Latest / Best of Business / Barb Hyman: Sapia.ai chief executive on the increased usage of AI in job recruitment

Transcript

Barb Hyman: Sapia.ai chief executive on the increased usage of AI in job recruitment · Best of Business

• 0:09
  Speaker 1: You're listening to a podcast from Newstalk ZEDB. Follow this
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: and our wide range of podcast now on iHeartRadio. Heather
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: Duple clouds out.
• 0:18
  Speaker 2: More and more companies are using AI for recruiting staff. Spark,
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: Kymart Wilworths. All of these guys in retail and hospital
• 0:25
  Speaker 2: Apart from Spark obviously, they all use the software by
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: a company called sapier Ai. Now. The program basically does
• 0:31
  Speaker 2: the chat and video interviews and then scores the candidate's
• 0:34
  Speaker 2: written responses. The results can then be tracked by the
• 0:37
  Speaker 2: hiring team. Woolworths, a loan, has used the system to
• 0:40
  Speaker 2: interview fifty nine thousand people in the past year. Saperai
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: founder and CEO barb Heiman is with us. Now, hey,
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: bub Hi, how does this work?
• 0:49
  Speaker 3: So?
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: Does it just ask sort of basic questions of the
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: first round applicants and then screen out the ones who've
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: got no shot?
• 0:55
  Speaker 3: Yeah? So what we do is basically do the interview
• 0:59
  Speaker 3: for you. If you think about hiring, you want to
• 1:01
  Speaker 3: meet someone, get to know them, figure out whether they're
• 1:03
  Speaker 3: the right pots for the job. The technology does it
• 1:06
  Speaker 3: for you. It does it in a way that is friendly,
• 1:09
  Speaker 3: it's not time pressured, and so you see amazing feedback
• 1:14
  Speaker 3: from candidate's candidates love it that don't feel stressed. It's
• 1:18
  Speaker 3: much more inclusive for those with a disability, and it
• 1:22
  Speaker 3: allows you to get to the best candidates really fast,
• 1:24
  Speaker 3: and often getting to the best candidates first means that
• 1:26
  Speaker 3: you win them.
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: How does it do the video interviews? I mean, I
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: can understand if you're doing like a text interview, you
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: can sort of screen out like that, But what about
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: a video one? What are you looking for there?
• 1:36
  Speaker 3: So the video there is no AI at all, and
• 1:38
  Speaker 3: we strongly believe that. Look, I would love video to
• 1:41
  Speaker 3: disappear as a tool to evaluate people because I think
• 1:44
  Speaker 3: it's very hard to remote bias. You know, most biases
• 1:47
  Speaker 3: are unconscious. The video is there is what we call
• 1:50
  Speaker 3: another data point, another signal, So someone has to watch
• 1:52
  Speaker 3: it and make a decision. You see the AI.
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: Does the AI do a video interview that's recorded and
• 1:59
  Speaker 2: then somebody needs to watch it? Does that how it works?
• 2:01
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's not really an AI do in a video.
• 2:03
  Speaker 3: It's just like any video. You might use zoom to
• 2:05
  Speaker 3: do a video. There's no AI in the video. All
• 2:08
  Speaker 3: the AI comes into the chats. So what we're doing
• 2:11
  Speaker 3: is taking language data. How does your respond to a
• 2:13
  Speaker 3: question about how you work with the team, how you
• 2:15
  Speaker 3: work with customers, and what do we learn from that response?
• 2:19
  Speaker 3: Do we learn that you're someone who's great with people,
• 2:21
  Speaker 3: that you really humble, that you're a fast learner, that
• 2:23
  Speaker 3: you're a good thinker. That's what we're doing, which is
• 2:26
  Speaker 3: what humans do, but we're doing it without all the
• 2:28
  Speaker 3: bias that we humans bring. And that's using science has
• 2:31
  Speaker 3: been around for decades now natural language processing, and that's
• 2:35
  Speaker 3: what provides for the accuracy of hiring, so that you
• 2:38
  Speaker 3: hire people who end up staying, not people who come
• 2:41
  Speaker 3: in and leave one week later.
• 2:43
  Speaker 2: So being a quick thinker is a positive.
• 2:47
  Speaker 3: Well depends on what the role requires. So each role
• 2:50
  Speaker 3: has its own custom requirements. If you think about your
• 2:52
  Speaker 3: hiring for someone in your team, or you're hiring for
• 2:55
  Speaker 3: someone for customer service, cabin crew, it's fundamentally different what's
• 2:58
  Speaker 3: important for the role. So depending on what's important for
• 3:01
  Speaker 3: the role dictates the traits and the qualities that we're
• 3:03
  Speaker 3: looking for. Some jobs require really high critical thinking and
• 3:07
  Speaker 3: amazing common skills don't. And then we're identifying the questions,
• 3:12
  Speaker 3: we're creating the questions which are always what we call
• 3:14
  Speaker 3: behavioral They ask you to draw on what you've done
• 3:17
  Speaker 3: in the past, and in that basis you get everyone
• 3:20
  Speaker 3: to share their story of who they are in a
• 3:22
  Speaker 3: way that is obviously a lot more comfortable than what
• 3:26
  Speaker 3: it often is for people facing someone across the table,
• 3:29
  Speaker 3: which is scary for a lot of candidates out there.
• 3:32
  Speaker 2: Bob, if being a quick thinker is something that's a positive,
• 3:37
  Speaker 2: presumably you are required to answer pretty articulately, quite fast.
• 3:41
  Speaker 2: That would surely disadvange' You're not.
• 3:45
  Speaker 3: So what's really important is that the chat is not timed.
• 3:49
  Speaker 3: You could take an hour, you could take twenty minutes,
• 3:51
  Speaker 3: you could come back to it five times. Well, we're
• 3:54
  Speaker 3: not testing for quick thinking. What we're testing for is
• 3:56
  Speaker 3: attributes like critical thinking or are you someone that's brilliant
• 4:00
  Speaker 3: a customer service? Are you someone that goes above and beyond?
• 4:03
  Speaker 3: Are you someone that has good communication skills? But speed
• 4:07
  Speaker 3: we don't see in any way is correlated with quality
• 4:10
  Speaker 3: of higher So it is an untimed interview.
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: Right, So how do you though? I mean, one of
• 4:17
  Speaker 2: the things that I imagine you're going to struggle to
• 4:19
  Speaker 2: actually quantify is charisma, personality, enthusiasm tone, which is all
• 4:25
  Speaker 2: the stuff that you get in actual face to face interviews.
• 4:28
  Speaker 2: How can you possibly pick up whether somebody's got that.
• 4:32
  Speaker 3: Well, we would say that those are heuristics. They are
• 4:36
  Speaker 3: signs that we look for based on our gut or
• 4:38
  Speaker 3: we think what we think drive success in a role.
• 4:41
  Speaker 3: You gave a lot of conversation about vibe hiring, but
• 4:44
  Speaker 3: is that actually delivering results for your business? You know,
• 4:47
  Speaker 3: what we're trying to solve for is who actually is
• 4:49
  Speaker 3: a fit for the role? Do you think to be
• 4:51
  Speaker 3: great and stick about I do? I mean, what does
• 4:54
  Speaker 3: vibe high mean? Vibe high means basically I like you, yeah,
• 4:58
  Speaker 3: and I think you're a good fit for the brand.
• 4:59
  Speaker 3: It's what we call mirror hiring, and mirror hiring is
• 5:02
  Speaker 3: a recipe for buys.
• 5:04
  Speaker 2: But bob our guts have been have been trained for
• 5:07
  Speaker 2: flipp and millennia, but.
• 5:10
  Speaker 3: They're leading us astray. If you think about the two
• 5:12
  Speaker 3: most important decisions to make in our life, who do
• 5:14
  Speaker 3: we partner with? Where do we work? We get it
• 5:16
  Speaker 3: wrong most of the time, and so you know, how
• 5:19
  Speaker 3: do you kind of debias? The gut and the gut
• 5:22
  Speaker 3: and bias is a wonderful shortcut to make a fast decision,
• 5:25
  Speaker 3: but it doesn't necessarily make it a good decision.
• 5:27
  Speaker 2: Right, Well, are you going to roll out some AI
• 5:28
  Speaker 2: for picking husbands and wives? Now?
• 5:31
  Speaker 3: You know what, I can't. I would be a millionaire
• 5:33
  Speaker 3: from the number of times people have said that to me. Really, yeah,
• 5:37
  Speaker 3: everyone wants to use AI to try and figure out
• 5:39
  Speaker 3: the right partner, not the partner that you pick because
• 5:42
  Speaker 3: they you know, they meet your parents' expectations, or they're
• 5:45
  Speaker 3: a bit of a smunk. You know, how do you
• 5:46
  Speaker 3: actually choose someone who really aligns with your values? Like
• 5:49
  Speaker 3: you can do that through science. It's just that we
• 5:52
  Speaker 3: as humans feel really uncomfortable using science, you know, data
• 5:57
  Speaker 3: and anything but the gut or the gut of our
• 5:58
  Speaker 3: friends and family to help us on those decisions. It's
• 6:01
  Speaker 3: a lot of human bias really around using a different
• 6:06
  Speaker 3: approach for these decisions.
• 6:07
  Speaker 2: Interesting. Thank you very much for talking us through to
• 6:09
  Speaker 2: find they're absolutely fascinating. It was Bob Heiman, founder and
• 6:12
  Speaker 2: CEO of Sapa AI. Do you know what I beat you?
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: There is something out there where you can find a
• 6:16
  Speaker 2: partner you can I mean, that's basically what Tinder is,
• 6:18
  Speaker 2: isn't it where you sort of like you put all
• 6:20
  Speaker 2: your important stuff, but it's it's not smart enough. You've
• 6:23
  Speaker 2: got to go for You've got to go for more
• 6:24
  Speaker 2: than that. You've got to go for values, Like like
• 6:27
  Speaker 2: values to me would be how often do you wash
• 6:30
  Speaker 2: the sheets? Do you wipe the bench after you've made
• 6:35
  Speaker 2: a coffee and left the crimes? You know, like that
• 6:36
  Speaker 2: kind of stuff like I'm into that. I think that's
• 6:38
  Speaker 2: really important, and that kind of most of those things.
• 6:40
  Speaker 2: If the AI could just solve that stuff like no
• 6:42
  Speaker 2: lies please, also has to screen out whether the person
• 6:45
  Speaker 2: is lying just to impress you, it could fix all
• 6:47
  Speaker 2: of that stuff. How many how many marriages would be
• 6:49
  Speaker 2: saved by the dishwasher washer being packed properly?
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: For more from News Talks B listen live on air
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: or online, and keep our shows with you wherever you
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: go with our podcasts on iHeartRadio