NKT increases its hiring efficiency and hit rate with video interviews 

As a company driving the green energy transition, NKT is growing extremely fast and needs to find and hire many new people to meet its business goals. 

NKT partnered with Recright in 2021 to achieve a more efficient recruitment process and to reduce unconscious bias in hiring. The company first implemented Recright as a six-month pilot in Sweden, and now continues to use the tool in Sweden and Denmark. As things played out well, NKT is also in the process of rolling out Recright in other countries.

 

CV and phone screening make for a tedious recruitment process 

Before using Recright, NKT wasn’t using any digital tools in its recruiting. The screening process required a lot of time from recruiters and hiring managers, including the following steps:

 

1. 1. Recruiters first reviewed candidates’ CVs, either alone or together with the hiring manager. 

   2. Recruiters prepared a long list of candidates to discuss with the hiring manager, and together—based only on CVs—tried to cut down to a short list of about five candidates.

   3. Recruiters scheduled 30-minute phone interviews with the five shortlisted candidates and took notes either in a Word document or on paper.

   4. Recruiters reviewed their notes and summarized the five phone calls during a follow-up meeting with the hiring manager.

   5. Recruiters decided together with the hiring manager what top three candidates to invite to an in-depth interview. 

 

Josefine recalls the tedious work required to screen candidates when she was a senior recruiting specialist in Sweden: “With phone interviews, it wasn’t easy to pinpoint the best candidates for the role. I needed to write a lot to be able to remember and differentiate between the five candidates.”

 

“Reading a lot of resumes is probably not the most motivating task in a recruitment process. But when looking at a video, it feels like you’re speaking to someone and it gives you a much better understanding of the candidate,” she continues. 

 

Video interviews replace traditional phone screening 

By replacing phone interviews with video interviews, NKT saved time in several steps of the hiring process. 

 

“Recright saves our recruiters a lot of time—time that they don't have because they have so many recruitments. It’s not only that we don’t need to do phone interviews, but Recright also increases the possibility for us to only interview the right candidates at the end so we increase the hit rate,” says Josefine. 

 

NKT’s screening process now looks like this:

 

1. 1. Recruiters, and sometimes hiring managers, review candidates’ CVs.

   2. Recruiters record their video questions, and invite candidates to record their answers, also on video.

   3. Recruiters and hiring managers review candidates’ video answers on their own time, add comments, score candidates’ answers, and review each other’s comments and scores—all in the Recright platform. 

   4. Based on the videos, recruiters and hiring managers decide who they want to invite for an in-depth interview. 

NKT still conducts phone interviews for certain roles when it makes sense. For example, if there are only a couple candidates for a role, the recruiter will phone both candidates and invite them for an in-depth interview.  

 

Major wins include time savings and reduced bias 

“The two big wins when we shifted to video interviews were time savings and being able to engage the hiring manager in the earlier stage of the recruitment process,” explains Josefine. 

 

By engaging hiring managers earlier on, NKT was better able to reduce bias in the hiring process. “With Recright, the hiring managers see what I see. We both make our interpretations and then we discuss,” she continues.

 

Improving NKT’s employer brand and the candidate experience

With talent attraction as a major challenge for NKT, Recright helps to position NKT as a digital and innovative company. 

 

“Recright helps us show that we are a forefront technology company—it makes that visible in the recruitment process. We use innovative digital tools in our recruitment because we want to ensure unbiased recruitment. With Recright, we also get the opportunity to work with employer branding, as managers can also record videos to better explain what NKT is doing and what the role can offer,” says Josefine.

While it might be difficult to get HR to record video questions, Josefine encourages her team to do so. “If we ask the candidates to record videos, then we shouldn’t use written questions,” she says. 

 

If a candidate expresses hesitation to record themselves on video, Josefine would explain the benefits to them: “This is a great opportunity for you to market yourself beyond your CV. Black letters on a white paper is fairly plain, so here you have the possibility to sell yourself and your skills.”

 

To ensure candidates feel comfortable sending in their video answers, NKT allows candidates to re-record their videos as many times as they wish.

 

Recright helps NKT cultivate a digital mindset

NKT now uses several digital tools—including Recright—to make the recruitment process more efficient.

 

“Recright has helped us cultivate a digital mindset. We implemented Recright and a digital reference tool at the same time, so we’re opening up to digitize our overall recruitment processes,” says Josefine. 

 

Josefine summarizes the positive impact Recright has had on NKT’s hiring process: “Recright is an innovative tool that improves our recruitment processes and ensures we get to know the candidates a bit better before the first real interview. It increases our hit rate, decreases the amount of interviews we need, involves the manager at a much earlier stage, and it saves us a lot of time because we don't need to do phone interviews and all the scheduling and feedback meetings.”

 

“Recright’s support stands out. You get the feeling that you are important to them as a client,” she concludes.