She is powered by artificial intelligence and can scan resumes, make calls, send e-mails and also conduct video interviews.
The job of recruiters may soon be on the firing line. A robot powered by artificial intelligence (AI) is the culprit. Companies, such as PepsiCo, IKEA, L’oreal, and Kuehne + Nagel are already using it.
Developed by a Russian startup, Stafory, the name of this AI-powered robot is Vera, which means ‘faith’ in Russian. Vera goes by the name Wendy in the US, and she will soon land in China too.
Since her launch in December 2016, Vera has conducted 2300 interviews, made 440,000 calls and scanned one million resumes at the request of employers at five job sites.
For PepsiCo alone, Vera has managed 5000 applicants per month, made over 40,000 calls, sent 37,000 e-mails, and video interviewed more than 100 candidates.
For Global Venture Alliance, Vera hired a secretary in just a day!
Vera goes along the recruitment chain, taking care of everything from search and selection of potential employees across the largest recruitment sites, to calls and invitations to suitable applicants, and even a video or face-to-face interview.
Vera can call the candidates and recognise their speech. She has been programmed and trained with about 13 billion examples of syntax and speech from TV, Wikipedia, and job listings to develop her vocabulary and help her speak more naturally, while also expanding the understanding of responses.
She integrates speech recognition technologies from Google, Microsoft, Amazon and Russia’s Yandex, and is now being taught how to recognise emotions, such as anger, pleasure and disappointment. This feature can be quite useful for HR managers—in the analysis of applicants’ emotional state, for example, when they react to the mention of the company’s brand.
Vera can remove all matches (same profiles) of CVs after searching on several job sites. This means, no single candidate will be e-mailed or called twice.
She can quickly scrutinise candidates for high-turnover services and blue-collar positions such as clerks, waiters and construction workers. This reduces the time and cost of recruitment by a third. Vera is capable of managing different and distinct profiles—from that of cashier to engineer!