Talent & Tech Asia Summit 2024
Winning Secrets: How TDCX’s in-house digital interview platform (DIP) has achieved 90% cost savings over external tools

Winning Secrets: How TDCX’s in-house digital interview platform (DIP) has achieved 90% cost savings over external tools

TDCX's talent hunters, candidates and clients can now use DIP anytime, anywhere at their convenience. Interviews are no longer restricted to local office hours; clients also welcome the idea of being able to conduct interviews at their own pace.

With a silver win for Excellence in HR Innovation at HR Excellence Awards 2020, Singapore, Angie Tay, Executive VP - Singapore and Thailand, TDCX reinforces that the DIP’s purpose is aimed to ease, simplify, complement and enhance the organisation’s talent initiatives. In this interview, she reveals how this in-house solution has simplified the recruitment process through tailored screening assessments and ensured HR priorities are mapped to business outcomes.

Q What is TDCX's winning HR strategy, and what are some milestones you’ve accomplished along this journey?

As TDCX expands our workforce and seeks higher qualified people to cater to more sophisticated, high-touch and more complex ways of doing things, our HR solutions also need to revolutionise.

Digitalisation is key and being one of the companies to embark on the digitalisation journey early is probably one of our winning HR strategies. Along the years, we have digitalised our HR solutions with the objectives to be more efficient and effective, giving us a competitive edge.

Through this digital innovation journey, we developed a robust platform that allows candidates, recruiters and hiring managers to access and self-help at the various stages of recruitment. This platform empowers recruiters to customise assessments and cater to the diverse requirements from different clientele. With real-time assessment results, this not only saves time but also increases the productivity of recruiters, ensuing that HR priorities are mapped to business outcomes.

Q How has this strategy helped you achieve your HR priorities, and what role has the leadership played in helping make this initiative a reality?

One of the prides of our digitalisation strategy is the birth of digital interview platform (DIP). The implementation of DIP yielded great benefits to TDCX talent acquisition teams across the region. DIP’s performance went above and beyond our expectations.

As a single platform with the capability for customisation to suit the varying needs of the different users, DIP reduces our hiring time to fill a position significantly and efficiently matches candidates’ profiles to open positions.

Our CEO and EVPs across the different TDCX offices are the key sponsors for this initiative. They took the lead on digitalisation and advocate the benefits of the new system for the organisation.

Q Unexpected roadblocks are part and parcel of executing any initiative. What were some of the barriers that you and your team experienced while rolling this out, and how did you successfully get past them?

A winning strategy cannot be polished without friction. As such, we did face challenges and overcome them during the implementation of DIP across TDCX offices:

1. Diverse requirements

Due to the nature of our business and the varied clientele that we have, the recruitment requirements are very different between the clients; testing has to be versatile and assessments are required for many scenarios.

With diverse requirements in mind, we developed a tool that is able to accommodate any kind of assessment type and form. The development work is a continuous process to prepare the tools ahead of business needs. To sustain this process, we implemented a staggered launch plan on each request and feature. Regular communications with stakeholders is also key to set proper expectations.

2. Overwhelming response in a good way

DIP was designed to ease, simplify, complement, and enhance our talent initiatives. We envisioned an easy to learn-and-use (almost plug-and-play) feel with very minimal training required. This however, resulted in a very quick and massive adoption which we did not expect. Everyone was excited to want to try DIP out. Our adoption rate was overwhelming!

Our technical team was challenged to constantly track the performance and if there is any lag in functionality due to overloading of the tool.

We have had to speed up and prioritise this aspect of the tools’ enhancement to accommodate the vast amounts of data it transacts due to the overwhelming usage from the adoption.

Q As evidenced by the win, this initiative clearly delivered some amazing results. What was your game plan for measuring ROI? What are some proud achievements you can share with us on this front?

As an in-house solution and developed by our internal technical team, we achieved a cost saving of 90% as compared to an alternative tool if we were to get it from external parties.

Our talent hunters, our candidates and valued clients can now use DIP anytime, anywhere at their convenience. Interviews are no longer restricted to local office hours; our clients also welcome the idea of being able to conduct interviews at their own pace.

DIP simplifies the recruitment process, with tailored screening assessments, we can immediately sift out candidates that do not meet requirements and select only the best.

Q What’s your secret to gaining stakeholder buy-in for your HR Innovation initiative? What are the three key messages that your HR leader communicates to ensure a successful HR Innovation framework?

Prior and throughout the implementation, key stakeholders were engaged and involved in the key decisions made. A formal communication session was held for all stakeholders when DIP was ready.

During the communication session, the key messages delivered were:

  • The reason for change
  • The impact and benefits of DIP
  • Everyone was made aware of 'What’s in it for me?' 

Photo / Provided

Read more interviews on why organisations have won trophies for their HR practices - head over to our Winning Secrets' section! 

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