Thanks to Russian start-up, Robot Vera, robot recruiters are now a reality. Before you launch into a bunch of jokes comparing real recruitment consultants to their AI counterparts, humanoid recruiters aren’t going anywhere just yet.
PepsiCo, Coca-Cola and Schlumberger are amongst the first to use Robot Vera for conducting preliminary phone interviews with candidates for driving jobs, factory workers and sales rep recruitment.
Using artificial intelligence (AI) and advanced speech recognition software from Amazon, Google and Microsoft technology, the robot can automatically scan hundreds of CVs, make 10,00 calls simultaneously and interview 1,500 candidates in one day, answering and asking basic questions about the job at the first stage of screening.
Animated avatars with 13 billion words and phrases
Vera can then forward the transcript of the interview to the humanoid team, and confirm success or further interview details to candidates by email or text. She even has the ability to video candidates with an animated avatar.
The self-learning software in Robot Vera has taken over 13 billion words from TV and Wikipedia, and has processed the wording from over 10,000 job vacancies and interview scripts. This will naturally expand continuously as the machine learning experiences more scenarios.
Feedback and confidence in the robot has been positive so far from candidates – partly because of the novelty factor but also because of the efficiency (the robot cold calls equal the success rate of human sales calls).
Don’t write off the value of real recruiters yet, though.
The automation of screening frees up the real recruiters from the more mundane, time-consuming tasks allowing them to carry out more in-depth interviewing of pre-qualified candidates. And, as PepsiCo reiterated, they rely on the recommendations made by human recruiters for the rest of the process and for more senior or complex positions.
Whilst Robot Vera isn’t yet in the position to recruit for complex jobs such as Dev Ops, data scientists, enterprise architects and programmers, as tech recruiters, we’re pretty excited about these new robotic assistants.
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