again so we get better over time. 

Tim Butara: That's very well thought out and very well organized, it sounds like to me. Very cool. And what about other companies, other products in this field? Do you know if they're using, if they're leveraging AI in a similar way, to a similar extent? What's the state of adoption and innovation of AI in HR? 

Maya Huber: AI is really progressive in HR tech. We see it across the board for different solutions for all those steps in hiring, from sourcing, to hiring, to upskilling and reskilling and payroll. We see it everywhere. But having said that, we also see some legalization happening and laws across the US and across the world that make sure that companies use respectful and responsible AI with their hiring processes. 

The way we make sure that we stand with that is the fact that the candidate see his analysis before applying. So he sees result, he can validate or do it again, whatever, or to decide not to send it over. So companies who work with us have less stress about standing with AI regulations. But this is a massive topic right now. Everybody talking about AI in HR and it's extremely interesting. 

Tim Butara: I think this leads perfectly into the final question I have for you today, Maya, and that is – how does everything that we've discussed so far today factor into what's called the “future of work” in quotation marks? Would you say that we're already experiencing this future of work? 

Maya Huber: Absolutely. First of all, I didn't mention, I have a PhD, my expertise in future of work. When I was doing my studies, they talked about all these processes that will happen that we are dealing with right now. So the fact that people changing careers, that career paths are not linear anymore. I come from HR, now I'm a CEO of a startup. I can choose– hopefully, after I exit with my startup, I can be an Uber driver, right? I can do whatever I can and go across the industry. So this is one we see it more. 

The shortage in the workforce is something people predict that we'll do in the future of work. And this is we all fear right now. And also the conversation about remote work, using deep technology to first of all replace some of the positions or change the way the position looks or what the test that they will require to advertise. I absolutely feel this is the most fascinating time in terms of the workforce that we face right now and the massive change. 

So many opportunities for one hand and rapid growth of technology. But at the same time, population who could not find themselves at work, diversity and inclusion and social aspects of work that become more crucial. Green tech. So for me, it's fascinating and I'm so proud and excited to be proud of this journey. And hopefully our company will leave a mark future of work. I want to create a life where my kids will be judged only based on their competencies. What do you say? 

Tim Butara: That sounds like the perfect note to finish on. And Maya, this has been a great conversation. I really, really enjoyed speaking with you today. I think that listeners will get a lot of value out of this conversation. If they would like to learn more about you or learn more about TaTiO, where can they do that? 

Maya Huber: So, first of all, thank you for having me and thank you all for listening. You can reach me personally on my LinkedIn profile, Maya Huber, our company website, tatio.io. Looking forward to hearing from you all. 

Tim Butara: Maya, thanks again. Thanks for joining us. It's been great to have you as our guest and have a great day. 

Maya Huber: Thank you. Same here.

Tim Butara: And, well, to our listeners. That's all for this episode. Have a great day everyone, and stay safe. 

Outro:
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