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Nigeria’s recruitment industry has benefited from adopting virtual approach, says Foluso Agbaje

Nigeria’s recruitment industry has benefited from adopting virtual approach, says Foluso Agbaje

Foluso Agbaje is the Head of Human Resource at Jobberman, Nigeria’s foremost recruitment platform that helps employers and jobseekers solve their recruitment and employment challenges. In this interview, Agbaje who has experience in Human Resource Management and Management Consulting across various industries including Technology, Telecommunications, Banking, and Professional Services spoke on a number of issues including recruitment, impact of Covid-19 on business. She says in recruitment there is no perfect candidate who will tick all the boxes but to hire right, companies will need to hire candidates who have the critical skills that have been identified for the business.

A lot has changed lately since the outbreak of the pandemic, most companies have to go virtual. What has the experience been for Jobberman and the recruitment industry?

Recruitment has become a predominantly virtual exercise now due to the pandemic. If you had asked most HR professionals in 2019 if they would have ever hired a candidate without meeting them in person the answer would have been a resounding no. The pandemic has forced companies to find innovative ways to fulfill their hiring needs, depending on advancements in technology with the use of video interviews, group case studies using virtual zoom classes and digital psychometric assessments to name a few. At Jobberman all our internal recruitment has been done virtually over the past 6 months using some of the former mentioned digital tools. Overall it has been a good experience because of the time and cost saved that would typically have been associated with in-person recruitment. On the other hand, there have been a few painful experiences. For example, having to give up on an interview due to poor internet connection. Having said that, the recruitment industry has definitely benefited on the whole from having a more virtual approach.

Jobberman recently launched a skills assessment product for employers? What is the idea behind it?

The assessment product provides companies with an objective way to find the best candidate for the role. We have a wide suite of tests for various roles and to test different skills sets, and the best part is that the standard tests can be customized to fit unique client requests as an additional service. As the assessments are all done virtually, clients do not have to worry about renting out a suitable test centre. Candidates also do the assessments from the comfort of their homes at a time that is convenient for them, and the results are instantly sent to your chosen internal contact as soon as the candidate submits the test. A lot of our clients also worry that candidates will cheat if they do the tests at home unsupervised, however the assessments are done with image proctoring technology to ensure that candidates are discouraged from cheating. The tests are also timed so it imitates the environment you would have in a regular test centre.

Read also: Jobberman introduces Skills Assessments add-on for Employers to test for best

The recruitment industry is a competitive and crowded space! What’s been the key for Jobberman to amass over 60,000 employers?

Over the past 11 years, Jobberman has worked hard to build a ‘customer-centric’ business model. We are constantly listening to the needs of our users and we take feedback very seriously. For example, we diligently track our Net Promoter Score (NPS) and our Business Development and Customer Experience teams work hard at the relationship management side of our business. This careful tracking of feedback and relationship management over the years has been useful in ensuring that our product offerings are not only fit for purpose, but also designed to meet all our users’ needs. We also recognize that we have a huge responsibility to ensure that the job seekers and youth that visit our platform and engage with us have the skills to fill the jobs advertised on our platform. For this reason we have invested heavily in our Youth Engagement & Learning efforts to equip the youth of Nigeria for the jobs listed by our clients through initiatives such as our free online soft skills training and virtual youth events. Employers can then visit our platform confident in the knowledge that the candidates applying for their jobs have the skills they are looking for in their organization.

As the Head HR of Jobberman, you must have interviewed and recruited a number of people. Let us in on the magic. What’s the interview process like at Jobberman? How do you utilize your own tech to discover the best and brightest talent?

To begin with, all our open roles are advertised on our platform with an assessments listing. This ensures that the job is being advertised to a wide pool of talented candidates. The assessment then helps us to efficiently do an initial shortlist based on skill set. Shortlisted candidates then go through various stages with key stakeholders within our organization. The key here is that we ensure that anyone coming into our organization is not just a culture fit, but also a ‘culture add’, in the sense that anyone coming in should be bringing the skills and behaviours that we have already identified as critical for our future. For example, a question I typically ask is for candidates to give an example of efforts they have taken towards their self-development in the past 3 months because we focus on self-driven continuous improvement at Jobberman.

What is your favourite Jobberman product add-on for employers?

This would definitely be the Assessment product. The assessment product is one of my favourite Jobberman products because it is designed for the future of work. Modern-day recruitment literature suggests that to be best placed for the future of work, companies should be assessing the critical skills their organizations need to have the right competitive advantage. This implies that to hire right, companies will need to hire candidates who have the critical skills that have been identified for the business. This is where our assessment product comes in; by using an assessment you can immediately see what skills the applicants have and at what level because the assessment report shows you the level of proficiency the candidate has based on their answers.

What do you wish more HR professionals and recruiters knew about recruiting?

My first wish would be for HR professionals and Hiring Managers alike – there is no perfect candidate. It is important that when you are looking for a candidate you know exactly which areas you are willing to compromise on for different roles without disqualifying candidates who have potential but don’t tick all the boxes. My second wish that I would like all HR professionals and recruiters to know is that recruitment is an art not a science; there is no one size fits all recipe for recruiting for all roles across various organisations. What this means is that you might need to tailor your recruitment strategy for each open role in your organization to ensure that you are getting the best fit.

Industry analysts have said that recruitment will be driven through a mix of human and automated solutions. Do you agree? Also, what are the challenges in the recruitment industry that need urgent attention?

I definitely agree with this. Artificial intelligence will probably ensure that in a few years only the final stage of the recruitment process is done by a human being. The current challenge I see in the recruitment industry that needs urgent attention is discrimination based on age and less explicit discrimination targeted at candidates who have career gaps on their CV. This discrimination automatically excludes some candidates in the labour market eg women on extended maternity leave or workers who had to take extended sick leave for example. Recruitment needs to leave this bias behind as we progress towards a focus on hiring for the right fit based on skill and ability, not the notion of what the right candidate looks like on paper.

What should Nigerian job seekers and employers be looking out for with Jobberman?

Our job seekers and employers should look out for our ongoing Soft Skills training and our upcoming virtual career fair happening in September. Soft Skills have been shown to be the skills of the future of work. Soft skills, commonly defined as non-technical skills, enable individuals to interact effectively with others. According to the World Economic Forum, to succeed in the workplace everyone needs to have a good grasp of soft-skills because these skills are vital to organizations and can impact culture, mindsets, attitudes, and behaviours. The purpose of Jobberman’s Soft Skills training is to equip job seekers with the skills and tools needed to succeed in the workplace during and post-covid-19. Secondly, we have our upcoming Virtual Career Fair happening on September 30th, 2020. The career fair is really a chance for us to showcase the various opportunities open to active job seekers.

Our job seekers and employers should look out for our ongoing Soft Skills training and our upcoming virtual career fair happening in September