Chad Sowash and Joel Cheesman are the hosts of The Chad & Cheese Podcast, “HR’s most dangerous podcast”, where they talk about recruiting industry news and opinions. In their last episode of 2018, they go through their year in review and present their infamous “Naughty & Nice List” for the year – news and developments that caught their attention in a bad way or in a good way. Chad had chatbots on top of his Nice list for last year, and we’d like to share what he had to say. Listen to the whole podcast here or read the transcript of the relevant part (from 31:15) below.

Joel: All right. Naughty and nice list, I came up with mine about midnight last night so it's going to be really incohesive. Are we starting with nice lists first? Is that what we're going on?

Chad: Yeah. Let me start this out.

Joel: Sure.

Chad: Number one, and get ready to take shots buddy. Chatbots, Chatbots, Chatbots. Here's the thing. I believe chatbots are starting to help TA focus on process instead of the bright and shiny tech. They want to know about chatbots but as Quincy Valencia from AMS told us on our interview with her on one of our badass interviews is that when you start diving deep into these new technologies and say “We need to have a chatbot”, well why do you need to have a chatbot? Then that's where the process conversation starts.

Chad: Most applicant tracking systems and process methodologies that companies have today in their "stack" is for shit because they're focusing on the tech before they do the process. Many of them still have 1990s processes that all they do is take the paper and put that process into tech. Once you start to revitalize and understand what the process should be from an efficiency standpoint, not because this is the way we've done it since 1999 or what have you but because it makes sense, I believe chatbots are starting to make that conversation more prevalent.

Chad: So all those chatbot platforms that are out there, they are on my nice list because they're getting talent acquisition to start to focus where they should be focusing in the first place. That's process, not tech.

Joel: Very nice. Can I put you on the spot and ask for a prediction for chatbots for next year?

Chad: Yeah. I really believe that chatbots are going to start to integrate into the platforms more. So it's not just going to be a chatbot platform. It's going to be a chatbot. That is it's all ingrained into itself. So instead of having ... I think this is smart. We saw SmashFly and Olivia they partnered to be able to ensure that there were chatbots Emerson within the SmashFly platform. I see companies starting to acquire and make that a part of their platform instead of just partnering with it.

Joel: Consolidation and acquisitions for sure. I see that as well. I do think there will be a little groundswell of consumer punch back over chatbots. There may be little seeds planted around. We're not really hip about talking to a robot, but we will see.

Chad: Yeah. I don't see that happening though because it's between going into a black hole where you hear nothing and talking to a chatbot. We've seen surveys that actually show that job seekers would rather have some form of feedback versus no feedback whatsoever. So I don't personally buy into that.

Joel: Good enough. Good enough.