In a tight labor market, employers need to pull out all the stops to wow their top candidates. To differentiate themselves, employers must be thoughtful about the candidate experience. But that’s easier said than done. Recruiting teams are stretched thin, and simply can’t engage with every single candidate that visits their career site.
Fortunately, conversational AI technology has evolved to the point where intelligent, automated assistants can provide real-time responses to candidate FAQs, help candidates find and apply to jobs that fit their preferences, automate interview scheduling and much more. Thanks to modern technology, employers can now deliver a personalized candidate experience 24/7, while also removing the burden of administrative tasks from recruiting teams.
The confluence of labor market trends and advancements in conversational AI technology has created a unique opportunity for companies to develop solutions that appeal to candidates and that help recruiting teams be more productive. Today, we’re thrilled to share that we are co-leading Paradox’s Series C, to enable the company scale its solutions to even more businesses around the world. At Sapphire, we’re passionate about companies defining the future of work, and our investment in Paradox follows our recent investments in Gem and Degreed–two companies that are also giving employers new tools to attract and retain employees.
Automating Recruiting One Step at a Time
It’s hard to believe, but most recruiters spend 80% of their time on administrative work and only 20% on engaging with candidates. Paradox has emerged to help address this issue by providing a conversational AI platform that automates a number of aspects of the recruiting process, and improves the overall hiring experience for candidates.
Paradox’s AI assistant, dubbed “Olivia,” lives on career sites or can engage candidates on any mobile messaging platform (SMS, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and more), and uses advanced NLP to respond to candidate questions, guide candidates to open and relevant job postings, enable candidates to apply through the chat interface, screen candidate responses and schedule interviews as appropriate.
In addition to its candidate-facing functionality, Paradox provides recruiting teams with access to a central command center where they can monitor Olivia’s conversations with prospective candidates in real-time and even step in as needed.
Exceptional Product Trusted by Blue-Chip Customers
Paradox is unique in that the product can be used for both high-volume, hourly worker recruiting, as well as high-skill professional recruiting. Recruiting hourly workers is extremely difficult, especially in the current tight labor market. Employers need to act quickly when candidates are interested in job opportunities. That’s why companies like McDonald’s, Lowe’s, CVS Health, and Wendy’s use Paradox. Paradox makes the recruiting process mobile-friendly and shortens the hiring process from weeks to days.
Given its success working with such marquee customers, Paradox has successfully packaged its products into an end-to-end recruiting solution called Hire, which can be used in place of traditional ATS’ for hourly worker recruiting. McDonald’s recently shared the dramatic results it has seen with Paradox’s Hire product (lovingly referred to as “McHire”) across thousands of franchises in the US and Canada.
When it comes to high-skill professional recruiting, companies like Unilever, General Motors, and Nestle use Paradox’s AI assistant to engage candidates, answer questions about company culture, share relevant job opportunities, automate interview scheduling, deliver rich employer brand content and even collect feedback on the hiring process. This helps recruiting teams deliver a high-touch concierge experience that will leave a lasting impression on candidates, while freeing up recruiters to focus on the most strategic aspects of their role.
Don’t just take our word for it. Paradox customers love its products. As we did our market research customers shared that they couldn’t imagine doing their jobs without Olivia. Customers praised Paradox for creating an AI assistant that sounds so much like a human to the extent that candidates couldn’t tell the difference. In addition, because Paradox’s solution automates the recruiting process, customers saw strong ROI typically measured through a significant reduction in time-to-hire. Finally, customers praised Paradox for being a solution-oriented vendor and true partner in helping them modernize their recruiting operations.
A Founder With A Life-Long Dedication to Simplifying Recruiting
Paradox’s Founder & CEO, Aaron Matos, stands out for his dedication to the HR profession. Early on, Aaron showed a deep passion for HR. He studied Human Resources in college and spent the early part of his career as an HR professional before becoming an entrepreneur building companies like Jobing.com and Recruiting.com with the singular goal of making recruiting easier for both candidates and recruiters. Paradox builds on his decades of experience in the recruiting industry, identifying and solving the challenges that candidates and businesses face when seeking a job or hiring for a role respectively.
Ultimately, building a company is a team sport and we have been impressed by Aaron’s ability to attract experienced executives and board members from organizations like SAP, Workday, Taleo and Blackbaud. We are thrilled to partner with Aaron and the entire Paradox team! If you are interested in learning more about what Paradox offers you can find more here. Paradox is also hiring here.
