How Conversational AI Transforms Recruiting: Two Case Studies

Recruiting has been an opportune area for artificial intelligence and automation, propelling companies like Paradox into new areas of innovation. Founded in 2016 as a simple chatbot experience, Paradox has grown into a comprehensive AI recruitment platform offering what is now called “conversational AI.” 

Conversational AI in recruiting streamlines hiring by reducing inefficiencies in candidate screening, interview scheduling, and onboarding — ultimately reducing administrative burdens and hiring times and improving the candidate experience. 

Paradox integrates with applicant tracking systems (ATSs), human capital management systems (HCMs), and scheduling tools. It has steadily taken over a significant portion of the early stages of the hiring process for the companies that use it. Conversational AI is especially popular with high-volume employers engaged in continuous recruitment and expedited hiring. But organizations are using it for their corporate roles, too.  

“The leader in this space is Paradox, a company that pioneered the application of conversational AI in recruiting,” said industry analyst Josh Bersin, founder and CEO of The Josh Bersin Company. “Their system defines the category.” 

Adam Godson, CEO of Paradox, said that “delivering a mobile-, text-, and chat-driven experience can work wonders to create a faster, more frictionless experience for candidates, while driving automation around work that’s typically manual often frees recruiters and hiring managers up to focus on higher value work and shortens the time it takes to complete each stage of the hiring process.” 

The benefits include higher conversion, which means spending less on job advertising and recruitment marketing; up to 95% improvement in time-to-hire, which is critical for front-line roles; and dramatic improvement in recruiter efficiency. 

“We’ve always said that no one enjoys the boring stuff,” Godson said. “While screening applications to make sure someone meets minimum requirements and scheduling interviews are critical steps toward making a good hire, there’s no clear benefit to having a human do that work. Those are tasks that AI can easily automate.” 

He added that in the future, recruiters will spend a lot more time on recruitment strategy, hiring manager advisory work, and candidate coaching. And front-line hiring managers could end up spending very little time hiring and backfilling roles, and a lot more time on the floor engaging with employees and customers. 

Here are a couple of examples of organizations benefiting from conversational AI and recruitment process automation. 

Compass Group

Headquartered in Charlotte, N.C., Compass Group USA provides food and support services across various sectors, including government, banking, and health care, and at high-profile events like the Super Bowl. Compass Group operates globally in 35 countries, employing more than 550,000 people, including 300,000 in the U.S. Remarkably, about 20 U.S.-based recruiters support the high-volume hourly side of recruitment, hiring about 150,000 workers each year. 

Shay Johnson, vice president of strategic HR partnerships and former talent acquisition leader at Compass Group USA, said that before implementing conversational AI in 2019, the company was experiencing low applicant volume. “We had really high career site traffic but very low conversion to job search or apply,” he said. 

“The job search and application experience for job seekers were disconnected,” Johnson said. “If you landed on our careers site, we had 15,000 jobs posted, and in those jobs, there were multiple openings. You were looking at a list and had to filter by title or location. Then, when you clicked apply, you got what I refer to as the ‘ATS screen of death,’ which required candidates to create a profile, username, and password just to get started. Right out of the gate, there was confusion.”  

Johnson said that initially, Paradox’s “Olivia” conversational AI assistant sat on top of the careers site as a concierge, helping job seekers learn more about the company. “Candidate Q&A was helpful — especially the interactions happening outside of normal business hours — but the biggest impact we had was implementing the chat-to-apply process,” he said. 

That’s when Olivia began guiding applicants through the application process by a chat- or SMS text-based conversation, rather than leaving them to fill out traditional long-form applications.  

“Olivia would create the applicant profile, check to see if the applicant had previously applied, and take them through the application experience, and eventually included scheduling interviews and offering assessments,” Johnson said. “We saw an immediate boost in conversion at the top of the funnel.” 

Compass switched over to use Paradox as their careers site host in order to have a seamless environment for reporting and upgrades.  

“We just recently completely redesigned our careers site,” he said. “Olivia has been upgraded with new contextual AI features and dynamic content to be able to provide a richer experience. Job seekers will be able to converse, get questions answered, view media, search for a job, and receive customized job matches and recommendations.” 

The AI-powered digital assistant has also reduced the manual workload for recruiters and hiring managers, allowing them to focus on more strategic tasks. 

By December 2024, the application completion time at Compass was reduced from over nine minutes to under three minutes, and the overall process from job search to scheduled interview was down to as little as six minutes. The overall application completion rate increased to 85%. 

Johnson Controls

Johnson Controls International, headquartered in Cork, Ireland, is a world leader in smart buildings and sustainability, specializing in fire, security, heating, ventilation, and air conditioning systems.  

The company hires 20,000 to 25,000 people each year, including manufacturing and production workers, technicians, salespeople, and mechanics. 

Mike Aronson, senior director of talent acquisition for global operations at Johnson Controls, is a leader in a recruiting function of about 200 people.   

Aronson said that his goal was to reduce time-to-hire to 45 days across dozens of countries and that meeting that goal had to include streamlining a cumbersome hiring process and automating multiple manual steps between systems. He also wanted to better understand candidate preferences to identify areas for improvement in the hiring process and make more informed recruiting decisions. 

Paradox was integrated with the organization’s existing ATS in 2022. Johnson Controls brought on features for conversing with, screening, and scheduling interviews with applicants, as well as the chat-to-apply functionality with help from an AI assistant named Emma. 

The bot can converse in more than a dozen languages, and applications can be completed via online chat, SMS, or WhatsApp, providing flexibility and options for the company’s global candidates. 

“We were trying to meet candidates where they are and, at the same time, create efficiencies,” he said. “Emma was able to interact with candidates and engage in chat-to-apply. We optimized scheduling for hiring managers and recruiters. Scheduling is one of the biggest wastes of time for recruiters.” Aronson said that when a candidate applies for a position, Emma begins a screening process to assess their qualifications, matching relevant jobs based on interest and location. If the candidate meets the criteria, Emma automatically provides available interview times based on recruiter schedules. 

“Change is sometimes hard for recruiters, and not all use the tools or use them correctly, but no recruiter will tell you, ‘I want to schedule my own interviews,’ ” Aronson said. “We can now get an interview scheduled in less than an hour. It took a lot longer before. That alone is something that recruiters will not argue with.” 

The release of customized questionnaires for certain roles to further engage with job seekers has been another help to recruiters, he said: “Those are used to see if job seekers would like to continue in the process, and recruiters say that feedback has created more efficiencies.” 

The talent acquisition team at Johnson Controls has also benefited from new data insights produced by Paradox.  

“Data allows us to better see how candidates engage with us, what questions they have, how long each stage in the hiring process takes,” Aronson said. “We take those insights and make much more informed decisions on where we want to implement process efficiencies or take a standardized approach.” 

The insights also helped with employer branding. “We found out that India is our most engaged country in terms of interacting with the chatbot, so now we push out more content there,” he said. “We are trying to understand who our audiences are and ultimately make decisions that cater to those audiences.” 

In another example, the company “lacked a strategy to recruit for manufacturing roles before Paradox because there was a time when we didn’t support plant hiring,” he said. “Once Paradox was embedded in the hiring process, we gained insight into that population.”    

The use of conversational AI has led to a 14% increase in hires and an incredible 98% decrease in candidate response time, Aronson said. “Time-to-fill is at an all-time low, due to an upgraded technology ecosystem that includes programmatic job distribution, recruitment marketing, and conversational AI.”