When students graduate from North Carolina’s Wake Forest University’s School of Business, they’re ready to hit the ground running. Aside from top national and state rankings, Wake Forest is well known for their strong student and career services support, priding itself on students who are successful both in and outside of the classroom.
The school’s Master in Accounting program has consistently achieved one of the highest CPA pass rates in the United States, earning the number one spot 13 times since 1997. A stat which no doubt supports the program’s 100% career placement at graduation.
Wake Forest also boasts one of the first and largest Master in Management programs in the U.S., specializing in a curriculum that students need to find success in their career paths.
With these top rankings generating growing interest and increased applications to these specialty master's programs, Wake Forest was presented with a significant challenge; How to evaluate students efficiently while giving each applicant a fair chance to show their skills.
That’s when they turned to Kira Talent.
Assess applicants anytime, anywhere
Wake Forest’s state-of-the-art facilities and strong academic reputation have made it an attractive option for students, not only in the U.S. but around the world.
25-30% of the MS of Accountancy program and 40-45% of the MS in Business Analytics program enrollments are international students.
International students have proven difficult for Wake Forest to properly engage in the past. Relying on phone interviews, and later video calls, to assess language and soft skills, the admissions team spent countless hours organizing and interviewing these candidates.
“You can have a very strong candidate, but if their communication and language skills aren’t at a certain level they are going to have a hard time in the classroom and in group settings,” shared Eric Olson, the Executive Director of Enrollment Operations for the Business School.
That’s why, in 2016, Wake Forest switched to Asynchronous Assessments in Kira Talent, replacing over two hundred 30-minute Webex interviews with a five-minute, on-demand video assessment.
“Prior to Kira, if we had two hundred short-listed international applicants, that's 200 30-minute video calls. That’s 100 hours of recruiter time spent just on the phone,” Olson explained. “We can now review five to six minutes of video and make a reliable determination if this candidate meets the criteria to move them to the next level and have a face-to-face discussion.”
Olson estimates the recruiting teams save over 150 hours, or approximately 21 business days, per cycle, which they can now focus on other recruitment and admissions efforts.
Saving time where it matters most
“With Kira, we can review five to six minutes of video and make a reliable determination if this candidate meets the criteria to move them to the next level and have a face-to-face discussion,” Olson shared.
Balancing efficiency with effectiveness, the competency-based assessment has saved Wake Forest time without sacrificing their ability to into their applicants’ key personality traits and attributes
“Kira helps us assess applicants for not only communication and language but also their motivation, commitment and drive,” explained Olson. “It allows us to get to know the candidate more holistically which helps us make more defensible admission decisions.”
Securing buy-in
Integrating seamlessly with Wake Forest’s existing CRM, the logistical transition was pretty simple for admissions staff at the school of business. Managing applicant progress and organizing scoring data digitally has greatly improved the teams’ use of critical recruiting time.
“Our staff and faculty who have used Kira have all provided really positive feedback,” shared Olson. “Within the first month, they knew switching to Kira was the right decision.”
“When recruiters and program leads are going out of the way to tell me something is working out, then it must be really good.”
Read what other schools had to say about their experience with Kira
