THE post-Covid job market is more competitive and challenging than ever and for graduates it has never been harder to get a foot on the career ladder.
But a new online platform PeopleHawk (www.peoplehawk.com) is aiming to reinvent how graduates and young professionals in Northern Ireland and beyond unearth and showcase their career potential to land their dream jobs – all at the click of a button.
The result of a multi-million-pound technology investment, PeopleHawk is helping young people stand out from the crowd and launch their early stage careers with a digital career profile.
Validated by scientific studies in the US, under the eye of its lead scientist Professor Colin Cooper, formerly of Queen’s University, the app has quickly caught the attention of leading universities and employers in the UK, North America, South Africa and India.
PeopleHawk’s aim is to replace the outdated paper-based application form and CV process with digital career profiles that can be created and shared online with leading employers.
Members can quickly catalogue their knowledge, qualifications and work experience in a digital format, with the platform automatically generating an infographic resume in a format that is more readily understood. The platform also provides a free personality test and detailed behavioural guide, as well as aptitude tests to rank cognitive abilities.
What’s equally impressive is the platform’s video interview functionality, where candidates can record an elevator pitch and complete a first round video interview which can be shared online as part of their job application. And because the platform uses scientifically-backed, highly predictive algorithms the candidate selection process is faster and easier.
For Eunjin Oh, an international student from Korea who graduated in design from the Manchester School of Art, the platform was a game changer in her career search.
After visiting Northern Ireland and falling in love with the country Oh, as she prefers to be known, decided to stay but like so many graduates, struggled to find her ideal job.
With PeopleHawk Oh was able to practice her video interview technique – an increasingly popular recruitment method – which was pivotal in helping her secure her dream role as a set designer/artist in Northern Ireland’s booming film industry.
She said: "Because I am an international student, it was important to me that I came across well during my interview. Using PeopleHawk’s video interview tool I was able to practice and record a structured interview from start to finish.
“The tool enabled me to take each question in turn, develop my responses and record them multiple times until I was happy both my delivery and content were convincing. For me, this aspect of the platform was really helpful.”
From an employer’s perspective PeopleHawk fast tracks the hiring process by helping businesses shift their reliance from slow, outdated CV-based recruitment processes to a more digital processes.
As PeopleHawk’s chief executive officer Paul Kinney explains: “Employers typically spend weeks of their valuable time trying to unearth ideal candidates from a pile of unsearchable, randomly formatted CVs, but PeopleHawk allows them to take a radically more scientific, targeted and faster approach using digital candidate profiles, together with rich search, find, rank and shortlist features.
“Talk to any forward-thinking employer and they’ll tell you that personality strengths and cognitive abilities are at least, if not more important than knowledge, skills and experience.
“You see businesses increasingly want to hire for personality and potential, because they already know the world of work is changing so fast that the same job today will likely require different skills five years from now.
“That’s why we designed our platform to unearth each candidate’s potential, while at the same time provide companies direct access to this valuable information. And because the platform is digital, and all the insightful data is provided by candidates up front hiring decisions are better informed, faster and more cost effective.”
