The bots are multiplying.
Breezy, an applicant tracking solution from the folks who brought us Path.To, launches Hello today. Similar to other chatbot offerings like Mya, Olivia, Crowded, and GoBe, Hello aims to have a virtual conversation with a prospect that moves them through the hiring funnel. The goal in doing so is to replace the grunt work normally done by recruiters, while also strategically capturing a candidate in an new way.
Hello lives on your company website and careers section. It is currently available only as part of a Breezy subscription, but will be expanded to support competing products in the future, although exact details weren’t shared.
The technology observes visitors as they browse your site and its job openings. Then through a set of rules and machine learning, Hello recognizes just the right moment to start a conversation with prospects while collecting their contact details and resume. Hello can also automate follow-up.
“We built Hello after listening to the needs of hundreds of hiring organizations and recognizing how so much great, passive talent, already browsing your company websites and blog every day, was never making it into a company’s talent pool,” says Darren Bounds, Breezy HR founder and CEO. “This was due to misaligned job descriptions, and a tired, antiquated apply processes. Today we’re changing that.”
The experience is similar to customer service or sales chat solutions you see on many websites today, such as Olark or LivePerson. As visitors browse pages on a website a chat icon reveals itself where a live chat is triggered if the visitor chooses. Historically, there is a live person on the other end. If no one is there, a message can be sent to the company for a later reply.
Where Breezy HR is different is the automation component. Visitors get a response 24/7, and in most cases don’t even know they’re talking to an automated system. As a chat commences, information such as email address or phone number and even a resume file is retrieved and uploaded into an ATS or CRM.
“Absolutely, there are many other AI solutions, but this is the only product designed to engage and capture visitors on your own company website,” says Bounds. “As we know, companies today spend so much time building their employer brand with smart marketing and gorgeous, rich web experiences but they aren’t converting visitors as efficiently as they could. There are many passive and semi-active candidates who are merely exploring; Hello is designed for them.”
As automation and AI continue to gain steam, I expect solutions like this to become commonplace. I wouldn’t be surprised if a majority of ATSs and job boards have some sort of bot offering in the next 24 months or so. As the technology evolves, adding such solutions will become pretty easy. WordPress, for example, already has a decent number of chatbot plugins for websites running on the platform.
“Hundreds of interesting, passive candidates browse your website and culture and careers pages, every day, but how many do you get to know?” said the company in a release. “Now, Hello gives your team the tool they need to start timely, proactive, human or AI-led conversations with them.”
It not only makes sense from a commercial perspective — having the lights on all the time for your visitors — and collecting data in an automated way, but from an employment perspective, it helps take away the black hole facade so prevalent in today’s job search experience. People are yearning for some sort of connection in the application process, even if a bot is on the other end.
“For the first time, Breezy’s recruiting platform gives companies the opportunity to build better relationships with candidates from the very first impression and it only gets smarter with time,” says the company.
Recruiters will also like the idea of capturing talent in this fashion before they hit up a competitor. “I reached out to a candidate with Hello, and we snagged her from interviewing with someone else,” said Jacob Medina, talent acquisition and marketing manager for KCI Wireless.
Hello will be bundled with the company’s growth plan at $149-per-month.