1. Tell us about your role in Monjin?
Aparna Swaminathan leads Sales and is responsible for customer success overall. This includes understanding our clients unique and diversified recruitment processes and challenges that they face in getting quality workforce as a part of their team. Analyzing and proposing solutions to address those and driving change management to improve the

• overall time to hire
• bandwidth and efforts from stakeholders and channelizing that more effectively
• significantly improving the candidate experience throughout the recruitment process.

2. Can you tell us about your journey into this market?
Monjin stands for My online job interview. It has a datapool with structured video interviews and digital profiles. It has been assessed by a network of experts of respective domains in India and Overseas.

Founded in 2014, Monjin is a next-gen, transformational platform for Talent Acquisition processes and outcomes. There is no other company globally which offers a combination of an interviewer’s network and ‘ready-to-view’ videos evaluated by experts along with the video interview platform. Currently present in India, UK, USA and Europe.

3. How do you think technology is changing the HR Sector?
With technology changing the way how business processes are running, the recruitment industry is currently undergoing a big transformation in the core on how to recruit correct people and retain good talent.

As technology continues to evolve, it plays an increasingly important role in the way companies approach talent search and the hiring process.

Usage of various standalone products and automation of sub-processes: Tools and technologies to predict, analyse and predict outcomes (in terms of fit of candidates to an organisation) are being developed and experimented with. Multiple tools are being sought to predict and psychometrically analyse job seekers using AI and Machine learning.

However, most of the current AI tools fall far short of achieving the required outcomes.
100% of our clients, while using some of these AI tools still have not forsaken the ‘interview’ by a live individual. Humans are good at specifying what’s needed for a position, eliciting information from candidates in a free-flowing format which needs deep probing of the candidate’s experience.

That’s where Monjin comes into the picture. Monjin has a team of industry veterans who serve as our interview panels. We’re talking about individuals who are experts in their fields with over 10 years of experience depending on the domain. As mid-to-senior level managers who still serve the industry, they possess the ‘current’ technical know-how to assess a candidate’s skills. They have an eye for high-performers. And given their experience with conducting interviews, they know the exact questions to ask and can take informed calls on assessing candidates on their work experience/ performance.

4. How do you think digital interviewing platform can help in better talent acquisition?
There are various factors that contribute to the overall hiring problems like high logistic costs, geographical limitations, loss of valuable time, surface level candidate assessment and most importantly lower hit rate. Monjin’s keen focus is always on rendering the right technology to the experts’ panel and candidates through its platform. There is no assessment available today on any of the Portals – Monjin creates a profession, it brings in to the world for the first time an ISO or a CMM on talent.

Up to 70% Savings on Cost-per-hire and time-per-hire
Monjin’s dashboard analytics tells you profiles available for each skill-set. Sort candidates by skill, location, experience, rating, and more. Playback recorded as you want. Speed up your next level process with the right candidate. It works as if multiple experienced vendors are working together for you for each position, reducing your man hours and time substantially

Customize Your Hiring
Every job is as unique as the person working on it. So, it doesn’t make sense to have common JDs. With Monjin, you have the option of creating your own unique JD by entering a range of skills you’re looking for. This could be a creative expert with basic experience in WordPress plugins or a Data architect who’s proficient with Python.

Detailed Candidate Assessment
You will find that each interview is backed by a thorough analysis of the candidate. This includes an Interview Summary provided by the interviewer, their personal opinion of the candidate, the kind of questions that were asked, etc. You will also find comparative ratings provided by the candidate on their skills versus ratings provided by the interviewer, and further details that provide a 360-degree analysis.

This is the same formula with which Monjin has helped organizations in a quick span of time.

5. How do you define your digital interviewing and assessment platform?
Monjin has a self-aggregating, ever-growing global army of experienced, even decades-long, domain experts, passionately associated with us as Interview panelist.

Tapping this exclusive intellectual resource immediately uplifts an organization’s interviewing process for good. Best part, these mid-to-senior level managers working in a different organization, not only brings their own technical know-how but are also trained to perform extensive evaluation and pick the right candidates. These interviewers’ mentor and assess the budding professionals within their domain and get paid for each interview they take.

Monjin is built on the Microsoft technology stack and is hosted on Microsoft Azure to supplement it’s computing and storage capabilities. Monjin leverages cutting edge technologies such as Microsoft Search, Azure Cognitive Services, Azure Redis Cache and Azure Functions. Monjin API’s are RESTful and authenticated using OAUTH 2.0 protocol.

6. What advice would like to give to the upcoming HRTech Start Ups?
We believe that Anyone who steps into a market with a new setup must have something to offer that nobody else does. With a world that is so full of HRtech products and applications, it is important to identify and distinguish how your product solves a particular problem / pain that your customers might face. Also, its very critical for everyone in the team to believe in the ‘Why’ of any organization as that builds the culture, the dialogues and the actions you take.

7. What technology according to you that will leave its mark in 2019?
We can expect HR technology buyers to create innovative solutions working with their chosen solution providers. We can also expect solution providers to form alliances to stitch together unique solutions to solve customer business challenges.

In a nutshell, the days and years ahead signal for a lot of exciting action in the HR technology space.

8. How do you prepare for an AI-centric World? (Blurb of Q3)
Most of the current AI tools fall far short of achieving the required outcomes.
100% of our clients, while using some of these AI tools still have not forsaken the ‘interview’ by a live individual. Humans are good at specifying what’s needed for a position, eliciting information from candidates in a free flowing format which needs deep probing of the candidate’s experience.

That’s where Monjin comes into the picture. Monjin has a team of industry veterans who serve as our interview panels. We’re talking about individuals who are experts in their fields with over 10 years of experience depending on the domain. As mid-to-senior level managers who still serve the industry, they possess the ‘current’ technical know-how to assess a candidate’s skills. They have an eye for high-performers. And given their experience with conducting interviews, they know the exact questions to ask and can take informed calls on assessing candidates on their work experience/ performance.

9. What are the major developments you are planning, in recent times?
Azure cognitive service, GraphQL, AI ML, Candidate registration app for ios and android, pwa

10. Which Book are you reading these days?
I have in recent times switched to audio books more than the traditional sit down read because of the convenience it offers. One of the books I recently finished listening to was Born a Crime – by Trevor Noah and Sapiens – Yuval Noah Harari. I am currently listening to Becoming Michelle Obama.

11. Can you give us a glance of the applications you use on your phone?
Some of the most frequently used applications are Outlook / Whatsapp and Amazon Music. While I am on the road its usually a book on Audible that I am listening to or some playlist from Amazon Music and a few toddler learning apps.