Might skill-based hiring eliminate the need for resumes and massively improve the efficiency of high-volume hiring?

Welcome back to the High Volume Hiring Podcast, the podcast that features news tips, case studies, and interviews with the world’s leading experts about the good, the bad, and the ugly when it comes to high-volume hiring. 

The High Volume Hiring Podcast

In this episode, host Steven Rothberg, College Recruiter’s Founder and Chief Visionary Officer, talks to Dr. Maya Huber, the Founder and CEO of TaTiO, formerly known as Skillset. TaTiO is a competency-based sourcing platform that assesses its candidates beforehand using smart simulations. TaTiO is on a mission to reduce the need for resumes during the application process so that candidates are judged based on their competencies and not their work history.

Skill-based hiring:

In a staffing crisis where employers struggle to source enough qualified candidates, TaTiO offers an alternative solution, skill-based hiring. Employers who do not require a resume for their application process expand the number of qualified and diverse candidates within their hiring pool. Having a larger selection of candidates to choose from is especially helpful for those high-volume hiring organizations.

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TRANSCRIPT

Steven (00:14):

Welcome to the High Volume Hiring Podcast. I’m Steven Rothberg, the founder of Job Search Site College recruiter. We believe that every student in recent grad deserves a great career. This podcast features news tips, case studies, and interviews with the world’s leading experts about the good, the bad, ammy ugly when it comes to high volume hiring. Thanks for joining us. Today’s guest is Dr. Maya Huber, the c e o and co-founder of tatio, formerly known as Skillset Tatio enables recruiters to improve their application to higher ratio for high volume positions by accessing people from previously untapped sources. It does that by using simulations to assess the actual job skills of the candidates. Dr. Huber, welcome to the show.

Maya (01:06):

Hi, Steven. I’m so excited to be here today.

Steven (01:09):

Ah, awesome. It’s, it’s great to talk to you and, and this should be a really fun conversation. Assessments are well, for the, for the nerd in me, I, I can’t get enough <laugh>. So for the list, <laugh>, for the listeners who might not want to, who, who might not know you all that well or what you do how about if you take a minute and, and fill them in on who, who Dr. Huber is and what taio is?

Maya (01:34):

Taio is a woman, that company, we are two women co-founders always proud on that. My dearest colleague name is Moore, and we come from hr. So TA was created based on years of experience working that industry. We manage a couple of hr agencies and we were, I was a practitioner. And also our, the PhD, my expertise, job analysis and the future of work. So after years of working in in hr, we got really frustrated by the fact that despite innovation in technology, still the first and only option for candidates to prove themselves is based on resumes. So to make a long story, story short, I will tell that Tao Connect companies and job seekers based on competencies alone, and we are on a mission to remove CV or at least reduce the need to use resume or any application forms on application process in order to straighten the fields for everyone to be judged based on our competencies and not work history.

Steven (02:45):

Yeah. And there are so many advantages to that, and, and we’re definitely gonna get into that. In this interview also, I would be remiss if I didn’t point or emphasize what you talked about with the two female founders. So our company college recruiter is also a woman-owned small business. Oh, yay. And yay. Absolutely. There, there, there should be a lot more of them. If if you wanna get things done right don’t have it done by somebody who has both chromosomes, <laugh> that’s, that’s for sure

Maya (03:17):

Not to dream more, not

Steven (03:19):

Agree more, <laugh>. Exactly. So before we get into, you know, some of the conversation about assessments and, and the benefits of them and, and the different kinds of them, question I had for you is, is that Taio recently changed its name as I was mentioning a a little bit before from skillset. What led to that change?

Maya (03:45):

So the change came after deep thinking about our messaging, the way we wanna be perceived by our customers. There is a big difference between skills and competencies. And we try to highlight better our, our, I dunno, core values or our mission, which is promote a better talent acquisition ratio. So Tao is talent acquisition ratio. For me it was a deep process of better get a better understanding of the market needs and to put our advantage upfront. So this is the reason for the name change.

Steven (04:28):

Love it. Love it. I, and, and we’re gonna get into the ratios later. Don’t worry. For those who aren’t math inclined, we’re, we’re, we’re not gonna be testing or grading and everybody, everybody’s gonna get a participation on <laugh>. Absolutely. so <laugh>, the second, the other question I had was that you and I were introduced weeks back by a, a mutual friend of ours Chad SOAs of the Chad and Cheese podcast. And if I understood correctly Chad is an advisor to Taio. What is, what’s his role? Like, what did, what are your, is he the only advisor? Do you have others? What, what role do the advisors take for, for

Maya (05:08):

You? So, we are lucky to have a great board of advisors. Chad is one of them. He’s a friend and colleague, and we appreciate his Sapporo a lot. I will start with him and I’ll tell a bit more about our board, but Chad, as you probably know our listening know, are one of the biggest expert in the market. He knows the market deeply, have a better, under a deep understanding of its need, you know new product, he have a prospect of years of experience, right? Of what the market needs and now is it to implement new ideas into the market. So just working with us closely first of all, of having a better saying of the market to find our product market fit and the way into the market. Anything from business strategy to marketing to good advice and nice hug and support and tough days.

(06:13):

<Laugh> you know, as a, as a founder, sometimes you’re, you are alone in that, in this journey, right? So he is a great supporter and I can’t thank him enough for his support. We also work with Professor Joseph Fuller. He’s the one leading the future of work project that Harvest Business School. So he is the the part, you know, the academia, the evidence based data yields that perspective from our advisory board and also our, the former VP sales of mansur.com, Sonny Milov, the former VP HR of Google Fagan, and the current VP marketing of Tabula, which is one of the biggest, greatest startups in terms of marketing that is a unicorn basically over the last couple of years. So we are pretty lucky to work with those amazing smart people. I believe that in order to succeed, you need to work with the best people in the industry. So we found them <laugh>.

Steven (07:18):

Yeah, that’s, it’s, it’s awesome. And, and a couple of those people, I just know the names of them but everything I’ve heard has just been fantastic, Chad, I know quite well, and the way you described him was great. What you didn’t say is that he’s got, he’s like the Energizer bunny <laugh> he is, he just go, go, go, go, go, go GOs. But I loved how, how you also talked about, you know, how he gives you advice. One of the great things about Chad, and I’m sure that you’ve benefited from this, is that he’s not afraid to call a spade a spade, right? If you’re doing something great, he is gonna be all over you and giving you a big pat on the back and way to go. And let’s get a lot more of that. And if you’re doing something that’s not so great, he’s gonna say, Hey, Maya, I think you could have done better here.

Maya (08:04):

This is one of the main reason I love him so much, really, because you need to find those people who will tell you the truth, what you need to hear, and that’s what you want to hear. My mother will say, you’ll tell me I’m great. That’s fine. I need people with a strong perspective on the market to lead the way <laugh>.

Steven (08:23):

That’s so true. And, you know, I think that really applies in, in not just for those of us on the vendor side, but also the people in talent acquisition too. You know, to, to have to have mentors, to have objective people Absolutely. To be, be praising you and praises due and by encouraging you to do better when you could. So question for you. Do you feel like recruiters ever need resumes when they’re hiring in high volume? Or should they just be using competency or skill-based hiring criteria?

Maya (08:57):

You are highlighting the toughest question that we hear from talent acquisition manager. Do I really need to get rid of resume forever? There is a, the answer is no, not forever, and not for every position. But I believe that the fact we are still offering candidates to apply only with their resumes or application form that resolve in I’ll, I’ll start again. The fact that we ask job seekers to only use resumes or application form, bring us only specific people and in the staff financial crisis and the ecosystem right now, when we can’t find enough qualified people, we need to find better ways to bring people in, which is more engaging. And also, you know, there’s two sides on that issue. It’s the, the job seeker problem that they’re sending because it’s so easy, they just sending their resume everywhere, right? It’s clicking, clicking, clicking, that’s it. No effort. Almost not even a deep decision making that is going on. And on the other side, the result is that we recruiters receive dozens, hundreds, sometimes right? Of resumes per position. And you know, in those, I believe that in any position, you need to judge people based on our competencies, even in volume hiring. So for your question, I think competencies based hiring should be our new metrics, our new job matching standard, and we need to, we can pull resume to learn better about the c.

Steven (10:52):

We’ll be back right after this break. Welcome back to the high volume hiring podcast.

Maya (11:02):

Imagine, right? Let’s take me first, for instance, I have 15 years of experience in hr. I owe the PhD. We can agree that I have a privileged resume, right? But you’ll never hire me to be head of product. Maybe you’ll <laugh>, but most people

Steven (11:23):

<Laugh>, we’ll see at the end of this interview, we’ll get back to you in a few weeks. Don’t call us, we’ll call you, okay?

Maya (11:30):

<Laugh>. But most talent acquisition managers, mo team want, and as you know, I created a product, I sell it. I, I could be, I’m competent to be a product manager, at least maybe not the best one, but you should interview me. At least this is what I’m talking about. Imagine me applying based on my competencies. You will see that I know how to design a product, but then you’ll meet me and see that I never done it before. That will be extremely exciting for you. And then you understand what I mean. So it’s about looking at your future and current employees in a different way.

Steven (12:14):

And it also, in, in this era, and it this is true almost globally, almost in every industry, that there’s a real labor imbalance right now. And that almost all of the, the better employers are striving for increased diversity. And when you, especially in high volume positions, when you require somebody to jump through a bunch of hoops and to say, you have to have a resume, and I’m gonna have to see certain keywords on those resumes, you know, you’re looking to sell cars, you have to have a four year undergraduate bachelor’s degree for that. Why? Because we’ve always hired that way, is it’s a, it’s, that’s usually the best explanation you get. You end up with a much smaller candidate pool and a much less diverse candidate pool. So I guess what I’m hearing, Maya, is that by that the employers that work with Tao, that at least some of them, maybe most of them, are using the assessments and also accepting the resumes. So there’s, so we’re on a journey, right? We’re not at the end of that. We haven’t eliminated the resume or cv, but it sounds to me like the employers who are using your system are finding it to be less important, but not unimportant. Is that a, is that fair?

Maya (13:49):

Again, it depends on, you know, and the talent acquisition manager and is how brave he is. <Laugh>, <laugh> and I, to be honest, mostly it’s about the hiring managers and not the talent acquisition. Because the talent acquisition feel that they have the experience and they can rely on our competencies report to I based on that, the hiring managers ask for resume. And that’s where we ask for our candidates for, you know, based on the, the hiring manager request to also send is their resumes. You know, it’s we are on a path, it’ll not resume, will not be gone tomorrow. But we all need to be more flexible and open to new perspective that, as you said, it’s about diversity. It’s about creating equal opportunity to everyone. It’s not just about the diversity, it’s also about people on career path.

(14:55):

Career path are not linear anymore. We cannot look only on their history or credential. It’s not that relevant. You are missing great people. And also it’s about making the talent acquisition life easier. Not talking to people, not interviewing people who are not relevant. And also meet KPIs of diversity of, for me as a past recruiter is doing what I love is investing my time, interviewing people deeply, interview people that are relevant for a job. This is what recruiters have to do, right? Interact with people, not calling people hundreds of con calls a day just to ask, ask them if they’re qualified for the best basic, general requirements of the job, right? That’s what happened in Volume Mering. So for us it’s creating a better decision making process with a great results for both sides, job seekers and companies and recruits.

Steven (16:00):

Yeah, and, and, and I love that the, you know, one of the, one of the objections that I hear sometimes from talent acquisition people, when you make the process more inclusive, you say, you know what it doesn’t really matter what school you went to. We just want somebody who has a college or university degree. We used to only go to these 20 schools, but now there’s this thing called the internet, and we can hire college or university educated talent from, from anywhere. And just in the US there’s so 7,400 post-secondary schools. So if you only go into 20, by definition, there’s no diversity there. You’re, you’re missing the, the rest of the 7,400. The answer that I, or objection that I hear a lot of times is, well, I don’t have time to interview all those people,

Maya (16:46):

Or I do not know, right? You’re out.

Steven (16:49):

Yeah. But, but by, by assessing them, you’re surfacing the candidates who are the most likely to be a good fit, that you’re interested in them and they’re interested in you. And those who aren’t a good fit, it’s a good thing for them to get knocked out earlier in the process. You know, we don’t want to take people on a journey of, of weeks or months and then, and then end up saying no to them. So yeah. You know, something else that I’d like to dig in a little bit with you is the, the idea of, of the resume going away. Just to kind of ex expand on that conversation a little bit, when you were talking, it reminded me of years ago when at college Recruiter we transferred from using one c r m customer relationship management software program. I think it was called Maximizer.

(17:42):

And this is 20 years ago or something now to Salesforce. And we’ve made plenty of mistakes over the years, as all people in all organizations do. But one of the smart things that we did then was that we operated both systems side by side. So we continued to use maximizer as we had been while we were also implementing Salesforce. So for a couple of months, it was awful cuz we were doing all of that same work twice. But what, it gave us a real sense of comfort. We didn’t switch over to the new system to Salesforce until we were a hundred percent confident that it was working properly. And I kind of wonder if that is essentially what the hiring managers are doing when they say, I still want the resume. It’s like, I love the assessments, they’re really helping me, but I want the comfort of knowing that I’m also seeing the resume and sort of validating what I’m seeing here. And when I get comfortable that I really don’t need that resume anymore, then stop sending it to me. Is that

Maya (18:47):

Exactly, is that fair? Absolutely. Absolutely. This is what you see and you know, it’s reasonable, it’s a massive change for them. It’s like so yeah, we, we hear a lot, not from all companies we work with, but we definitely encourage that if that will create a better, you know a safer environment for the talent acquisition managers to, to go through the change.

Steven (19:16):

So I think we’ve got time for just one more question and, and that is something that you and I were talking about before I hit the record button for, for the interview. And that is the, the ratio, which, which is, you know, basically in, embedded in into the name of the org of of of Taddio, which, which I love. At, at college Recruiter we talk about conversion ratios click to apply. When the candidate sees the job posting, they click the apply button. You know, how, what, what percentage of candidates who read the post and click the apply button? And then I, I saw, I think it was on your site that you focus on, I think maybe more so, but definitely correct me if I’m wrong on the apply to higher ratio once they’ve applied to the job, what percentage of those are hired to, to me that all goes to quality. And maybe you can help the listeners who are Intel and acquisition or interested in that process understand why recruiters should work to reduce those ratios, to have a smaller number of clicks per application and to have a smaller number of applications per hire.

Maya (20:27):

So there are so many reason for that. First of all let’s start with the job seeker side. Better engagement from their point of view, from their experience will provide, they will be more committed. They will show up to the interview, right? We see that a lot. They will see one of the, the biggest struggle we see is no shows lately. So people show up, they are more committed. Also they feel like, you know, there people are not wasting daytime. And, and when it, in this era where it’s a time of job seeker, they rule, right? They rule the right. Now they’re the one people are looking for constantly. And they can choose, you can, you can look them. So this is one. The second here is, you know, a more efficient process. You want a more efficient process. We work so hard, talented recruiters, talent managers and talent acquisition teams work so hard interviewing people, filling those positions and their position where turnover is so high.

(21:41):

So you are doing the same job over and over again. We can do it better. I feel, and again, I’m saying that not as a tech leader, I’m saying it as a talent acquisition leader, we cannot use the same tools and, and, and, and see different results. We need to change the way we operate. We all need to be more efficient, you know, to finish, to finish my work on time, to meet my KPIs and to be a better employee myself as a, as a talent acquisition. So I, I believe w in this time, the way the hiring process is going is happening is so long, so fragile and both side waste a lot of time, money, and, you know, sometimes the world wellbeing, job seekers are frustrated. Talent acquisition managers are frustrated. Recruiting team are, are frustrated. We can close the gap we need to close to make a more efficient talent acquisition ratio. This is why I get up in the morning.

Steven (22:53):

Oh, that’s, yeah, that’s, that, that’s, I I I love the passion and, and thank you so much for, for sharing some of that and, and also your wisdom on, on this subject and helping our listeners understand better the, the world of assessments and, and, and the slightly smaller world of ta. So Dr. Hubert for listeners who wanna contact you learn more, how should they, how would you like them to do that?

Maya (23:18):

So I will be happy for peop if people will reach my personal LinkedIn profile or you can look at a website, www dota io. You can schedule a demo. You, you can meet my team. We will love to

Steven (23:34):

Hear from you. Awesome. And that’s Taio, T A T I O. Thank you so much.

Maya (23:39):

Thank you Steven.

Steven (23:42):

Thanks for joining us today on the High Volume Hiring podcast. I’m your host, Steven Rothberg of job search site college recruiter. Each year we help more than 12 million candidates find great new jobs. Our customers are primarily Fortune 1000 companies, government agencies, and other employers who hire at scale and advertise their jobs with us. You can reach me at steven@collegerecruiter.com. The high volume hiring podcast is a co-production of Evergreen Podcasts and College Recruiter. Please subscribe for free on your favorite app. Review it five stars are always nice, and recommend it to a couple of people you know who want to learn more about how best to hire at scale. Cheers.