In the column ‘Women in Tech’, three leading women in the world of recruitment technology tell their story. What do they think the future of tech in recruitment will look like? In this first article, Elin Öberg Mårtenzon has the floor.
What do you do in recruitment technology?
“I’m the CEO of Tengai and up until just recently, I was also the Chief Innovation Officer at TNG which is the birthmother of Tengai. The unbiased interview robot Tengai was founded in TNG’s innovation lab as a result of working with unbiased recruitment for the past 15 years.”
“Tengai is the world’s first physical recruitment interview robot. The robot combines behavioral science with state of the art AI-technology in a unique social robotics platform. The result is a diversity recruitment HR-tech tool with a user experience above the average that predicts future work performance objectively while assisting companies in hiring more efficiently and bias-free.”
“Tengai is programmed to execute unbiased job interviews and candidate assessments. By measuring soft skills and personality traits, Tengai is providing recruiters and hiring managers with data-driven interview transcripts and objective analytics, to make better hiring decisions. The AI-robot is an effective recruitment tool that also enhances the candidate experience, making the interview more fair and honest.”
“The companies shared vision was to create a more fair interview process for all candidates, by combining TNG’s 15 years experience in unbiased recruitment with Furhats insights on social robotic.”
What influenced you to pursue a career in recruitment (technology)?
“I’ve always had a great passion for technology in combination with behavioral science and have constantly strived to make my job better, more efficient and with higher quality to deliver great results to my clients. It’s been natural for me to use technology to help me solve my daily task and for improving my profession.”
How big is the role of tech in recruitment?
“We have just recently started do discuss tech-stacks in our profession which is a natural step towards the future. The future of recruitment can’t flourish without tech. Technology can help us do our job better, more efficient, more objective and with higher quality.”
What are according to you the biggest challenges recruiters face today?
“The daily pain that I see a lot is the headache of candidate shortages and companies trying to hire skills that are not even there instead of re-think the way we see skills and competencies to hire for attitude and soft-skills. It often leads to companies choosing a candidate that are a poor fit rather than to train people with the right soft-skills.”
“One of the biggest challenges I see is for practitioners to navigate the field of recruitment technology in terms of combining tools for creating the tech-stack that is best suited for their specific pains. There are a lot of tools on the market and there has never been a higher interest for HR-technology, from both practitioners and other stakeholders than today and the offerings are increasing by the minute.”
Which opportunities do you see in recruitment technology?
“There are a lot of opportunities to create a good foundation for the future of work and the functionality of skill-sets. In a future where we need to have more liquid hard-skills and be able to adjust and upskill our knowledge in an agile manner, recruitment tech can help us assessing candidates in new ways according to soft-skills, personality traits and potential rather than base our decisions based upon historic achievements in candidates.”
How do you see recruitment in 5 years?
“We will see a lot of fully automated recruitment processes with very little human interaction during the first 3/4th of the process and recruiters and hiring managers will act at the end of the process. Agencies will need to redefine their business models to operate on in a new end-to-end market. The combination of conversational technology, assessment and blockchain will be interesting to follow.”
