So this week I thought I’d follow up my blog on the 28th September which you can read again here.

This week, I had the pleasure of speaking with Iain Hamilton from People Traction who gave me a tour of his Recruitment Chatbot. I’ve viewed a number of similar products in the past which have all been impressive, but I’ve never managed to get past the ‘science’ of it all and how it actually works. Yes, I get there are algorithms, deep learning, machine learning but I want to understand;

• What is it going to do for the end user (the candidate) and
• How will it benefit my Talent Acquisition team

When it comes to the cost model, I’ve never managed to get clear view of what my development/implementation and ongoing costs would be. Something of a dark art you could say.

So, back to the demo – Iain made it very clear and spoke in clear nontechnical language that I could understand. From this I was able to ascertain that this was a very stable, well developed and scalable product and I will highlight why later. The clearest thing was this is a product that all talent acquisition teams could use. Whether you are a small, medium or large Talent Acquisition team in a small, medium or large organisation – this is an affordable, effective and clever product that over the next 12-18 months I can see going from strength to strength.

So, why choose the People Traction Recruitment Chatbot;

• Security – hosted on Amazon Cloud servers, the solution can be situated anywhere in the world. But, should you be a government department/agency or have stringent security requirements requiring it to be based in the UK then People Traction can facilitate this
• Front end interface – owned and developed by People Traction however on a platform that is currently connected to Facebook messenger, but will shortly be connected to other social platforms such as Twitter etc. Possibly WhatsApp once/if they open up the platform
• Facebook – chosen due to its vast audience of which 75% are adults the potential to engage potential candidates and create talent communities is vast
• Pre/Post Application – deployed within your website so that, should the bot recognise the person has Facebook Messenger on their device it will immediately connect via the app. Where the person doesn’t have the app, the bot will open Facebook Messenger within the website which means much higher engagement rates
• GDPR compliant – no need for terms and conditions and candidates completing forms as it uses their Facebook account
• Open API – which enables you to connect it to your ATS/CRM and careers websites
• Affordable – it won’t cost you the earth to buy a license or in implementation costs

All in all, I was very impressed by the Recruitment Bot and if you are looking to venture into the world of AI or Bots then I would highly recommend reviewing People Traction Recruitment Chatbot.

Its beginning to look a lot like….recruitment awards season!

So, it’s that time of year where we are not just anticipating Christmas but entering the recruitment awards season! This week the 2018 RAD shortlist was revealed, and I have to mention my talented colleagues at Penna who were shortlisted in 5 categories;

• Best single use of media for New Qualified Teachers – Essex Schools
• Diversity & inclusion initiative, Employee Engagement, Integrated Campaign for Metropolitan Police
• School Leaver/Apprenticeship Campaign – Aldi

It was also the week that the In-House Recruitment Awards took place at the Park Plaza, Westminster Bridge. A big congratulations to all the winners who can be found here and a mention to one of my old companies ResourceBank with Northgate Careers who were pipped to the post for the Best Careers Website by Compass Group.