Get ready for a pitch-off – introducing ATC2019 Innovation Lab participants

The ATC Innovation Lab competition is back again this year and, once again, we will be featuring the latest and most innovative TA tech from across the Talent space!
Get set for some witty pitches, slick presentations and memorable sound bites, as we see these start-ups go head to head in the ATC’s version of a dance-off.
So, who will take the top prize? Here is a sneak preview of the participants at the ATC2019 Innovation Lab competition. Be sure to check them out at the Expo hall during the conference!

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Sam Zheng
Co-Founder & CEO of Curious Thing (WINNER!)

How would you best describe your innovation?

Curious Thing is a voice-based conversational AI technology company for high-volume hiring solutions.
Powered by Knowledge Graph and Natural Language Processing (NLP) technologies, Curious Thing empowers HR teams with 10x efficiency in shortlisting, gives all candidates a fair opportunity to shine, and significantly reduces human biases from traditional CV-centric approach.

What frustration/problem does it solve?

In today’s hiring process, 93 percent of candidates are rejected purely based on CVs. The CV-centric approach also introduces biases and inconsistencies due to lack of benchmarkable data.
For Talent Acquisition teams and hiring managers, phone interviews are highly repetitive and are consuming a large amount of their time.
Curious Thing is a data-driven solution for fairer, more efficient and a better shortlisting process.

How does it differentiate from other like-minded products in the market?

We are voiced-based conversational AI delivered through simple phone calls. No matter where the candidates are, there is equal accessibility to the interview.
Curious Thing is powered by state-of-art technology of Natural Language Processing, Knowledge Graph, and Deep Transfer Learning.
Our analytics are based only on what interviewees say; not their body language, appearance or tone of voice, removing the potential for bias in the screening process.

Has anyone signed up as a client yet?

Curious Thing AI interviewer has been adopted by a number of companies in Australia and SE Asia such as CSIRO, Stellar BPO, and Westpac.

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Jade Chen
Head of Strategy & Operations at AllyO (RUNNER UP)

How would you best describe your innovation?

AllyO is a chat bot and more. It utilises deep workflow conversational AI to fully automate the end to end recruiting workflow by intelligently engaging through texting over mobile and web.
It enables conversational job matching across all Talent Acquisition channels, intelligently qualifies the candidate specifically for the best-fit role, automates interview scheduling and post interview interactions, drives retention through post-hire check-ins, and gathers actionable insights to improve overall recruiting performance.
AllyO is multilingual, can be quickly deployed due to its highly configurable technology, and easily integrates and scales with existing HR systems and processes.
Since launch, it has processed millions of applicant interactions to schedule over hundred thousand interviews. As a result, enterprises have experienced 2-6X increase in applicant capture and conversion rate, 91 percent application completion rate, and over 50 percent reduction in cost and time to hire.

What frustration/problem does it solve?

AllyO addresses the traditional inefficiencies of lost applicants and conversions due to poor candidate experience, high cost of recruiting due to overburdening of menial tasks on hiring teams, and lack of visibility and control for HR leadership.
It is re-inventing recruiting by bringing the recruiting process to the applicant rather than taking the applicants to the recruiting process.

How does it differentiate from other like-minded products in the market?

More than just an AI chat bot, AllyO integrates with your ATS and enterprise calendars to deliver end to end automation, from the initial candidate engagement through to scheduling and post-hire workforce analytics.

Has anyone signed up as a client yet?

Hilton, Walmart, FedEx, Cheesecake Factory, Panda Express, Randstad.

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Raj Soni
Founder & CTO of smartAI

How would you best describe your innovation?

smartAI creates engaging chatbots for the HR and Recruitment industry.
More specifically, we use our conversational AI platform to create chatbots that are deeply integrated into an organisations existing HR tech stack.
We then automate and augment their current HR workflow processes with a conversational layer – essentially, we create a scalable virtual HR team, that is able to ‘chat’ to a candidate on multiple channels at scale and guide them through the company’s HR life cycle.

What frustration/problem does it solve?

Current HR tech platforms still interact with candidates using traditional user interfaces or contact centres. While most have improved, they still are not great and suffer from a number of problems.
Our product aims to:

• Improve the user experience for both the candidates and recruiters
• Reduce the friction created whilst exchanging information between parties so it saves everyone costs and time
• Take over the majority of admin work so that the recruiter only has to focus on the more important task of engaging the Talent.

How does it differentiate from other like-minded products in the market?

We are taking a different approach to our competitors in that we offer our solution in modules which provides a much more reasonable entry price point.
smartAI also guides candidates through the full HR life cycle rather than just recruitment, answering payroll, leave and policy type questions.
Our vision is to democratise the use of conversational AI (chatbots) within the HR industry.

Has anyone signed up as a client yet?

IntoWork Australia, Titan recruitment, Dixon Appointments, RPR Trades, National Workforce, Manpower (POC).

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Mike Keating
Co-Founder of Attract.ai

How would you best describe your innovation?

We help businesses proactively engage with high quality + diverse Talent by leveraging our automated sourcing technology.

What frustration/problem does it solve?

Attracting great Talent is super time consuming and crazy expensive. Attract.ai solves these problems.

How does it differentiate from other like-minded products in the market?

Attract.ai is a hybrid solution that incorporates both artificial intelligence + human intelligence. We have chosen this strategy to ensure we provide the best candidate leads in the most efficient way possible.

Has anyone signed up as a client yet?

Accenture, Canstar, and Compare the Market.

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Guy Abelsohn
Co-Founder of myInterview

How would you best describe your innovation?

myInterview is disrupting recruitment technology and taking it to the next level with a best-in-class video interviewing platform enabled with predictive analytics, designed to put personality back into the hiring process and streamline the work of recruiters.
myInterview can save money for any company with an HR department – we would love a chance to get to know you and offer you a test-drive (on the house) of our solution.

What frustration/problem does it solve?

Hiring is time consuming to get done right. You have to assess skills, experience and personality, then you have to share this with various decision makers.
Add into the mix bias controls and diversity quotas, the process is protracted and great candidates fall through the gaps.
myInterview solves these challenges for you.

How does it differentiate from other like-minded products in the market?

• myInterview Intelligence™ – machine learning based recommendation engine
• Integration at the application and second stage of the process
• Tech built in-house
• Partnerships with job boards not just the ATS
• Accessible pricing for high volume rolls
• SDKs and app integrations
• Data hosted securely in Australia
• Customised branding and UX

Has anyone signed up as a client yet?

Pandora, Hudson, Catch Group, Development Victoria, Winning Appliances.

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Andrew Nicol
CEO of coHired

How would you best describe your innovation?

coHired is a recruitment platform that matches people to jobs they love, because people who love their jobs are more reliable, more productive and stay longer.

It is a platform that matches people based on experience, skills and ethos, and allows the client to outsource as much or as little of the process as they desire.

What frustration/problem does it solve?

We improve retention and team fit by focusing on three problems that recruiters have while matching people to jobs:

• Selection fatigue – we remove the need to review 100s of CVs by automagically shortlisting the very best applicants.
• Workplace ethos – we understand the unique ethos of each team and predict if people will be a great fit for your team.
• Unbundled technology – we allow your team to choose how much of the process they want to be involved in. We can simply shortlist, or handle the full process right through interview.

How does it differentiate from other like-minded products in the market?

We front load the recruitment process, gathering more data from applicants (extracted experience data, gamified skills & ethos data) and then use machine learning to match them to the workplace “ethos”.
We provide access to collaborative pools of job-seekers and enable automated recruitment process outsourcing (RPO).
We also developed matching algorithms that are the base for machine learning. Our current goal is to use matching solutions to:

• Faster to hire | Reduce the time taken to review and shortlist applicants.
• Better team fit | Increase staff retention by improving ethos fit which is shown to increase retention.
• Hiring Manager centric | We give the power back to Hiring Managers, enabling them to improve matching for their teams in the future.

Has anyone signed up as a client yet?

Some of our NZ Beta customers: SkyCity, Mitre10, Finance Now, Coca-Cola Amatil, Countdown/Woolworths, Visy.

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Sally Carr
VP Sales at Expert360

How would you best describe your innovation?

Expert360 Enterprise is a freelance marketplace and management platform that connects Talent specialists and Hiring Managers with highly skilled and vetted Talent on-demand.
Our recent product innovation allows enterprise businesses and recruiters to manage private networks of Talent.
The system works by intelligently matching a project-brief or description with relevant and available Talent in the selected Talent network.
Talent specialists can also use the system to browse and engage available Talent with full visibility of the Talents availability, work preferences, experience and ratings.

What frustration/problem does it solve?

Some of the benefits of using Expert360 Enterprise include:

• Decrease time-to-hire through direct access to Talent
• Get critical work done faster
• Increase the quality of candidates
• Great candidate experiences
• Full visibility of the freelance workforce
• Internal mobility for internal employees

How does it differentiate from other like-minded products in the market?

Unlike HRIS systems which are designed to manage permanent employees, Expert360 is designed specifically for organisations to manage engagement with the project-based worker. At the core of Expert360 Enterprise is a live and dynamic talent profile which the Talent is incentivised to keep up-to-date to find their next opportunity.
Expert360 Enterprise provides direct access to external Talent on-demand. Talent specialists can make informed hiring decisions based on work history, previous ratings and reviews, availability and more.
With the dynamic talent profile at the core of the system and unlike static HR systems, Talent specialists using Expert360 Enterprise can instantly match their project requirements with engaged experts which dramatically reduces time-to-hire.

Has anyone signed up as a client yet?

All will be revealed during the ATC2019!

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Stefan Hinrichsen
Principal Consultant & Head of Sales at Aon’s Assessment Solutions

How would you best describe your innovation?

AI-scoring for video interviewing, using innovative technology with focus on a fair, transparent and legally defendable process.

What frustration/problem does it solve?

• Mitigation of human bias
• Significant increase of speed, fairness and diversity
• Legally defendable
• Reduce costs
• Increase user experience (candidates and recruiter)

How does it differentiate from other like-minded products in the market?

We are the only provider to offer a ‘glass-box approach’ in AI which means ensuring a transparent and fair process.
We do not consider any kind of facial expression/recognition or use non-transparent algorithms which have even caused legal issues in some countries.
We focus on speech-to-text which makes it a legally defendable process. We emphasise the interaction between AI and a human recruiter rather than replacing the human.

Has anyone signed up as a client yet?

This pre-launch version is currently in use with participating testing clients. So far, we have used the AI for more than 8,000 real candidates.
 

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Keen to know more? Join us at the ATC2019 Innovation Lab on 19-20 June to check out all the latest Talent technologies that will be on show. Tickets are running out so get onto it quick! More information available here.