How Cisco improved interview structures to create a world-class candidate experience with SocialTalent
Cisco partnered with SocialTalent to make candidate experience at the interview stage world-class — upskilling hiring managers and panelists into excellent interviewers, improving quality of hire, and driving a fair, consistent, and transparent process across the company.
Cisco's primary reason for partnering with SocialTalent was based on a fundamental desire to make candidate experience at the interview stage world-class. The company understood how intrinsically linked positive candidate experience was to attracting the best talent, and they were dedicated in their mission to make this process the best it could be.
After thorough research and an internal review of their current processes, Cisco identified areas of opportunity on this front that could be iterated and evolved in order to optimize how interviews were conducted throughout the company.
In addition to creating a consistently great candidate experience throughout the hiring process, Cisco's goal was to upskill hiring managers and panelists to become excellent interviewers and secure the best talent. They wanted to continue to improve their quality of hire and better align hiring managers and Cisco's Join and Connect team (Cisco's classification for TA) to enable this.
In sum, their aim was to improve interview structure, drive a fair and transparent process, reduce the risk of making poor hires and, ultimately, create unparalleled candidate experience across the board. So, it was decided that a comprehensive program of interview training, facilitated by the SocialTalent e-learning platform, would be rolled out to the organization.
"Excellent training, fantastic insights. This will make all the difference." — Cisco user on SocialTalent's Interviewer Training
We wanted to give Cisco employees the best information possible in the easiest way for them to learn and SocialTalent already had that set-up. People love the missions, the way everything is structured, the vignettes of information and accomplishment badges.
The breadth and depth of interview training content was a hugely attractive feature of the platform.
A proven form of industry-led, bite-size learning that enabled teams to excel at interviewing.
Training was easy to access for teams across the company's global footprint.
The customizable nature of the training let Cisco tailor it to their needs.
I have been sitting on interview panels for over a decade and have been a hiring manager for more than half of that time and this was hands down the best interview training I've gone through. Thank you Cisco for investing in SocialTalent training for interviewers!
Establishing a PM team to help operationalize SocialTalent learning and make the training mandatory for all interview panelists.
- Cisco conducted a temperature check of their hiring managers' interest in undertaking interview training.
- A survey resulted in an overwhelming 78% positive response rate, confirming the appetite to roll out interview training to everyone responsible for conducting interviews, company-wide.
- Building on a prior partnership with SocialTalent for recruiter training, Cisco committed to delivering and operationalizing the training by putting a senior project management team in place from the get-go.
- The PM team understood how important it was to collaborate and be active participants in the roll-out — and this became a key factor in Cisco's overall success.
- To maximize impact, it was deemed mandatory for any employee who participated in interviews to complete the training and gain the Cisco Certified Interviewer award.
- Failing to achieve certification meant employees would not be eligible to sit on future interview panels — ensuring best practices were adopted by all, and not just some.
"We wanted to give Cisco employees the best information possible in the easiest way for them to learn and SocialTalent already had that set-up. People love the missions, the way everything is structured, the vignettes of information and accomplishment badges." — My-Chau Matrick, Leader, Talent Acquisition Operation Program and Change, Cisco
NPS scores have risen and employees are now enabled to provide world-class candidate experience during interviews.
Thanks to such a dedicated and organized approach to rolling out the training across the organization, Cisco immediately saw positive returns. Crucially, NPS scores from candidates being interviewed rose.
With close to 40,000 registered users on the platform (and over 30,000 certified interviewers), Cisco has seen massive uptake in the SocialTalent interview training. Coupled with strong support from leadership in all regions, the content is being shared across countless teams and the feedback from surveys has been excellent, with some users saying that it was "the best online training [they] have ever received at Cisco." 95% of those surveyed would recommend the training to a colleague, and over 93% agreed it was relevant to their role.
With every user now responsible for ensuring that interviews were conducted effectively and in a manner which allows candidates to flourish, the organization has witnessed hugely beneficial behavioral changes from their employees upon completing the SocialTalent training.
SocialTalent's extensive catalogue of interview training content has enabled Cisco to achieve their aim and empower their employees with the knowledge and practical advice needed to foster the best possible candidate experience.
But the progress won't stop here — Cisco already has future plans to deepen knowledge around diversity interview practices, and to translate the interview training for different global markets. Furthermore, they are implementing a pioneering recertification process to keep L&D forever fresh — whereby everyone involved in interviewing will be required to recertify on the SocialTalent training every 12 months.
Excellent training, fantastic insights. This will make all the difference. The topics and how the modules were broken down was intuitive and easy to absorb. Really good.
Cisco Systems Inc. is the worldwide leader in networking for the Internet. The company was founded in 1984 and is now a multinational corporation, with over 77,500 employees. Cisco solutions are the networking foundations for service providers, small to medium business and enterprise customers which includes corporations, government agencies, utilities, and educational institutions. Cisco's networking solutions connect people, computing devices and computer networks, allowing people to access or transfer information without regard to differences in time, place, or type of computer system.