If there’s one thing Kira knows best it’s how to make admissions more fair for higher education institutions. Since day one, Kira Talent has built products designed specifically to help admissions teams like yours increase process efficiency, identify the applicants that are most likely to succeed in their program, and gather the insights to help them make more defensible decisions.

So it’s hardly a surprise that that’s what we continued to do in 2022. Pulling inspiration from our 900+ global clients and each of their unique processes, we’ve added new features, from a quantitative skills diagnostic to a universal search tool, to help make your admissions processes that much more efficient, effective, and fair. 

Here are a few updates and upgrades we made to the Kira platform last year which will give your admissions process a mega boost of efficiency and ease. 

Discover what’s new in Kira

  1. Checkpoint quantitative skills diagnostic
  2. Kira en español
  3. Full control over applicant naming
    • Pre-populate registration fields
    • Anonymization of applicant names
  4. Bias-mitigating review made easy 
  5. Powerful enhancements to simplify your process
    • Universal search
    • Manage applicants & reviewers directly in platform
    • Download and upload supplemental docs in Kira
  6. A more robust Live Interviewing tool
    • Broadcast messaging
    • Group stations
    • Schedule builder

Measure the quantitative readiness of your applicants more effectively with Checkpoint

Discover a new way to measure your applicants’ quantitative skills.

Checkpoint in Kira Talent is the quantitative skills diagnostic for the new era of admissions. Developed by ETS, creator of the TOEFL® and TOEIC® tests, the GRE® tests and The Praxis Series® assessments, Checkpoint provides a snapshot of a candidate's quantitative readiness in four key areas — Probability & Statistics, Algebra & Functions, Graphics Interpretation, and Quantitative Application.

Delivered completely online and at one-third the cost of a traditional standardized test, Checkpoint is accessible to more applicants than ever. With accurate results available within minutes, applicants can share their report with schools directly from the platform, helping you identify how well applicants will meet program expectations.

Learn more about Checkpoint in Kira Talent

Kira en español

Hola! In addition to English and French, an assessment or interview in Kira can now be delivered entirely in Spanish. 

From your dedicated Client Success Manager to the platform itself, the Kira experience is accessible to your staff, applicants, and reviewers entirely in Spanish.

Want to use Kira in another language? Let us know!

Full control over applicant naming

Help mitigate bias and protect the integrity of your assessments and interviews with full control over what applicant data shows throughout the Kira Talent platform. 

Pre-populate applicant names in registration fields

Ensure data consistency across your admissions process with the ability to pre-populate applicants’ first and last names on the Kira Talent registration page.

When applicants receive their personalized Kira invitation with a unique registration link via email, they’re directed to a registration page. Kira now allows you to autofill and lock the name and email fields, to ensure that those fields match the rest of their application records. 

This feature removes the opportunity for error, in particular for applicants who have different legal and preferred names.

Anonymization of applicant names

Further reduce the potential for bias by hiding applicant names in your Kira assessments and interviews. 

This new feature replaces the name of the applicant with a Kira ID number, unknown to your reviewers, helping them score applicants as impartially as possible.

Bias-mitigating review made easy 

In 2020 we launched Horizontal Review in Kira Talent to help schools facilitate a more equitable reviewing process based around the structure of the Multiple Mini Interview (MMI) used by medical schools and other healthcare programs. 

Learn how your peers are using Horizontal Review in Kira Talent to enhance their admissions processes

Horizontal Review helps mitigate bias in admissions by assigning reviewers to a specific competency that they assess for across a wide pool of applicants. In doing so, Horizontal Review helps improve the accuracy and reliability of scoring as each applicant is evaluated by more reviewers who are better versed in assessing that specific competency.

Want to know what Horizontal Review in Kira Talent can do for equity in your admissions process? Read the research published in the Journal of Physical Therapy Education.

Now, we’ve made it easier for admissions teams to choose a horizontal reviewing process by enabling the ability to assign reviewers in bulk. No need for spreadsheets or file uploads, Kira now offers the ability to set up Horizontal Review assignments directly in the platform with just a few clicks. 

Powerful enhancements for greater ease

At Kira, we believe that good technology should make your life easier. That’s why we’re continuously enhancing our platform to make it easier for you to identify and enroll your top applicants. 

Universal search

Find what you’re looking for with ease, using Kira’s universal search functionality.

Universal Search in Kira Talent allows admissions teams to search for an applicant across all assessments in Kira. Whether they’ve applied to one program or five, their applications and assessment scores will be stored separately, but accessible to admin users simply by searching their email, helping you find what you’re looking for without scrolling through multiple assessments.

Manage applicants & reviewers directly in platform

Make changes to your assigned applicants and reviewers with just a few clicks.

You can now add, edit and delete participants directly in the Kira platform. No more spreadsheet uploads or additional steps required!

Download and upload supplemental docs in Kira

Say goodbye to extra emails and added work! Kira now offers the ability for applicants to download a document directly from Kira. In addition to our uploading files feature, this now makes it easier to share key information with your applicants prior to their Kira assessment or interview. 

Another step in delivering an “all-in-one” experience, this feature allows you to collect supplemental essays, reference letters, and more through Kira Talent. The uploads are automatically linked to the applicant’s profile and can be pushed directly into the corresponding file in your enrollment management system.

Need to get a confidentiality agreement or additional interview instructions to your applicants? No need to send another round of emails, simply upload it to the Kira platform and applicants will be prompted to download it from their Kira registration page.

The next evolution of Live Interviewing

Tailor-made for higher education admissions teams, the launch of Live Interviewing in Kira Talent changed the game for virtual interviewing in 2021. 

As more programs transitioned their in-person interviews online with Kira, we continued to live up to our ‘built for the way you interview’ promise, incorporating their requests and suggestions into development, resulting in some powerful enhancements to Live Interviewing.

Broadcast Messaging

Get info out to all your applicants during your Live Interview or MMI. 

Broadcast messaging in Kira Talent enables you to blast out a short message directly to participants in the Kira platform during a Live event. Whether you need to communicate with individual applicants, specific groups, or everyone involved, Kira can help make sure they get the message.

Group Stations

From one-on-one and panel interviews to Multiple Mini Interviews (MMIs), Live Interviewing offers flexible setups to reflect your traditional processes. Now, we’ve added group interviews to that lineup.  

Group stations in Live Interviewing allow for more than one applicant to be in an interview room at one time. Whether you want a group of applicants to move through each room together as a unit, or you want individual applicants to come together for a single station and then continue separately for the remainder of the interview, you can build it in Kira.

Schedule Builder

Are you a DIY kind of team? 

With the new schedule builder, you can take your interview schedule into your own hands and create your own Live Interviewing circuits and change participants. Once your dedicated Client Success Manager has set up an interview in Kira, you and your team can access a visual layout of the interview circuit, make changes to participants, and even create an entirely new interview circuit.

Wondering what you can expect from Kira in 2023?

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