HelloCecil

Take the guesswork out of screening resumes.

3 followers

Automated video interviewing software that takes the guesswork out of screening resumes. Sign up in minutes to create your first Video Interview for free.

Launch tags:

Hiring•SaaS

Launch Team

Marc Thomas

Doopoll

Hey Brandyn, This looks really interesting. I was talking to someone about an idea like this just the other day. One concern I have is that this will contribute to creating a lack of diversity. It's well documented that first impressions count and that that can have a negative effect as well as a positive one by allowing interviewers to only hire people who are like them. Do you see this as a problem and, if so, how do you plan on mitigating this? Cheers, Marc

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6yr ago

Ivan Podgurskiy

HireFunnel

@iammarcthomas Hey Marc, as a founder of a similar product HireFunnel.io, I wanted to share my opinion on the matter you raised. Personally, I don’t think avoiding tools that let you “meet” candidates earlier in the hiring process can help embrace diversity in any way. It’s the people's attitude and perception that we need to work on and have done huge progress in the last decade. Also wanted to congratulate Brandyn on the launch, looks like a solid thought through product - good job!

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6yr ago

Brandyn Morelli

Grapevine

Maker

@iammarcthomas Hey Marc! I'll let my co-founder (Mark) respond in more detail given his extensive background in both Law & HR, but I wanted to chime in. So this was a concern from the very beginning, as we're sensitive to Title VII discrimination issues. I do think however, that this unfortunately happens with written resumes whether consciously or subconsciously. I also feel getting past a name on a resume and to see & hear a real person could be a benefit. A major concern is that has always been that people don't even make it in for the interview, which we're hoping this helps. Product wise, we're looking into features that can address and help combat this as we grow.

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6yr ago

Brandyn Morelli

Grapevine

Maker

@iammarcthomas @ivan_podgurskiy Thanks for the well wishes Ivan!

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6yr ago

Mark Lewis

HelloCecil

Maker

@iammarcthomas Hey Marc. Thanks so much for checking us out and for sharing your thoughts on diversity. With 25 years of HR and legal chops, I’m right there with you on ensuring that HR tools support diversity in the workplace. So when we first began developing HelloCecil, I approached both the HR and legal communities with the question: What impact, positive or negative, would automated video interviewing have on diversity hiring? The response from both HR and legal folks was that video interviews are simply a first meeting, just like an in-person interview. Success at achieving diversity in the workplace begins long before that first meeting, starting with a culture of diversity in the workplace, diversity in the planned recruitment process, diversity training, and the like. Our goal with HelloCecil is simply to help hiring parties meet candidates earlier in the hiring process so better decisions can be made -- based on the additional insights gained from a video presentation -- on who to invite for in-person interviews. We want to give candidates the opportunity to make a stronger case than paper resumes alone afford, and hiring parties the opportunity to build a stronger candidate pool and shorten their time to hire. Cheers!

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6yr ago

Murtaza Bambot

@iammarcthomas As another Founder in the HR tech space (careerblitz.io), totally agree with the sentiments expressed below. One of the biggest difficulties for diverse candidates is just getting in the door. There's so much bias that comes from just a resumes (name, location, school, hobbies, interests), that a platform like this that can get candidates "in front" of a screener or hiring manager faster seems like it would be a net positive from a diversity standpoint. Sure, there's a lot more that can go wrong afterwards (bias from seeing videos of people not like the interviewer, bias towards different dialects, accents), but all those forms of bias would also pop up in an in-person interview. It's impossible for a tool like HelloCecil to solve this, and improving diversity hiring from these points in the funnel really rely on the fact that companies need to spend time with their teams auditing how bias is coming into their interview process.

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6yr ago

Brandyn Morelli

Grapevine

Maker

Hey everyone! 👋 Hiring a new employee can be daunting for startups and small businesses. “How do I find the top candidates in this tall stack of resumes?!” With 25 years of HR experience on our team, we know that reviewing stacks of paper only tells you so much. You end up dealing with time-consuming follow up emails and phone calls, and still invite way too many unqualified candidates for in-person interviews. That’s why we built HelloCecil, a super simple one-way video interviewing platform that allows you to see and hear your candidates instead of just reading about them. Use visual and audio cues to spot top candidates faster, reduce your number of in-person interviews, and shorten your time to hire. We’re happy to answer questions and appreciate your feedback!

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6yr ago

Saijo George

tl;dr Marketing

@brandynmorelli congrats on getting it hunted mate

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6yr ago

Murtaza Bambot

Any ATS integrations yet? Would love to see how this can pair with other products in the recruiting space

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6yr ago

Rohan Mahtani

Networking Emails

@murtazabambot I'd recommend trying out HireFunnel.io (mentioned above). We use it at our company for hiring and it's been excellent. Comes with an out of the box ATS too.

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6yr ago

Mark Lewis

HelloCecil

Maker

@murtazabambot Hi Murtaza. Great question! We know business owners and HR personnel have a variety of HR software favorites they may already be working with - ATS, sourcing, onboarding and other tools. So we built HelloCecil to work right alongside all of those tools, no changes to existing practices needed :) Some employers use an ATS to screen resumes by keywords etc, while other employers manually review each resume (and some do both). HelloCecil is compatible with any such scenario. Once an employer identifies candidates that meet minimum requirements, either via the ATS or manually, they then simply email the HelloCecil video questionnaire link for their next level responses! As an aside, the questionnaire link can also be included upfront in the job posting itself. The value in doing so is that candidates who randomly submit resumes ("spray and pray") are far less likely to do so if they have no intention of completing a video questionnaire. We find this reduces unqualified resume submissions by over 50%.

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6yr ago