The Russian Robot
That’s Hiring Humans
Robot Vera can cut the time and cost of
recruiting by a third, its creators say. Now they’re teaching it to recognize anger, pleasure, and
disappointment.
A Russian startup is using Robot Vera,
artificial intelligence software designed for recruiting, to help its 300-odd
clients—including PepsiCo, Ikea, and L’Oréal—fill vacant jobs. (Yes, with
humans.)
The Benefit
Vera speeds the vetting of high-turnover
service and blue-collar positions (clerks, waiters, construction workers),
cutting the time and cost of recruitment by as much as a third, according to
its creators.
The software can interview hundreds of
applicants simultaneously via video or
voice calls, narrowing the field to the most suitable 10 per cent of
candidates.
Innovators
Vladimir Sveshnikov (28) and Alexander
Uraksin (30), co-founders of Stafory, a 50-person startup in St. Petersburg
Origin
The co-founders, with a background in
human resources, two years ago found themselves making hundreds of calls to
candidates who’d lost interest in the given job or couldn’t be located. “We
felt like robots ourselves, so we figured it was better to automate the task,”
Uraksin says.
Development
Vera, named after Sveshnikov’s mother, combines speech recognition technologies
from Google, Amazon.com, Microsoft, and
Russia’s Yandex.
Programmers fed 13 billion examples of syntax and speech from TV, Wikipedia, and job listings to expand the software’s vocabulary and help it speak
more naturally and understand responses.
Deployment
The robot started working in Russia in
December 2016, and Stafory has since added clients in the Middle East and pilot
projects in Europe and the U.S. The company says its revenue will top $1
million this year.
The Verdict
Human recruiters still vet the
candidates cleared by Vera.
Sveshnikov and Uraksin are working to
teach the bot to recognize anger, pleasure, and disappointment, but even if it
can gauge emotions, Vera shouldn’t be viewed as a substitute for traditional HR
departments, says Mikhail Chernomordikov, a Microsoft Corp. strategist in
Dubai. “Final decisions on hiring,” he says, “are reserved for humans.”
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