One of the biggest developments in HR technology in the last decade was the advent of high-volume hiring technology. I’m a huge fan of this technology because it seems obvious, yet traditional ATSs and large HCM recruiting modules never went down this path to develop something for hiring low-skill/no-skill workers. The expectation was that these hourly workers would jump through the same hoops we make salaried workers jump through, and they’d like it.
The leader in this space is Paradox.ai. When they launched using machine learning with their chat-to-apply and on-demand interview scheduling, it was groundbreaking. For the first time, we actually had technology built specifically for low-skill/no-skill hiring that was fast, efficient, and reduced cost per hire. It was a technology that seemingly allowed everyone an equal chance, or at least many more, to make it through the hiring pipeline than we saw from traditional hiring practices.
While they still use conversational AI automation for hiring, they have also launched their next-gen generative AI chat, which literally blew me away. Paradox is way out in front when it comes to using generative AI in a safe, ethical way that delivers an advanced candidate experience. Paradox found an architecture that I think will blow most legal teams away in terms of how it protects both the brand and the candidate.
Here’s the thing: you don’t really even know what Paradox is today!
Paradox has quickly evolved into a full-feature hiring suite for all of your hiring, not just high-volume hiring. Don’t get me wrong, it still kicks ass on high-volume hiring. Here’s all that they have right now:
- Conversational Career Site
- Conversational CRM
- Conversational ATS
- Contextual Q&A
- Video Interviewing
- Conversational Interview Scheduling
- Conversational Events (Career Fairs, Campus, etc.)
- Employee Chat Assistant (think hourly worker has an HR need during a shift or after hours)
- They also have fully built-out integrations with Workday, SAP, and Oracle.
I hesitate to call Paradox an ATS because they’ve taken what we thought an ATS or hiring process was and completely flipped it upside down. In this new world of AI, Paradox has discovered a new way, dare I say a better way, to hire people. The companies I know who are using it are seeing measurable positive results, and the candidate experience is also very high.
It’s like we’ve had this wheel in hiring for decades. Everyone had a wheel. The wheel worked fine. It was way better to have a wheel than not have a wheel. Then Paradox came around and said we can reinvent the wheel! And they actually did it. They built a better mousetrap.
I spoke to a Fortune 200 TA leader recently who said this about Paradox: “Tim, it just works!” When was the last time you were able to say that about your hiring technology?
I recommend Paradox so much that I tease I should be on their sales team, but that’s how much I think what they are doing is the right thing. If I were running an enterprise TA function, I would buy and implement Paradox. In fact, I wouldn’t even take the job unless I had assurances I could do that. They are a game changer for our industry, and everyone else is currently playing catch-up.
So, what are the negatives?
I see two for TA leaders:
1. It’s expensive. They can charge a lot because it works. From the shops using it, I know the ROI is high. You probably need to make 1,000+ hires a year to even consider using them to get the value.
2. To get full maximum value it will supplant your ATS or Recruiting module, and that can be a hard sell to your CFO, CIO, and CHRO. But it’s worth the fight.
In ten years of covering TA Technology, I’ve never found a better, more complete hiring tool. I don’t know what else to tell you.
Go demo and give them the discount code: “Tim’s a Fanboy”! Just kidding, they didn’t give me a code.