How OneValley is Improving Diversity in Every Stage of their Candidate Funnel

When we asked Chris what sets OneValley apart from the competition, he talked about its people-centric perspective. “Philanthropy U was a certified Great Place To Work,” he told us, with 100% of their employees agreeing that their workplace rocked. Great Place To Work is the most definitive “employer-of-choice” recognition that companies aspire to achieve, especially as it’s the only certification based entirely on what employees report about their workplace experience, so Chris’ goal for 2022 is to achieve the same certification for OneValley. 

With so much emphasis on people, achieving an ultra-diverse candidate funnel all the way through has long been one of Chris’s primary goals. 

When he started to compare software, Talent Gleam stood out right away thanks to our blind screening tool. Chris and the hiring managers use it to help reduce bias early and often, despite a bit of pushback from some hiring managers on the limitations of the blind screening process. (Engineering managers, for instance, prefer instant access to a candidate’s GitHub link and get frustrated when it’s hidden.)

As with any AI software, blind screening isn’t perfect. But, Chris tells us, “It works in 99% of instances. When I get pushback, it’s always about an edge case.” That’s why OneValley uses Talent Gleam’s blind screening functionality to encourage a broadly diverse candidate base. They also use Criteria Cognitive Aptitude Tests (CCATs) to assess their candidates’ basic skills.

We asked Chris to give us his dream recruitment scenario. He described a diverse pool of candidates who have all completed CCATs, providing hiring managers with hard data points on their broader skills and capabilities beyond their CV.

Because OneValley can look beyond CVs to the candidate and abilities behind them, they’re able to hire for the qualities that matter instead of resume-boosters like an elite education or the “right” employment background. They’re also taking additional steps to place all candidates on equal footing, like sharing interview questions in advance whenever possible, so they aren’t biased toward on-the-spot performers.

“We find that we get more thoughtful answers, and we can be more critical of answers, too, because candidates have had time to consider them,” Chris told us. After all, everyone’s had an interview where you fumble to provide an on-the-spot example, only to think of the perfect one hours after the fact. OneValley solves that problem by giving candidates the opportunity to do their research and show off their critical thinking skills, regardless of how good they are at answering on the fly—which may not even be a relevant skill for the job they’re seeking.

At the time of writing, about two-thirds of OneValley’s entire organization has used Talent Gleam in one way or another, whether on interview panels or as hiring managers. Chris himself has “practically lived in” Talent Gleam since April, when the merger prompted a hiring surge at a rate of one new team member per week.

When OneValley and Philanthropy U first joined forces, OneValley had very few hiring processes or systems in place. Chris worried that getting the hiring managers to adopt Philanthropy U’s new ATS might be a hard sell—but that fear proved unnecessary. 

No one misses all the back-and-forth correspondence that used to be the OneValley interview scheduling process. Now, hiring managers can simply select windows of time on their calendars, and candidates can self-select interview slots compatible with their schedules. Everybody wins. “If nothing else, that is the number one appreciated thing about Talent Gleam,” Chris says. 

But hiring managers have found a lot to love in our software. Take, for example, the flexibility of the interview process. If a hiring manager isn’t ready to move onto the next stage without squeezing in one more round with finalists, they can easily add and adapt interview stages in the moment, which they love.

Finally, Chris praises the intuitive UI as another reason why Talent Gleam was such an easy transition to make. “Even when people haven’t gotten a session on how to use it,” he says, “they figure it out. It’s so intuitive and easy to use.”

Before Talent Gleam, Chris used Google Hire. By the time it was sunset in fall 2020, he’d already realized he would need a new ATS to get more advanced tools and insights. 

But the clincher was sheer value. Talent Gleam offers the robust features of a more expensive software solution, like interview scheduling and a seamless onboarding experience after hiring, for the cost of a much leaner solution. “The blind screening really made it stick out,” Chris told us. “No one else was doing it.” And then there was the personal touch. “There’s such a strong human element on the Talent Gleam team.” 

His only hesitation in committing to Talent Gleam was in whether additional roadmapped features would be delivered as promised. As a tech startup themselves, OneValley knows enough to be skeptical of any product plan, but they trusted that Talent Gleam would add the features they needed. (Spoiler alert: we have.)

When we asked Chris what he’d say to someone considering Talent Gleam as their ATS, he suggested looking at the value for money.