HireBox

A day in the life of a talent acquisition professional or a CHRO or even a manager revolves around juggling between umpteen tasks, going through heaps of documents, ensuring that everything is in its place at all given times, and most importantly—hiring the best-in-class. I must know! Being a senior editor, I’ve been responsible for acquiring the most capable, talented, and ethical journalists who can not only report but can someday lead our firm as well. Although the process of recruitment excites me and is one of the hardest duties I continue to undertake, there is always a bothersome question at the back of my head that’s left unanswered through the years—Am I acquiring candidates who are genuinely talented or posers portraying themselves as one? Despite having built a great team, this unattended thought inevitably turned into a predicament for me. How could it not? I’ve never had any formal training in HR—the know-how, know-why, know-who, I knew nothing when I started hunting and hiring talent. Whenever I discussed with my former-lead about this, he told me what his boss once told him, “It’s not rocket science, you will learn in time.” I beg to differ; and my interactions with a number of enterprise leaders showed that I am not the “only recruiter” facing this issue.

While many could not run a functional HR team or a system due to budget constraints, others had to take the final call due to their role in the organization. I, along with many enterprise leaders, had no other option. Until recently! It was through a typical interview that casually hit my desk, that made me question the way I hire people and strangely, changed my perception of hiring as I knew it. As I recall, it was an hour or so after I logged in when I received an e-mail from my colleague who stated that I had an interview with a gentleman named Patrick Valtin. I did a little background research about him, and what I found out left me spellbound. Valtin is not just an ordinary CEO; he is a 30-year veteran management consultant who authored best-selling books like “No-Fail Hiring 2.0.” The man has trained over 140,000 business owners and executives in more than 35 countries and has evaluated over 25,000 applicants for almost 5,000 clients till date. That’s one solid bio! My eyes then went seeking about the company Valtin owned and headed— HireBox! As it was called. On its homepage, I found yet another statement—his vision statement—“Raising Happiness in the Workplace.” I was intrigued. I already had a good lot of questions to ask him and somehow knew he had the answers to solving my hiring predicaments. I had become a keen, curious customer, wearing the mask of an HR journalist. I picked the phone up, dialed his number and waited in anticipation! Soon enough, he answered with a warm greeting, “Hello! This is Patrick from HireBox.”

Interviewee Spotlight On!

We started with the problem itself—the way organizations hire today! Valtin highlights that for many organizations acquiring and retaining a competent workforce of qualified and passionate employees is a rapidly-growing challenge.

We are the only talent acquisition support provider that can guarantee your happiness as an employer

Many firms, primarily SMBs, do not have enough capital to have a competitive HR infrastructure or teams in place and are most often poorly informed on aspects of talent acquisition. Due to this, employers in many cases tend to focus their candidate evaluation on hard skills and confuse with what Valtin mentions as “temporary personality and chronic personality.” Companies tend to hire people based on what they observe during the interview without being aware that applicants may show different personalities after probation. I concurred and further questioned, “What can these firms do to keep them from making these blunders while hiring? How can they acquire the best and ensure that these workers are productive, with lower budget overheads?”

“That’s why we are here!” Valtin said as he laughed.

Unmasking Candidate Traits and Intent

Valtin developed the HireBox testing and performance appraisals platform that enables businesses to expand their workforce with the right talent. “We are the only talent acquisition support provider that can guarantee your happiness as an employer. We do so by teaching and helping you to attract and select only those people who are willing and able to make you and your team happy and successful,” said Valtin.

The HireBox platform encompasses simple pre-hire assessments tools that help employers understand candidates better, especially on the soft-skill side. The offering can broadly be divided into two major segments—the Pre-Selector and the Recru-Tec Test. The former is a short pre-screening test, to be used on applicants who have been pre-qualified from their resume/job application. It evaluates applicants against the Happiness Contribution IndexTM—that measures how willing and able they are to contribute best to their employers and teams. In addition to enabling recruiters to identify the candidates’ innate traits, it also accurately reflects on the honesty and integrity of applicants. How different would it be if we could gauge what a person is really like beyond what s/he portrays to be? Having known the value proposition of HireBox’s offerings, I wished I’d heard about the company when I was tasked to carry out my first hire. It could have saved my firm a ton of money wasted on hiring those “all-talk-no-shows.”

Likewise, the Recru-Tec Test is a full soft skills analysis tool. It reveals with over 90 percent precision, 20 key personality traits which can affect—positively or negatively, success and happiness, on the job and in specific work environments. Plus, the uniqueness of the test is that it can differentiate between “temporary and constant personalities.”

Valtin cites one remarkable instance wherein an employer used HireBox’s tests to assess a candidate’s honesty while hiring. A young entrepreneur named Steve had taken over a car dealership as its general manager. Within just a few months on the job, he was asked by his board of directors to hire Scott—an applicant who had an impressive resume with demonstrated expertise—as operations manager to deal with the company finances and bank relations.

Having become intuitively (mildly) suspicious during an informal interview with Scott, Steve decided to use the HireBox testing platform to investigate the applicant’s true intentions. The pre-hire assessment results suggested Steve to not “hire the candidate without a proper background check.” Unable to reach out to Scott’s previous employers, Steve could not find “anything wrong” with a standard background check. Pushed by the owners of the company, he reluctantly hired Scott. Six months later, Scott disappeared with over $150,000 of cash stolen from company accounts. Amid all the stories discussed on call that day, this alarmed me. While it did show the platform’s success, it out rightly put on display everything that was wrong with the way we hire and the disastrous outcome of choosing people based on what we see!

Be the Best at Hiring the Best or Simply Outsource

HireBox has two service delivery models. Businesses can either have their HR teams trained by the company or have their hiring process outsourced. Based on best practices and designed by Valtin himself, the Hire-Master program provides hands-on training to individuals, managers, CHROs, CEO or anyone involved in the hiring process. The course covers a vast range of topics on talent acquisition including rules of hiring, compliance, attracting qualified applicants, pre-selection strategy, interview techniques, on-boarding process, and much more. The online training program includes a permanent phone coaching and support service, as well as certification for each registered person. In a nutshell, any personnel can gain recruitment expertise in just a matter of weeks by simply taking HireBox’s course. “Regardless of the industry, what we teach applies to everybody,” says Valtin.

"Get trained as a recruiter! A leader must always be a great head hunter!"

The other prong, HireBox’s Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO) services cater to leaders who aim to hire right but do not have the time or resources to expend for it—a situation that I’ve been through on many occasions. Valtin shares the success story of how a young company with only three employees grew to nearly 14 employees, and dramatically expanded their activities with HireBox’s RPO.

HireBox offers yet another purpose-built program to help companies hire, onboard and train sales personnel—the Sales Talent acquisition and training (STAT) program. The company helps organization recruit qualified salespeople, officially on-board them, and educated them on the fundamentals of salesmanship to ultimately enable them to ace at work.

Talent Acquisition—Forever Vital

Even though our discussion lasted a little over an hour, the insights I got over the conversation not only changed the way I interviewed but also introduced me to an easily overlooked yet hugely beneficial side of HR. I could imagine the momentous gains and transition HireBox’s clients would have made given the time they spend with the coach.

“The hiring industry is by far the most competitive market in the business world. So, get trained as a recruiter! A leader must always be a great head hunter! Be the best and hire the best.” concludes Valtin.