HiPeople picks up $3M seed to automate reference checks
Source: TechCrunch
By Steve O’Hear
HiPeople
, an HR tech startup based in Berlin that wants to automate the reference checking process, has raised $3 million in seed funding. HiPeople says the investment will be used to support growth so that more recruiters can hire remotely using automated reference checks.
“Abstractly-speaking HiPeople is in the talent insights business,” say [founders] Gillmann and Schüller. “HiPeople currently solves this by automating candidate reference checks from request, to collection, and analysis. This allows companies to extend the information they have on a candidate without additional manual work”.
As a result, the startup claims that its users on average collect 2x the amount of references on a candidate. “Workflow automation of repetitive processes, and insights on the candidate that go beyond the limitations of the CV, are a clear pain for anybody in recruiting.”
Nick’s take
Actually talking to your references is a clear pain for anybody in recruiting. So these guys are going to automate yet one more aspect of recruiting and hiring by eliminating even more human judgment from the process. Because, as HR execs like to say, people are our most important asset!
How does this automation of reference checking affect you, the job seeker? I shudder to guess at how your references will communicate their subtle judgments and comments about you when there’s no conversation, no back-and-forth. But these guys didn’t create this service to benefit you. It’s to enable recruiters to gather 2X the amount of references without manual work!
So do you have 2X the number of references who will gleefully report to the Robo Reference Checker? (You could always just decline to provide references.)
Is this going to help or hinder you at getting a job offer? Does it mean less work for you? How about your references? What’s your take?
: :
HiPeople – a concept created by high people. Sorry. I couldn’t resist a joke (of a business) that writes itself.
@DB: I was waiting to see who would do that :-)
Unbelievable stupidity. I wish them a painful bankruptcy.
More stupid hiring tricks. God forbid that anyone actually have a conversation with references, much less candidates. This means more canned (and stupid) questions that will have nothing to do with anything (what kind of animal/plant would you be sort of thing).
Companies that opt for this (automated reference checks) should give up on using any kind of standards for hiring. Just draw a name out of a hat or put the names of the candidates up on a board and throw a dart. The name the dart hits gets hired. Oh, and that can be automated too.
another startup: references can setup automated references for others, without having to be bothered with calls, emails, and such). Then the two can go head to head in automated reference battle. Jokes aside, with all this automation it seems that fewer and fewer people will be getting jobs in the future, then, most jobs will automated and and we will be forced into retirement because nobody will be able to get these jobs anyway.
Meanwhile it gets worse in the UK….
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-55932977
HIPeople–Just more angling the M.O. of managing scarcity to maximize profits.
“AI[No]People” perhaps more accurate.
“Algorithms R Us!”
I was asked to provide a reference recently to an automated service. I was asked to evaluate the candidate on a scale of 1-10 on various questions. Because I didn’t know how the responses would be interpreted I simply answered “outstanding candidate” for 30 straight questions.
The employer missed out on an opportunity to ask me about the candidate. There was a lot of detail lost in that in that questionnaire. I thought that using such a service was disrespectful to both the candidate and person giving the reference. I was being asked to give up 15 minutes of my time to a computer, and the potential employer could not be bothered to pick up the phone.
You would think that a manager would want to look into references and validate the candidates credentials as many ways as possible.