Wipro's Answer To Recruitment Challenge: IP Video Phones

Unique challenges need to have unique solutions. This especially holds true in case of gigantic companies such as Wipro Technologies, which recruits about fifteen to twenty thousand employees annually.

With such a large workforce being employed every year, the company faced the challenge of reducing the turnaround time of the entire recruitment cycle. To solve this issue, Wipro decided to opt for Nortel IP Video Phones, which would considerably assist the panelists and candidates decide upon a uniform location all the while giving the same one-on-one experience.

Major Roadblocks: Scale of Interviews and Fake resumes

Wipro primarily faced two challenges, namely the scale of interviews and fake resumes. The company interviews approximately seventy thousand candidates for 20000 vacancies for various designations. The interview process involves a panel of interviewees from the Human Resource (HR), technical and other departments of Wipro.

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Prior to the implementation of the videophones, members of the panel had to often wait for previous recruiting sessions to finish, resulting in wastage of time. Space was another constraint as there were no rooms to conduct the interviews in.

“We wanted a phone that was movable and could be used by close to 5000 panelists who were conducting the interviews. Thus, the phone we opted for is not locked to the system and can be used as a‘plug and play’ model,” informs Jethin Chandran, GM (IT Planning & PMO), Wipro Technologies . With these videophones, more than one panelist can now conduct interviews at the same time with the same candidate.

As is known, the IT industry is already plagued with the issue of fake resumes and impersonation for interviews conducted over the telephone. The IP video-based interview process checks the candidates against any impersonation while being interviewed on the phone.

MCS Backend Infrastructure Leveraged for Implementation

The project was initiated with a pilot at three locations with 50 IP Videophones, which will gradually be increased to about 1000 phones in the next one year. The pilot was done at around six locations and went on for about three months. The total project cost amounted to close to $100 thousand.

The implementation included upgrades (application upgrade plus the software package) in the backend and configuration changes in the network. Currently, the company is using telepresence and desktop-based conferencing. “We already have desktop-based and room-based conferencing. The backend Media Convergence server (MCS) was fully leveraged for the configuration of the videophone and the multimedia communications server,” says Chandran.

Currently there are more than 300 IP Video phones used for the interview process and the company plans to increase this number to more than 1000 in the next one-year. The IP Video phones come with Nortel Multimedia Communications server (MCS 5100). The major challenges in the implementation included cultural reservations owing to the fact that the interviews were being done in a video format.

The process of the interview involves the candidate uploading his/her photograph on the videophone, which was also a bit of an issue due to time constraints. For the video interview, there are common numbers allocated for every Wipro location and to participate in the interview, the candidate has to dial the number for the respective location.

Integrating the IP video phones and multimedia communications server to the existing systems was also worked out with no major challenges. Copying the photograph, uploading it in the database and allocating the phones in proportion to the number of panelists were some minor challenges though.

Significant Reduction in Fake Resumes and Time

The Nortel IP Video Phones have enabled the panelists to conduct interviews sitting in their own cabins. For the interview, the interviewee walks into a video kiosk that is located in the Wipro premises, dials a given number, which is answered by an HR personnel or a designated panelist and the interview then begins. The major benefits garnered after the implementation includes lesser number of fake resumes, which have reduced to less than 5% and the time consumed in the interview process as well as waiting in line for conducting an interview.

Plans of Integrating Desktop, Telepresence and Internet-Based Video Conferencing

“We are planning to integrate the IP Phone initiative with the UC Infrastructure to reduce travel expenses,” says Chandran. The class of employees who can benefit from the integration are project managers and technical heads who travel for team reviews and operational reviews. There are long term plans to use the integration for a flexible delivery model where the media collaboration aspect of the infrastructure will be leveraged. This initiative is a part of the integration that will enable employees to join projects irrespective of their geographical boundaries.