Will chatbots replace the average recruiter? I highly doubt it. Many tech companies want to disrupt the recruiting process altogether. I see chatbots as a way to only “slightly” improve the process at best. It may help with passive applicants – getting them to complete an application and helping someone understand the general job description requirements.
But just like when you try calling a company for help and get an automated robot. They may help you answer a few questions. But, at the end of the day – I’m the person typing “0” over and over on my phone in order to speak with a human being. So ultimately, AI chatbots will not replace a human recruiter human relationship altogether. They will only enhance the overall applicant/candidate experience.
The future of recruiting will involve artificial intelligence (AI). Currently, we’re seeing a trend in companies using chatbots in the recruiting process. I’ve been doing some research in this area for some time and have come across a dozen or so chatbot recruiting companies. I’ve shortened the list to 6 chatbots AI recruiting companies.
1. Applyr (Shut down in 2020)
Applyr: Our recruiter chatbots ‘sit’ on a company’s careers page and engage with, pre-select and schedule interviews with candidates. Applyr interacts with your selected candidates and takes care of booking their interviews at times that work for everybody. It also learns from its interactions with thousands of applicants and reports back to your team with actionable insights.
Location: Amsterdam
Company Size: 5
Review: This company has specifically targeted career-related websites. I was able to test out this chatbot on an example site and I was definitely impressed by my experience.
2. Pal.Chat
We’ve built a chatbot that can engage with candidates, share insights about the culture of the company, guide them through the application process and automatically inform them about relevant newly vacant positions.
Location: Berlin
Company Size: 10
Review: You can sync right into speaking with the chatbot using Facebook messenger. She answered all my questions within seconds. I would say this one is worth exploring more.
3. Textrecruit
Ari is a customizable recruiting chatbot that uses artificial intelligence. Add candidates from your ATS and let Ari engage them in two-way text message conversation to accelerate your time-to-hire.
Location: North America
Company Size: 60
Review: I recommend Textrecruits Ari – she is powered by IBM’s Watson. Which is the best AI Machine learning platform out there! It will be interesting to see where they take this in a few years.
4. Wade and Wendy
Wade & Wendy has developed an Applicant Experience Chatbot, Wendy. She serves as a first-round interviewer and candidate engagement tool. By chatting with applicants at the top of the funnel, recruiters and hiring teams can spend more time building relationships with candidates and sourcing hard-to-fill positions.
Location: North America
Company Size: 16
Review: Unfortunately, I’m still on the beta waiting list. Overall, I’m excited to learn more about this chatbot. This team has raised some substantial funding in the last year. It will be interesting to see where this one goes.
5. Chat Fuel
Chatfuel was born in the summer of 2015 with the goal to make bot-building easy for anyone. We started on Telegram and quickly grew to millions of users. Today we’re focusing mainly on making it easy for everyone to build chatbots on Facebook Messenger, where our users include NFL and NBA teams, publishers like TechCrunch and Forbes, and millions of others.
Location: North America
Company Size: 5
Review: Easily build a chatbot on Facebooks messenger without getting too much into the code. You can change the Q&A features fairly quickly. Overall, this ones perfect for the average user (me included). You can easily build your own chatbot with this tool.
6. Wit.ai
Wit.ai makes it easy for developers to build applications and devices that you can talk or text to. Our vision is to empower developers with an open and extensible natural language platform. Wit.ai learns human language from every interaction and leverages the community: what’s learned is shared across developers.
Location: North America
Company Size: 2
Review: Used by over 120K developers. This one’s great for customization. Users are testing these chatbots in sales, marketing, colleges, and on a recruitment career pages.
7. Mya
The San Francisco-based company launched Mya, its AI-recruiter in July of 2016, and quickly gained an A-list of customers including three of the five largest global recruiting agencies and several Fortune 500 companies. Its team is comprised of seasoned recruiting, sales, marketing, and business executives as well as world-class scientists and engineers, including many with PhDs and/or Masters in Machine Learning, NLP and Data Science.
Location: North America
Company Size: 30
Review: This startup has received a lot of raving reviews lately. This chatbot can be used for sourcing, screening & scheduling in the recruitment process. Overall, I highly rate this chatbot this one could definitely disrupt our industry within the next few years.
Overall, I feel that chatbots are here to stay in the recruiting field. For now, we’re experiencing a shiny tool syndrome. Within 10 years every company will be employing some sort of AI + Machine learning tool.
Recommended Reading:
Boolean Hacks to Source Diverse Talent
How to Use Evernote as a Recruiting ATS
Review of Vettery a Marketplace Hiring Platform
Curious that you didn’t mention Olivia, the AI Recruiting Assistant from Paradox.ai which has had a lot of buzz recently. Was that among the vendors you removed, and if so, why?
Just one that I obviously missed! Thanks, Glenn I’ll have to do more research on Olivia AI. I’m planning on writing a follow up post on AI automation tools and chatbots.
You missed off RoboRecruiter – winner of the UNLEASH London 2018 Startup competition for the HR and Recruitment Tech industry.