Paradox uses its virtual assistant Olivia to help transform the recruitment experience. Recruitment Tech spoke to Tom Trewick, the company’s Client Success Manager, for a video interview.
‘Taking away the heavy lifting’
Olivia is Paradox’s very own answer to the candidate experience. “So Olivia is a virtual assistant — and she helps to transform the recruitment experience”, Trewick says. “If you think of anything that could and should be automated, Olivia takes a heavy lifting from recruiters. Freeing them up to have more meaningful conversations and be more proactive elsewhere in the process. The candidate experience is broken. So Olivia helps to remove friction from that part of the process and making sure that candidates are screened scheduled.”
“Olivia is automation, but with a very human touch. She uses natural language processing, which means that she recognises intent.”
According to Trewick and Paradox, Olivia is on 24-7, 365 days a year. “Meaning that she’s presenting fully screened candidates to recruiters to speak to and take away some of that administrative burden. The main benefits are a reduction in time to hire, an increase in candidate experience and also hiring manager satisfaction. Olivia is automation, but with a very human touch. So she uses natural language processing, which means that she recognises intent.”
Fluent in 31 languages
Whereas most people still struggle through their daily Duolingo exercises, Olivia’s fluent in 31 different languages, Trewick says. “She is intelligent enough to pivot and start speaking in that candidate’s native tongue and translate that back to English if required. So if you think about her enhancing the experience across the whole process and making clients’ existing HR Tech stack better.”
Serving McDonald’s and Pfizer
Paradox has amassed clients from all over the world. “It’s a real mix in terms of corporate and part time volume-based hiring”, Trewick says. “Every McDonald’s restaurant in the US, Canada, the UK and Republic of Ireland will be using Olivia as a standalone product. But we’re very familiar integrating into different ATS’. We’re a marquee endorsed partner with SuccessFactors, for example, and we serve to make our clients existing HR tech stack better. We’re proud to partner with over 750 clients now ranging from McDonald’s to Disney to Pfizer to Unilever.”
“Every McDonald’s restaurant in the US, Canada, the UK and Republic of Ireland will be using Olivia as a standalone product.”
Trewick and Paradox are excited about the road ahead. “We’ve got a team of over 200 engineers that are constantly adjusting and improving the product and some key things to look out for in terms of the roadmap for the next 12 months are using voice rather than engaging with Olivia, when you buy a mobile-friendly, mobile-first application. And we’re also looking at some talent pool functionality which we call talent waves, which will be a further enhancement.”
