Rupak Agarwal, Founder, EvueMe Selection Robot
An engineer turned management professional, an MBA from IIMB 1990 batch, Rupak turned entrepreneur in late 2016 after having led various businesses as CEO/Business Head in his corporate avatar.
Podcast
Overview
Rupak Agarwal went from 26 years as a corporate professional to an entrepreneur in the AI field, as well as a coach to young leaders. His venture, EvueMe is a selection robot that simplifies the hiring process and weeds out candidates based on several technical and behavioural attributes. It is completely redoing the recruitment process by making it a lot more efficient and clinical.
“Have you ever had a situation where you ended up making a wrong choice, even after three to five rounds of assessments? Now imagine if there was a way in which all your potential candidates are ranked on all competencies required for the job. The amount of time and effort you will save. So EvueMe is your on-demand robot interviewer for your candidates which does various kinds of assessments with them through a robot. Ranks them on all competencies required for the job using artificial intelligence.”
On how EvueMe works
While many would argue that nothing can replace the human element in selecting other humans for a role, EvueMe goes on to prove that it could save recruiters a lot of time and effort, at least in the preliminary stages when an organization is faced with a large pool of candidates. EvueMe works with the candidates to create a database segregated by soft and hard skills.
“Our robot is available 24/7 for the candidates. And candidates can call on the robot and the robot will ask them questions which are recorded over video. We then look at the recorded video and do a whole lot of analytics around that – extracting text out of the words you said to your various audio features as you speak. So what we call as the prosodic features and all your visual features, your facial expressions, your eye ball movement. We are able to extract thousands and thousands of data points which are then analyzed using artificial intelligence and machine learning to give you a ranking on various attributes of the candidate. And over a period of time, we even plan to bring predictability of his likely performance in your organization.”
On training students on campus
EvueMe has also tied up with Career Launcher to create a base of well-trained and employable students.
“Career Launcher Group, as you know, has huge inroads into the campus space, being in that field for over two decades now. And what we do is two things with them. One, we have launched a mock interview product for them where they go to campuses. There are some brilliant people at campuses, technically very, very open, but they just do not know how to express themselves. The soft skills are very poor, so they train them, do mock interviews, using our robot interview solution and give those students feedback to be able to make them more expressive. The second thing that we’ve started doing now is we’ve realized there is a big gap in terms of recruiting students because everyone’s bio data looks almost the same. So, how do you as a corporate – one, go to so many campuses? Number 2, figure out who are the right guys for you? So with a tie up with them, what we do is we go to campuses and get a robot interview done for most of the students in their final year. We then rank them using our artificial intelligence on various attributes. And those are populated on a dashboard for the corporates. For example, if a corporate is looking for candidates with, say, artificial intelligence, machine learning skills. He will on our dashboard find, say 145 colleges the guys that have been picked up from. They have been rated on their coding skills, they have been rated on their analytical skills, on their logical ability skills, on their communication skills. They can use different parameters and assign weightages to them. They can dive deeper into the candidates which are looking promising and then engage with them.”
On his role as a coach
Rupak not only runs a successful business, but also serves as a life coach and mentor.
“To me, a coach is someone who at the very first is your mentor, a person who believes in you, who can make you think of bigger roles. Then he dons on the cap of a manager, breaking down your goals into logical steps. Then he wears a third cap, which is what I would call as your personal trainer. Who helps you remain on track to what journey you’ve embarked upon. And the fourth role that he dons on is what we typically see as a sports coach. He will observe you very intently. And then give you feedback to be able to improve your own game.”
In our country, the role of a mentor or coach has traditionally been assigned to either older family members or senior colleagues. Why then are millennials shifting to actively looking for mentors? Who should actually look for a coach or mentor? And who actually qualifies as a good coach? Rupak answers –
“I would say, who should look for a coach is anyone who wants to achieve something bigger in life but at the same time, is willing to change, is willing to do things differently, is willing to empty his cup and give a disproportionate amount of commitment to filling that cup again in a different manner.”
“As to who is a good coach. I think that comes out more from an interaction perspective. But anyone who helps you challenge your status quo, someone who helps you achieve what you have been thinking of for a long time is a good coach.”
Profile
An engineer turned management professional, an MBA from IIMB 1990 batch, Rupak turned entrepreneur in late 2016 after having led various businesses as CEO/Business Head in his corporate avatar. He brings to the table expertise from 5 different industries
right across consumer, technology, telecom, media and real estate In less than a year, his startup EvueMe got National Recognition from Facebook, CIIE, IIM Ahmedabad being a National Winner in ET Power of Ideas 2017 and got recognition and prize money from the Ministry of Science & Technology, Govt. of India. An infectious dreamer and a visionary leader, Rupak believes in the power of people engagement in executing strategies for impact on top-lines and bottom-lines. Driven by an innate zeal for differentiated value-based leadership, Rupak brings exemplary people leadership and change management skills. He employs a brilliant mosaic of business leadership skills such as sharp commercial acumen, deep consumer connect to pick insights for innovating marketing and customer experience and has very sharp analytical and organization skills in project management, financial planning and formulating strategies and above all motivational people management skills to create high energy impact for a business turnaround. A turnaround specialist, he has successfully transformed businesses into profitable outfits and beloved brands. As an ICF Certified ACC level Coach, Rupak mentors, and coaches young leaders to realize their full potential and evolve as more astute professionals. Rupak’s love for networking has him empanelled as an active committee member of multiple Management Associations such as the CII, AIMA, and NHRDN.
