Sharing #SonruSecrets in Dublin

The Sonru team has made one final stop in the jam-packed 2019 event calendar! Our final breakfast event of the year brought us home to our Irish roots, taking place in Dublin on Friday 22nd November.

Hosted in the BDO Ireland offices for a second year running, attendees heard from Sonru clients Version 1, Tourism Ireland and BDO Ireland.

In a string of fireside chats with Joy Redmond, Head of Research at Sonru, guest speakers shared their Video Interviewing experiences as attendees gathered best practice tips and advice on using the platform as part of the recruitment process.

Although the morning was full of many wonderful tales of Video Interviewing, we’ve honed in on some key highlights below.

Siobhan Byrne, HR Manager, BDO Ireland

The morning kicked off with an insight into BDO Ireland’s use of Sonru. Siobhan Byrne, HR Manager, shared information around completing her own Video Interview as part of the recruitment process for her current role, as well as team buy-in. Interesting highlights from her session include:

• The team sometimes changing their minds about candidates after watching the Video Interview, noting inconsistencies in some areas between the CV and the video
• Hiring manager involvement in question creation, which is particularly useful when hiring for technical roles
• For every role, savings of at least 2-3 hours on interviewing unsuitable candidates who would have previously been brought forward to the face-to-face stage prior to Video Interviewing

Alan Reilly, Head of Talent Development, Version 1

The second session of the morning saw Alan Reilly, Head of Talent Development at Version 1, offer the organisation’s reasoning for introducing Video Interviewing, its impact on employer brand and the time and cost savings enjoyed. Some key information included:

• Surprising positive impact on employer brand through the ability to brand the Sonru portal and include graduate success stories as part of the Video Interviewing experience
• Screened out 34.5% of candidates who may have been invited to an assessment day prior to the implementation of Video Interviewing
• Major time savings, taking less than a third of the time to achieve the results needed for the recruitment drive compared to previous years

Vivienne Horkan, Head of Human Resources, Tourism Ireland

For the final session of the morning, Vivienne Horkan, Head of Human Resources at Tourism Ireland, walked attendees through the impact of Video Interviewing on the HR function and on candidates, language skill assessment, using the platform for internal hiring and the impact on the department brand internally. Some interesting snippets included:

• Detecting unsuitable candidates at an earlier stage of the recruitment process
• Allowing hiring managers to ‘meet’ graduate candidates and assess language requirements before going to market
• Offering a benchmarked, standardised and fair recruitment process for both external and internal applicants

During the morning, Marie O’Sullivan, Head of Marketing at Sonru, gave an overview of our biggest research piece to date, the ’360 View of Video Interviewing in Action’ report, offering an insight into the impact of Video Interviewing on every stage of the recruitment process, as told by clients using the technology. The full report is available, here.

The morning concluded with a brief Q&A session and some final idea sharing between attendees. Photos from the event, along with more insights, can be found over on Twitter: @Sonru / #SonruSecrets