Using Vieple to select and grow Māori and Pacific leaders for a greater Aotearoa
TupuToa seeks to ensure that corporate Aotearoa is representative of the nation, by growing Māori and Pacific leaders in the corporate space. With over 100 partners this year, from Microsoft to ANZ, TupuToa works to recruit and nurture Māori and Pacific students, and to build cultural capability in the wider community. TupuToa is the largest recruiter of Māori and Pacific interns in Aotearoa, after scaling by 720% in the past four years, from a cohort of 28 in 2016, to 230 in 2020.
Maruata Reweti is TupuToa’s Programme Manager. During lockdown, this mana wahine led TupuToa’s team through a shift from time-intensive phone interviews to a digital interview process using Vieple. The timeline for changing the process was incredibly tight, but the TupuToa team know how to ‘flex’ as their CE, Anne Fitisemanu, would say. With an absolute focus on supporting rangatahi to succeed, the TupuToa team used Vieple to optimise their process, whilst maintaining the ‘vā’ – or relationship – between candidates and assessors.
“Our team wasn’t growing as fast as our applications were! Vieple allowed us to navigate the huge growth we’ve been through – and to truly see the essence of who people are.”
THE CHALLENGE
““Phone kōrero/talanoa was a time intensive part of our old process. We wanted a tool that would increase efficiency, enable us to share candidate responses across the team and provide a consistent experience for candidates that was aligned with our core values around being student-centric, ensuring a mana-enhancing selection process and accessibility to all candidates.””
With applications growing by almost 30% without an increase in internal resource, the team needed to review and optimise the interview process. Maruata reviewed the market, and found Vieple to offer the perfect solution, based on several factors:
It automatically collates and stores interviews in a centralised database
It allows for consistent, competency based interviewing
It reduces the team’s time and resource by up to 80%
It is asynchronous, allowing candidates to complete in a time and environment that suits them
It can be used as a growth tool for candidates
PROGRAMME STRUCTURE
100 University of Auckland International students were selected from a range of disciplines, and split into 20 teams of 5 students. Teams included 22 on-shore and 78 off-shore students.
Organisations were assigned between 1 and 4 teams of 5 students per team. With the support of Talent Solutions, each client developed at least one case study project brief for their teams to work on during the project. These case studies ranged from marketing plans, to cost/benefit analyses, to live construction redevelopment projects, and many more.
Over the course of the internship, students worked with both a ‘mentor’ and a ‘client’ from the organisation as they worked towards producing a project report and presentation in response to the client brief. Students, mentors and clients received ongoing training and support to develop personally and professionally, collaborating virtually using a bespoke platform.
THE OPPORTUNITY
The team maximised the use of its features to maintain a strong sense of candidate connection, resulting in an 86% conversion rate from application to interview. With ‘Kia ū ki te tikanga-ā-iwi’ or being ‘culturally driven’ as one of TupuToa’s core values, the team used the software in a number of ways to ensure that the process provided a mana-enhancing candidate experience.
1. Connection
The team made use of Vieple’s ‘introduction video’ feature. By uploading pre-recorded videos, each question was asked and introduced by the smiling faces of the TupuToa whānau. This ensured that the human side of recruitment was not lost in this digital format, allowing candidates to feel at ease so that they could put their best foot forward.
2. Quality
The team extended the candidate time limit to a maximum of two minutes, to remove a sense of pressure from candidates and allow time for a full and authentic answer.
““We wanted more than the scripted STAR answers from our applicants – we wanted to get to the essence of who people are.””
3. Responsibility
The TupuToa team found the asynchronous nature of the technology to be beneficial in a number of ways. Not only does this reduce scheduling and interviewing time by up to 80%, it also places the responsibility onto the candidate.
“As candidates had to organise themselves to submit their video interview within the timeframe, this provided an opportunity for candidates to demonstrate their commitment to the TupuToa mission and vision.”
4. Empowerment
The video interviews weren’t just used as a part of the selection process. After candidates were accepted onto the programme, the recorded interviews were used as a growth and empowerment tool. In preparation for their final interviews, candidates could view their own interview videos alongside a TupuToa Navigator to understand their strengths and develop in their growth areas.
“They didn’t always like seeing themselves in the videos!
But they were so useful for working together towards development.”
THE RESULTS
TupuToa have used Vieple to process over 600 applications, improving the efficiency and quality of their selection process, with an incredible conversion rate of 86%. By making the most of the customisable features, the team have developed a unique and warm candidate experience, which places the students at the centre of the process.
He aha te mea nui o te ao? He tāngata, he tāngata, he tāngata.
“The integration of Vieple video interviewing into our process has not only saved us valuable time so we can manage applications faster, we believe this process also supports our candidates for future success when they are tackling video interview processes for future employers.”
