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Published: April 28, 2021
At Talk Hiring, we are fixing the hiring process for jobs that don’t require a college degree. Our automated mock interviewing tool, used by thousands of workers to prepare for their next job interview, now has several new features to address one of our core values: accessibility.
In households with incomes under $30,000 a year, 44% lack home broadband and 46% lack a computer. That’s why we built a platform that allows job seekers to practice interviewing on a web browser, mobile phone, or landline.
Internet access is just the beginning of the access issues experienced by many of the populations served by workforce development nonprofits and organizations. In the last year, we’ve gathered a significant amount of data and feedback to help us improve clarity of feedback, overcome language barriers, and much more.
Instructions and feedback in Spanish
In the United States, 43 million people speak Spanish as a first language. While most employers in the U.S. want to conduct interviews in English, many job seekers prefer to see instructions and feedback in their first language.
Starting this month, Talk Hiring users will be offered the option to view instructions, questions, and feedback in Spanish. We plan to roll this feature out in more languages in the future to help people for whom English is not their first language feel more comfortable and confident practicing their interview skills.
New system for scoring and actionable feedback
We’ve been hard at work for months to completely reimagine how we score interviews and offer feedback to help users understand how to improve.
After completing a mock interview, users are now given a simple, color-coded chart showing how they can improve on a 5 point scale. They are also shown simple pieces of text with recommendations on how to improve.
For the first time, users now get an overall rating of their performance in addition to metrics for each smaller dimension. This is a feature our organization partners asked for to help participants in their career-readiness programs understand if they are improving holistically in their interview skills. We’re also introducing a dashboard that tracks progress over time.
Understand the WHY behind our scoring system
Finally, we’ve introduced a new page where users can learn more about our scoring system and the reason for tracking each metric.
The PAR method—standing for Problem, Action, and Result—is a standard technique to prepare strong answers to common interview questions. On this new page, Talk Hiring users can listen to examples of interview responses that use the techniques we recommend, like the PAR method, and ones that don’t.
We’re excited to launch the above new features in our effort to build the most inclusive, mobile-friendly, and tech-accessible mock interviewing tool.
To learn about how Talk Hiring can help your organization offer unlimited, data-driven mock interviews, reach out to us at hello@talkhiring.com.