AI instead of HR: HYIP or new recruiting opportunities?

Increasingly, there are news on the Internet that artificial intelligence has found employees for a bank or store. At the same time, the technical details of such projects are barely covered.

Robohunter decided to fix it and talked to the developers of robot recruiters, as well as client companies. And, it seems, as a result, we still found the answer to the question: is this really a new effective recruiting tool or is it just a hype?

Perhaps the most famous recruitment automation service on the Russian market is provided by Stafory. Her robot Vera makes a selection of suitable candidates for the requirements on five recruiting sites, including HeadHunter and Superjob, and then calls people around. Among the company's clients are M.Video, X5 Retail Group (which also includes the Pyaterochka chain of stores), Alfa-Bank and Econika.
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Faith is primarily used for the initial selection of interested candidates: the robot calls people whose resume was selected, tells them about the vacancy and finds out if the candidate is interested in continuing the communication. It is enough for a person to give the answer “yes” or “no”, although Vera recognizes not only these words, but also more complex reactions, for example, “ready”, “agree”, “interesting”, “aha” and “yep”. A robot can make a thousand calls at the same time.

As Alexander Uraksin, co-founder and commercial director of Stafory, explained to us, the program can work under several scenarios. In one of them, the conversation between the robot and the candidate ends with communication with the recruiter, i.e. in the same call, you can be switched to an HR specialist. In the other, where the base is being worked out, the candidate is promised to be called back. The employer's response, as a rule, arrives on the same day: the customer receives the relevant information instantly, further depends on the smooth running of the company's recruiting department.

The service is based on the technology of machine learning, speech recognition and synthesis. “We use a number of already trained networks,” says Alexander Uraksin, “Google Cloud Speech, Yandex SpeechKit, Amazon and Microsoft technologies. We combine them in a specific order for maximum performance. ”

The program has two male voices and three female. In addition, the customer can adjust the emotional color and speed of speech.

In addition to regular calls, Vera can conduct a video interview with a candidate. Alexander explains: “The candidate sees a three-dimensional image of a robot - she asks the candidate questions that have been predetermined by the customer. At the exit, the customer receives a video with the answers of the candidate. But not in all cases video interview is really necessary: ​​it is justified when you need to evaluate the candidate’s communication skills - for example, when selecting sales representatives or consultants of bank branches. ”

Now the company is improving the technology of recognizing natural speech. The purpose of this is to make Vera smarter so that she can maintain a dialogue and answer questions from candidates. As Alexander notes, this small evolutionary step is technically difficult, but now the work is already close to completion.



Unlike Stafory, Skillaz's service relies on a video interview with a candidate. Its clients include Otkritie Bank, the Azbuka Vkusa and VimpelCom stores.

They refused to answer our questions in the company - but this is what can be learned from open sources. Resume search can be done in the usual way, with the participation of a person, or you can entrust this to artificial intelligence. The system looks at Avito, HeadHunter and Superjob summaries, profiles in social networks, and then sends the candidates a unique link to the video interview. His system conducts automatically, with the inclusion of questions selected by the employer. Skillaz sends the received record to the HR specialist, having previously given it a high or low score. By what criteria is being evaluated, it is unclear.

In an interview with Inc. Andrei Krylov, the head of Skillaz, said: “First of all, our service closes massive vacancies - for example, sellers. But there are also projects on the point selection. We had a case when the recruiter said that the vacancy is a piece (we cannot disclose the position under a contract with a client) and there are only seven candidates for the whole country. But our system for the week only in Moscow found 50 interested people who were simply out of sight of recruitment agencies. ”

In addition to the assessment, the system can independently conduct the primary selection: “Our platform itself evaluates the candidate. She automatically invites him to take a test task, evaluates it according to a number of criteria, and then invites (or does not invite) for an interview with a recruiter. ”

Effective solutions for finding candidates also offer chat bots. In the simplest form, they send a series of questions to the candidates to clarify interest in the vacancy, and then ask to leave their contacts so that they can call the company's HR-specialist.

One of the first Telegram bots for staff recruitment was created by the Superjob portal specifically for the Svyaznoy company. For an hour of work, he was able to conduct 2000 interviews, and 600 applicants left their contacts. Another similar Telegram bot is Skillange.



More functions are offered by XORBOT. In Russia and the CIS, the exclusive partner of XOR Inc. became HeadHunter, and X5 Retail Group uses the chatbot services on an ongoing basis.

Based on this technology, HeadHunter launched the HH Robot family of chatbots for employers. For example, the chat bot “Lead Generation” allows attracting new candidates from different sources and conducting their primary selection thanks to the scoring system. A branded chat bot "Button hiring" talks about working in a particular company, conditions and prospects, as well as selects vacancies.

As we were told in the HeadHunter press service, chat bots of the HH Robot family work with candidates in Viber, Telegram, Facebook, Slack, or a browser window. You can add other channels at the request of the client.

“One of the schemes of work is the following: a potential candidate sees information about working somewhere on the Internet, social networks or a working site. Clicks and gets on the chat bot. Advertising is placed on job search sites, in social networks, as well as in mailings and Viber.

Another scenario: when a job seeker targeted at a potential employer receives a letter with a job offer and to speed up the selection process, he is asked to go through a preliminary selection process with a chat bot. ”

To find a candidate, a chat bot allows you to apply filters with an indication of citizenship, city of residence, work experience, experience, team management experience, etc .: “When a candidate communicates with a bot, his answers are checked with the filters specified by the employer. With full compliance on all issues, the candidate is assigned a “fast” of 100 points. A client can work only with those candidates who are 100% suitable for him - this significantly saves time for mass-scale projects. ”

As noted in the HeadHunter, “chat-bot is able to correspond, set audio and video questions, as well as receive answers both in writing and in audio or video format. You can set up a mixed script. Our customers are already using chat bots for video interviews. ”

And now is the time to look at the situation from the other side: to ask the company how satisfied they are with the services of these services and chat bots, whether it was possible to achieve the planned results, and also to find out about future plans for recruiting automation.

Press Service "M.Video":

M.Video constantly tests new technologies and start-up development to increase operational efficiency. It is advisable to test new solutions for complex and voluminous tasks, such as mass recruitment. It was under such a project that we attracted Vera's robot recruiter. At the beginning of 2017, M.Video launched a completely new consumer lending format for the market - instead of bank employees who work only with their products, our credit experts work with proposals from all partner banks. This project demanded to close more than 1000 vacancies of credit specialists in a short time and with wide geography.

For several months, robot Vera selected a resume based on keywords, geography, age, experience and the desired position of the applicant. Then she phoned the suitable candidates, told about the position and received feedback. HR specialists were connected at the invitation to interview stage and, most importantly, they already worked with “warm” contacts. Vera showed a high speed of processing the resume and calling of candidates, as well as a high level of conversion in comparison with similar services, which significantly saved time and resources.

We were pleased with the results of the pilot project and plan to attract the robot Vera in the framework of standard selection procedures.

Press Service "ABC Taste":

We collaborated with Skillaz for a specific task in attracting rare specialists. A funnel of candidates with sufficiently relevant experience was provided. Of interest is if there is a need to see how the candidate looks and communicates.

Press Service X5 Retail Group:

Pyaterochka is developing very quickly and immediately in many regions, therefore, up to 15,000 new employees who will work in new stores need to be employed every month. Most of them are cashiers. The robotic search for candidates and the initial “cold” calls to future cashier sellers is the work of the Pyaterochka robots.

In partnership with IBS, the company launched a project to digitize HR, one of the parts of which is the automation of the routine work of the HR department. So, in April 2017, Pyaterochka decided to test technologies for robotic search for workers. Testing of the Vera robot, which can call people and recognize speech, as well as the XOR chat bot, which communicates with candidates during off-hours, began. For example, if a person calls the HR department during off-hours, and the employee cannot answer him, after the call, he is contacted via an instant messenger or via SMS chat bot and offers a job. The text bot can also schedule a candidate to meet with an HR employee.

In August, the pilot [with Vera - approx. Ed.] successfully completed. Vera phoned around 30 thousand people, of whom nearly 2 thousand candidates agreed to select vacancies (6.7%). As a result, Vera employed 55 people (≈0.2%). Chat bot for 4 months talked with more than 31.5 thousand candidates, of which picked up more than 3.1 thousand vacancies (10%).

As for the future, the robot Vera will be used in particularly difficult regions: for example, in coastal cities in the summer when there are not enough applicants. Chat bot XOR is implemented and continues to work as a service function for applicants.

What is the result? HR specialists can exhale: in the coming years, robots will not take away their work. However, new services with elements of artificial intelligence can now save recruiters from the routine work and quickly find a lot of suitable candidates for a vacancy. Which is also quite good.