More and more, wider and wiser - the fields of Artificial Intelligence and automation with technology spread their wings into many different areas and industries. Especially when it comes to the process of recruitment and hiring, there are many tasks and processes that can be done more efficiently and effectively by automating repetitive tasks with technology. Three months ago, STRV started to implement a chatbot with jobpal.

To be on the A-list of the early adopters with implementing a chatbot to their services and gain the advantages of this software, STRV’s Head of People, Matej Matolin, decided to implement and train a chatbot with jobpal’s technology.

The idea originated when STRV wanted to have automatic and immediate assistance replying to common questions jobseekers and candidates frequently had. 
While there is an obvious trend and movement towards automation in recruiting and recruiting technologies, people still want relationships and a human touch in recruiting, Matej Matolin explained. The point is that at least half of the whole recruiting process consists of repetitive tasks that are either not personal (scheduling interviews, screening applications, transfer information) or not adding value. The most logical approach here was to deploy a chatbot.

“The real interaction with candidates, for example the interview, is the smaller part of all this, so if the impersonal routine can be replaced by technology - that would be awesome. We don’t have to waste time on non hiring things anymore!”, Matej points out.

For Matej, there are three main reasons why chatbots in general and jobpal’s technology are so attractive and fascinating to STRV.

“Our company motto is 'Unlock opportunity through technology'. We do it for our clients, but we also want this value to reflect in ourselves and our candidates.”

First, it is the desire to ‘practice what you preach’, adopt new technologies and truly be an early adopter. This fits perfectly to STRV’s company approach and brand spirit they aim to present: 

Be different, be unusual, be individual and modern when it comes to technologies, use cases and recruiting. Another big advantage STRV sees in chatbots is FAQ automation. 

“You don’t have to answer the same question again and again. It’s very efficient to automate the Q&A’s and to have immediate answers for the candidates as well is lifting the candidate experience.”

Especially for developers, it takes some time to decide about the next employer. Matej knows that the people working in that field need a lot of information and are really demanding - so chatbots offer them very easy access to all information they need to get to know the company better and to explore if both company and candidate fit together.

The candidate experience and engagement here is an important point that profits from the chatbot conversations as well.

While a chatbot promises valuable results, it is not a plug-and-play solution (yet).

Matej Matolin personally “trained and educated” STRV’s chatbot.

“It’s a process of feeding the chatbot with information you want to provide for your candidates and to think of possible questions the people will ask, as the chatbot is not able to answer all the questions from zero. It’s a process of learning, creating and reacting.”

Same as with humans. For a medium sized company like STRV, it wasn’t that complicated to compile the content for the chatbots answers. Additionally, you can as well choose how the tonality, style of the language and chatbot’s conversation with the candidates should be, which makes it personal.

To answer the question of STRV’s favorite feature of jobpal’s technology, Matej convincingly explained that to him it is the clear surface of the Dashboard:

“It’s easy to see what new questions came up, which are not answered yet, and to immediately assign questions to the right categories or to answer them directly - simple and user friendly!”

It all started with the articles about chatbots Matej was posting on his blog. He met Luc Dudler, founder and CEO of jobpal, while contacting different chatbot providers to interview for his blog.

“What jobpal made their product and service stand out against other competitors and providers was the ready made software solution they offer to a really good price. The engine was ready, the flow was ready and the clearly arranged dashboard to use the technology was ready as well. I personally hate long implementations and exercises - if I can’t start with a software in a couple of weeks, I won’t do it! With jobpal, we were able to start the chatbot within 3 weeks!”

All in all, the main reasons for STRV to choose jobpal as a vendor and partner were speed, readiness, simplicity and the ease of use of their solution.

Not only the product itself made it easy and efficient to work with jobpal, also the good advice they gave on how to prepare the answers for the chatbot and how to advertise it were very helpful. It was not only just buying the software, but getting a good kind of partnership, Matej Matolin points out. “We had a person dedicated for us who answered all our questions very quickly and with a professional approach.”

After implementing the chatbot, STRV’s chatbot quickly experienced meaningful traffic with the chatbot and the ratio of questions the chatbot could answer automatically was increasing. Especially Matej, as the Head of People, experienced that there were many questions that did not require a person answering anymore. He had multiple situations in interviews in which the recruiter asked the candidate if they had any questions, and the comment from the candidates were just:

“I don’t have any more questions, I already asked the chatbot.”

That was a concrete success for STRV’s recruiter, even if he is convinced that people still have to familiarise talking to a chatbot and not being surprised or suspicious by immediately getting the right answer.

For international companies like STRV, the 24/7 availability of the chatbot, and therefore the possibility for candidates to ask questions outside of the office hours, in any time zone and country, is a striking factor. Prolonged conversations with candidates because of different time zones are not a problem anymore. Saving time is the point and advantage here.

Partnering with jobpal and implementing their software without any specific expectation or use case, STRV was indeed able achieve their goals: Trying out a new and modern technology - without complications or a big loss of time - that can automate tasks quickly and at the same time improve their candidate experience. Additionally, STRV emphasizes on the really helpful and professional business relationship with jobpal.