BY ERICA MILOSH

Nichols College human resource management students recently got an inside look at an innovative online interview tool created to help individuals find jobs.

On March 22, Nichols Board of Advisors member and MAPFRE Talent Acquisition Project Consultant Jackie McGravey and MAPFRE Recruiter Dave Maglione presented the HireVue tool to approximately 30 students. The presentation was held in the College’s new academic building, which features state-of-the-art technology in classrooms.

HireVue uses a digital interviewing process that makes selecting the right candidate for a job easier and more efficient. The program is appealing to not only Nichols students, but also college graduates everywhere because it allows them to complete numerous interviews anytime and anywhere.

McGravey and Maglione demonstrated how to use HireVue by walking students through the online process and using volunteers from the class. They explained that MAPFRE, a Webster, Mass.-based insurance company, has adopted this method of interviewing because it allows them to meet candidates who live farther away and they can get a better feel for a prospective employee through a camera rather than on paper. It also saves time. Instead of scheduling dozens of interviews and taking the time to meet each candidate, MAPFRE can review the videos and make quicker decisions, which is vital for a large global company.

Olivia Barrett, a senior human resource management and general business major; and Tim Born, a sophomore human resource management major, volunteered to interview through HireVue. They found that the system allows candidates to rerecord their answers if they made a mistake the first time. The volunteers and audience had fun learning how to record their responses and explore HireVue’s options.

Sophomore general business major Aaron Perry also decided to try HireVue, following Barrett and Born. Perry voiced his skepticism toward this system; he saw the tool as impersonal and would defeat the purpose of interaction during an interview. He said watching himself be recorded was uncomfortable and made him lose his train of thought.

McGravey and Maglione assured Perry and his classmates that HireVue is mostly used as a filtering system to weed out unqualified candidates. They do not expect perfect interviews, they explained, and an in-person consultation would always follow a decent HireVue interview.