In an exclusive interview to SME Times, Sanjoe Jose, CEO, Interview Master said the video technology solution that they are providing will help Indian small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to choose right candidates and hire them. This reduces costs, saves time for pre screening and helps meet only the best candidates for interviews.

                                                                      Excerpts of the interview...

How does the Interview Master-- video interviewing solutions help small entrepreneurs and their businesses?
Sanjoe Jose: In small businesses there is a huge time constraint for entrepreneur and their small team. When it comes to hiring candidate they are very selective and want to select the best from the crowd; that's where Interview Master would help. Using Interview Master the entrepreneur can reach out to a large candidate base and view their video responses whenever they have time. The video responses help you see and hear the candidates helping you make a better judgement. Hence these video responses will help the entrepreneur pre screen candidates and invite only the best ones for a face to face round thereby saving lot of time and cost involved in the hiring process. They also have a video database which they can access and keep as a back up in case people are required for the same role as they are growing faster.

Could you tell us about its features and how much effective it is for reducing costs for small businesses?
Sanjoe Jose:  Interview Master provides application tracking system, Custom Application form, Custom Score card / Competency mapping, Multiple evaluators, Automated Reminders and many more features. Reducing costs happens in multiple ways in Interview Master, for example, SMEs can save by pre screening and meeting only the best candidates for Interviews this translates into huge time and travel cost savings meanwhile providing an added opportunity of having candidate database in video with option to hire from it whenever the role opens up again.

What kind of challenge do you see for hiring talent in the industry as of today? Is the Interview Master software tailored for getting skilled manpower for the industry jobs?
Sanjoe Jose: There's a war for talent that is happening in the industry today. The war for talent has been enhanced by a mobile workforce and emergence of companies in the new economy. Companies are exploring every option to reach out to the right candidate and provide them with complete flexibility when it comes to interviewing them. This is characterised by increasing demand for talent along with a decreasing supply of quality manpower for key sectors like FMCG, Banking, IT and Pharma. Companies are open bringing in talent from sectors with similar work skills like traditional retail and insurance to meet this supply demand gap of quality talent. Rural sales employees are in demand but companies find it very difficult to reach the lateral candidates.

Also one other major challenge for businesses will be more in the direction of alignment of the right skill sets with jobs. For this they need to know the candidate beyond their resume. Based on this, we have designed our Software to provide complete flexibility in engaging candidates for initial round of interviews. Our software ensures there is no scheduling conflicts or location constraints for the candidates as well as the company. And companies reach out the all the candidates using our software helping them prescreen and meet only the best ones and stay ahead in this war for talent.

Could you tell our readers about your entrepreneurial journey and what made you to decide to start up with this unique idea?
Sanjoe Jose:  During IIT days the team used to provide mock interview practice to juniors and students from other departments. Learning from that experience they thought of setting up an online portal which will provide a service which links up alumni with students to provide career counseling service along with interview practice. Soon they realized that alumni though very keen to be of any assistance possible for students of their alma-mater has very tight schedules making it almost impossible for them to conduct mock interviews. That is when it occurred to us that if they can have a platform where they can provide flexibility of schedule and location to alumni-student interaction it will solve a lot of issues. After MBA they took jobs in some of the leading MNCs but they knew that someday they want to launch our own venture. Whenever they met they use to discuss the idea and on discussion with more people they realized that the same issue exists in the industry where companies especially recruiting in masses or from a wide geography are tormented by poor conversion ratios, frequent travels leading to loss of productive employee time, lack of access to experienced candidates due to schedule conflicts and chaotic processes as a result of large number of candidates landing up in their premises. So finally one day they decided that it is time they say bye to the cushy jobs and make recruiting across globe easier. And that's how Interview Master was born.

Did you face roadblocks during this period and how did you overcome that?
Sanjoe Jose: We did face some issues with slower procurement / purchasing process in larger companies but as far as SMEs are concerned we have seen faster adoption of the product.

When we talk about small entrepreneurs, we always feel there is a need for growth and promotion. How are you promoting your company and which is the best medium today for achieving higher Marketing, Advertising and Public Relation goals?
Sanjoe Jose: We have not invested in Advertising so far, we have explored our Alumni links to get contacts and discuss about our product in companies. We have also been featured in media considering the innovation we are bringing about in the HR hiring process. We will be launching a self service platform for SMEs soon and would have considerable advertising in the right forums.

What are the other services Emprenure Labs providing at the moment? Also, tell me how are you planning to expand business activities?
Sanjoe Jose:  We do provide value added services like follow ups with the candidates, domain specific question creation, etc. As far expansions are concerned, we are reaching out the resellers who would take our product across the globe. We will be launching self service platform soon since we have received considerable request for Europe and US for our product and also for SMEs who can start using the product as soon as they need it.

How are you making businesses aware about this service?
Sanjoe Jose: Like, we mentioned before through our Alumni Network. We have chalked our some marketing initiatives which we are planning to launch soon to meet HR leaders across verticals and industries.

What kind of partnership are you looking for at the moment in order to give fillip to your business?
Sanjoe Jose:  We are encouraging reseller to be part of our network by providing a substantial incentive in a success based model.

(Namrata Kath Hazarika can be contacted at namratakh@tradeindia.com)