How This Talent Assessment Company Helping Businesses Hire Smarter, Faster

Remote assessment tests, and examinations have seen rising importance across the world. Post Covid, the trend has seen rapid surge. As organisations recruit staffers remotely to reduce cost, right selection of candidate becomes critical. Wheebox, a subsidiary of world’s largest private educational testing and assessment organization, is focussed on democratising the selection process by enabling candidates to take tests anywhere in India. Similarly, the company is reducing cost of acquisition of new hires significantly for enterprises.

In a conversation with the Bizz Buzz, Nirmal Singh, the CEO of Wheebox, an ETS Company, said that the company is actively leveraging AI is a gamut of processes undertaken in the selection process. It counts the top 20 IT companies and large insurance and banks in India as its clients

Can you provide a brief overview about Wheebox, which is a subsidiary of ETS?

Broadly, I come from education business (from the beginning). I started with NIIT in front-line marketing channel space. Then I moved to US for five years and came back in 2007. I rejoined NIIT as the country head for higher education business. In 2011, I with one of my friend Pawan Kumar co-founded Wheebox. We raised multiple rounds of funding as we grew Wheebox. In 2017, Wheebox was merged with PeopleStrong. In 2023, ETS, which is the world's largest assessment company, acquired Wheebox from PeopleStrong. Thus, Wheebox became the arm of ETS. When we got acquired, we were close to 86 people. Right now, we are close to 660 people. That’s kind of growth, we have seen in the last 18 months. Currently, we are in Gurgaon (NCR region). We have two setups in Gurgaon, and one in Hyderabad. So largely, our institutions are based out of Delhi and Hyderabad. Primarily, we are a talent assessment firm. It means if organisations are looking to hire talent, they would use our assessments. Globally, we cater to assessments like GRE & TOEFL.

Which are the sectors, you currently focus on or where you have a name recall? Can you provide a brief overview about the company?

Broadly, we are focussed on five sectors. So, we have a large presence in technology sector, followed by banking and financial services (BFSI). Then we are in MEA- manufacturing, engineering, and auto. We also have a good presence in the education sector. Before Covid, almost 90 per cent of our revenues came from corporate sectors. During Covid, a host of higher education institutions started using our (remote) proctoring services. Through proctoring services, people can take the exams from wherever they are.

What critical problem statements are you solving through your services?

There are many critical problems that we solve. Let’s take the example of insurance sector. In insurance sector, the widespread trend is that every second year, you get almost a hundred percent turnaround. It means new set of people join.

So, the organization will have to meet tens of people for hiring. And they have to meet all the people with the expense of time and money. This is being solved with our solution. People can take the test from wherever they are through our assessment platform. Though these tests, we enable companies to meet only those candidates, who have certain amount of aptitude, certain amount of process knowledge, certain amount of communication and so on. So, this becomes a win-win for both the company and candidates.

Candidates can take the exam from wherever they can. Organisation only meet shortlisted candidates from the assessment. So, it increases hiring efficiency multiple times. Today, cost of hiring is phenomenal for companies. Take for example the case of a large IT company, which hires candidates in thousands.

For hiring that may people, they need to go through significant number of aspirants. So, we democratise the hiring process along with saving the cost for companies. Companies’ cost of acquisition come down significantly through leveraging our platform. Moreover, we enable companies to hire from all over the place. Recruitment is not limited to single or only a few locations. Rather, companies can hire from a diverse set of places.

Thirdly, we leverage AI (artificial intelligence) very actively. In our remote proctoring solution, we actively use AI for assessment process. In fact, we are one of the early adopter of AI as we used this technology way back in 2016 in Pradhan Mantri Gramin Digital Saksharta Abhiyaan (PMGDISHA). According to the scheme, every villager has to take six hours of training, followed by one test and that test used to be a proctored test (which we conducted). Lastly, we release India Skills Report every year, which provides an overview about the job market, emerging skillsets and related aspects in detail.

How are you leveraging technology in all your platforms? Can you throw some light in this aspect?

There are two things, we have to look at when we talk about technology platform. First thing is scalability of the platform. Secondly, we have to see how secure is the platform. In both these parameters, we have industry-best features. We are compliant with all regulations and certifications with regard to security, which is a critical aspect in any examination.

As far as usage of AI application is concerned, we use it many of our processes. For example, we use AI for checking the credentials of candidates. When a candidate is entering the test, it is important to know whether he is the right person or not. We are using AI-powered computer vision to determine the credentials of candidates. Secondly, we use AI for providing question items to candidates. Using iterative algorithm, our platform presents questions to the candidate. It means based on the answer of a question; a new set of questions should come. Suppose, the person is not great at the subject (and the answer shows so), then give him/her a little lower level question. If the person can answer better questions, then give him a higher level question. Depending on the difficulty level, marks will also vary.

Thirdly, we are using AI in forensics. It means a lot of people have taken tests. Now, it is found out that candidates in a specific centre have scored high. Through AI, we find out patterns and any anomaly can be found out post the examination.

Can you give us some view on revenue coming from different verticals?

Today, we get the biggest part of our revenue from ETS in which we enable GRE, and TOEFL tests. The second biggest vertical is the IT, followed by BFSI. In IT industry, we work with top 20 clients in India. We work with almost 14 GCCs in India. Similarly, we work with 17 banking and financial services companies in India. We are very much insurance focused.