MeasureUP! for quality recruitment   

BANGALORE: Assuring

companies of quality candidates is the biggest challenge for most HR

managers and recruiters.

Now with CyberMediaDice, India's first and

only IT focused job board, they can breathe easy. Why? Because of one

distinctive and competitive feature: its qualitative assessment index

called MeasureUP.




To throw light on how MeasureUP can help enterprises and job seekers

alike, Priya Padmanabhan of CyberMedia News met up with the president and
founder of MeasureUP, Kevin Brice and CEO of CyberMediaDice Abraham

Mathew. Excerpts from the interview.









Please elaborate on the MeasureUp index and its advantages?





Kevin: We built the online engine to put the control of administration and
distribution of IT assessments into the hands of our customers. The tests

are fairly difficult and give a good pre-qualification mechanism for

companies. Customers and recruitment companies come to us and say, 'if you

are able to better qualify some of these individuals we'll be at a

premium.'






Recruitment companies can benefit by knowing what they get. I expect that
we would reach a stage where the recruiters have an advantage of choosing

from employees who have gone through the MeasureUP index and know how the

candidates stand against each other.






Companies can have the added comfort of knowing that they can screen
candidates through pre-assessment. Whether a company is hiring or wants to

find out if the employees are well suited for higher training, they could

use these assessments.






How has the response to MeasureUP been so far?





Kevin: We now enjoy market-leading position in both IT knowledge and skill
assessment, and IT practice tests. We now have over 1.3 million user

accounts and we have delivered over 20 million tests online. We are

bullish about the future of online testing. Our customer list is in excess

of about 1500 and includes companies like Microsoft, EDS, Dell, HP, and

also training organizations who distribute the assessments. It would to be

good to see ourselves as a standard in the IT assessment space.






How will you leverage the partnership with CyberMediaDice for promoting
MeasureUP in India?







Kevin: Being in the Indian market is of strategic importance to us. This
partnership with CyberMedia would help us to grow since they have good

market reach. The work that we are doing together in CyberMediaDice is

something unique. In the US, we were approached by Monster and Hotjobs, to

help them build MUP on their site, but the first company we actually built

for is CyberMedia.






CyberMediaDice would take care of the Indian piece. We hope to grow with
enterprise level deals with assessments and pre-assessments and also reach

out to the APAC region.






The recruitment trends in India are different compared to the US. One has
to take into account local conditions and society. Many professionals in

India want to constantly learn and improve themselves. So we believe that

they will come to us.






We want to increase our revenues by increasing corporate/enterprise deals.
That will only happen when you have a partner who understands how the

business works and the local culture.






How would MeasureUP aid a job seeker?

Abraham: Whenever a job seeker comes to the CyberMediaDice site, the critical difference here is that the individual gets an

opportunity to take an assessment and prove that he/she is better than the

other.



The assessment test consists of a one- hour test with 30 questions. There
are 14 different areas such as Microsoft, Java, Cisco certification and so

on. These assessments and practice tests can be bought at a special India

pricing. Practice test packs of -30 days/60 days/90 days are also

available. They can log on and start doing the practice tests, which will

help in preparing for the assessment. We are also marrying the tests with

learning material. So individuals can also buy the relevant reference

materials from us.



When job seekers know that they have achieved a certain standard result on
an assessment, it is like a badge of honor.






How has the Indian IT industry responded to MeasureUP?





Abraham: In India, the issue is not one of quantity but about the lack of quality.
We have been talking to a number of IT companies about MUP. We bagged our

first big order recently. We have seen good traction in terms of interest

shown. Enterprises realize the need to assess and qualify their potential

employees.



When these companies conduct campus recruitment, they have to deal with
thousands of candidates, which becomes cumbersome since its manual and

involves paper work. In this scenario, online assessments can save a lot

of time and cost and also reduces mistakes made while hiring. We focus

only for IT professionals and also on jobs that involve tech support

(non-voice based).