Episode 260: AI For Candidates, AI For Companies - The Inevitable Future with Larry Kodali , CEO of OptimHire

Speaker A: Hello there. Welcome back to Talent and Growth. Have you put out a job advert recently? Have you been inundated with responses? I know I have. And this is a hot topic right now. The volume of candidates coming through on job applications is just crazy. And that is a mixture of things. It's a mixture of the market and there's a lot of people, uh, available, no doubt. But also it's heavily influenced by AI and candidates using AI to apply for jobs. Today is a conversation with Larry Kadali, who is the founder of Optimhire and his business provides two services, um, least two. These are the two we're talking about today. One is, uh, software which helps candidates apply for jobs using AI and applying to many jobs. And one is, uh, his software which helps customers or businesses screen candidates using AI to help them stop. To stop. To stop them needing to go through thousands of applications. So it's kind of the problem and the solution their business kind of creates, I guess, really, uh, fascinating, but this is about where we're heading with this and the inevitability that this is here to stay. There's not really a way around this. So we kind of need to embrace, uh, whether it's Optim, Hire or other softwares to help us because candidates are not going to stop using AI to apply for jobs. Really fascinating to talk about where we're at, where we're going with this, um, the role of the recruiter in this. And look, if you're one of those people like I am, where you're just, you know, you can't get through all these applications and you're wondering if what you should be doing or if something's going to change. This is a conversation about that. Uh, so I hope you enjoy it.

Speaker B: Here we go.

Speaker A: Larry, you've been at the intersection of AI and hiring for a while now. So what do you see and how would you describe the current moment we're in in terms of that landscape?

Speaker B: Um, first thing, Paul, thanks for inviting me to the show. And um, first, hi to everybody and all the audience there listening to the show. So to answer your question, we actually are at a very interesting. You can call this as a tipping point or a junction, uh, in this entire industry of hiring, uh, the way that we are used to doing hiring. I believe it's going to change a lot of. And it's. And all the changes are for the good things are going to AI is, I believe, is going to bring a very big change to the entire process. The way we're going to Operate. Um, basically the last change that I can think of was probably happened like 30 years ago when we had job boards uh, coming in. Instead of newspaper ads, people were doing online job boards and other things and then people were uploading resumes and all that stuff. Now I feel like the, the process of hiring and candidates applying for job is going to change a lot and it's going to help us uh, make things lot, lot, lot faster. So it's, it's very exciting times now to sum up. Uh, yeah, yeah, I'd say there was

Speaker A: something in the middle there as well. I think uh, the evolution of LinkedIn had a big impact on hiring and how people put themselves out there as well and create that kind of shop window as well. I think of course the job board. So some big evolutions. And I'd agree that right now is as big if not bigger, uh, than what we've seen before. But if we focus on AI, um, uh, do you think that companies are underestimating how much candidates are using AI right now for applications?

Speaker B: So I believe there's this huge, we don't even have the full scope of the extent of the impact that AI is going to have. And uh, I'll give you a few examples on how it's going to impact but the impact going to be very, very big. Imagine uh, a future not very long, not very distant future. Also the way I see this, since I'm so much close to touch with AI, this is going to happen in the next few years or next few months. Also, if I'm not surprised that hiring uh, would become in a way that you as a company, if you have, if uh, you have an opening, you'll have matching candidates apply for your positions in a matter of say within few seconds, uh, if not minutes, people will apply to it. Uh, and you start having thousands of applications for your job and immediately within that, within the next 15 minutes or so you can see all the applications that are relevant for your job, who's interested for the job and you will have, uh, you could fill that vacancy within less than an hour's time as, as quick as nowadays. You, you get uh, say uh, the way you want to do, like you want to get a cab or a taxi, they click two clicks of a button, you get uh, the taxi in front of your house. Same way I believe like you put up a job posting within less than um, 15 minutes to half an hour's time. I feel like you could shortlist the candidates immediately interview them in the next five minutes, uh, schedule time probably that could be a little more tedious because two humans have joined. But the process, the way we are imagining is going to change a lot. Uh, so, uh, just to talk about Optima and the way we are, we are changing this or we are part of this evolution, uh, is that Optima has two big products. One is an AI recruiter. Imagine uh, you are having thousands of applications coming in and an AI recruiter can do the initial one, screening interviews, sort all your applications and it can uh, present to you saying, hey, all of these thousand, these five are 100% matching. Start with these first 500% matching. And then it goes down the percentage saying, hey, these are the 99% matching. So all of that, imagine getting thousands of applications in matter of minutes, seconds and minutes, then again having them all sorted out and then immediately presenting your recommendations, saying, hey, this is what you are looking for, this is the vacancy that you have. And uh, these are all the parameters you are looking at based on your selection process and everything. It immediately gives you these candidates. So that's AI Recruiter is the main product that we help companies out there and helping them recruit at the same time. We also have a second product where we call it as Job Copilot. And we give this AI product out to the candidates and imagine a candidate coming in, creating their own uh, application process. Like they come in and they tell, hey, this is my resume, this is my job preferences. This is the kind of job that I'm looking at. These are uh, my skills. Uh, this is exactly what I need. They put in all those settings, probably like five, ten minutes in the process. That's it. And after that the AI Copilot will find jobs not only in optimyard's platform, but it'll go out and search for matching jobs in the entire web. Currently Optima is connected with 300,000 companies and 20 plus job sites. So we go out, find, uh, matching jobs on behalf of that candidate, immediately apply, uh, send in them that candidate's application. And uh, we are seeing like all of that is happening in seconds. So as a candidate you just spend five to ten minutes setting up what is your preferences and settings. Next after that, immediately every job and job site, it goes in and applies all these thousands of matching jobs on your behalf, send and sends in the application on your side and that's it. So, and this job copilot is working 24 by 7. Uh, and we all know as a recruitment world, uh, if you see that the moment you put up a job posting within right now the Technology is in early stages, but within say one hour itself, uh, we are able to find a new job, then immediately apply to that new job coming in 24 by 7. That would be Saturday, Sunday, late night, 2am, 4am the copilot is always working on your behalf, searching for your matching jobs and immediately sending your applications. Uh, so that itself is. We are seeing huge impact in the market right now. Uh, we all know that as soon as the first few applications that come in, especially the matching ones, they get a lot of attention from recruiters because they are also at the early stages. They're very eager to fill that vacancy. Uh, but I believe now we are taking one hour time. Maybe next few months we'll reduce it down to 15 minutes, 20 minutes. As we keep crawling more and more and we find more matching jobs, that time is going to keep coming down shorter and shorter. But it's, it's very interesting times. Imagine every candidate having an AI co pilot and they're submitting their applications immediately. That is helping, uh, the recruiters and the company saying, hey, I have this vacancy. The moment I publish a job, I suddenly see more than say thousand applications being received. And then there is an AI recruiter which again saves the time of. The recruiter sorts them out. Um, the AI recruiter is talking to the candidates copilot. If there is any discrepancies, the two AI agents are talking to each other and they're saying, hey, this is, what is the client looking at? Uh, this is what is the requirement? Is this your person fit for this, not fit for this? These are the questions, these are the answers. So they themselves are discussing, uh, and you're again getting more refinements there. So very interesting time. So I see a future where a vacancy from a company's point of view could be filled within just matter of hours. Candidates saying that, hey, the moment they create their Persona within a m. Matter of say day or two, um, all matching jobs would be applied. They would get close to 50 interview requirements or so or uh, calls based on their matching skill sets and they could find a job within my one or two days itself. And it's so much time saved from a candidate point of view also is that they, they don't have to visit these 50 different job sites, fill up the same application hundred times, answer the same questions, upload their resume and go to different career sites, company sites, and all of that. Imagine a world where uh, all of that is done just five minutes as a candidate, you set up your copilot and 24 by 7 that is searching for your matching jobs and applying on your behalf, uh, and letting know, just

Speaker A: so I understand the mechanics, obviously I'm more on the, I'm on the company recruitment side of things and I've never used a tool to help me, um, applied to jobs before in terms of the screening questions that come with um, job application sites. And sometimes they can be very simple like, yes, no, have you got this? Sometimes they can be quite specific. It could be why do you want to work for this company? Or explain a time when you did this certain, uh, situation. How does your software, I suppose handle those types of scenarios for the candidate?

Speaker B: There are two parts here. Um, so when the candidate is setting up what kind of job he wants, this is a very detailed explanation what, what he's looking for in the company, what kind of job preferences he is having. That data is being communicated back with the recruiter AI. So from a, if you're a company, you come in, you put up your job posting, you set up all the screening criterias that you have that you're looking for in a person. Like you want certain skill sets within the salary range, location, and you can put in a lot of screening questions that you want. So it is level one screening and there is level two screening. So level one screening, say suppose mostly or yes or no questions. Hey, are uh, you immediately available for this job? What's your expected salary range, location? What is your status of visa? Uh, few questions that you have and do you have skill sets in this experience in this? Are you interested in job in this? Our company is in this industry. Are you interested in this or not? So many questions are there. So the basic yes or no questions, custom questions, maybe where you need text and all that, that all can be done in the very initial stage itself with the screening questions that we put up and the AI can communicate that, get that data, uh, from the candidate's application, uh, what he has filled up within optimized scope, uh, environment. What happens is if the candidate copilot is not able to answer that question, the copilot goes back to the candidate and says, hey, this data we don't have about uh, your preference. Say suppose, uh, there's a question out there that says, hey, why do you want to join this company? What excites you about this? If that answer isn't there in the data that he has fed in, that question would be gone back to the candidate and asked and uh, the answer would be collected back from them. And uh, the way this medium works is we have a In Optima itself we have a voice calling bot, we have a text message based bot, we have an email board, we have a WhatsApp based bot. So all three mediums we communicate with the candidates, get those missing question answers back and then again that data gets added onto the candidate file as well as well as it gets communicated back with the employer who has asked this question. So that is level one screening we're able to do. So basic HR screening is all being done. Now once as an employer you say hey, uh, just imagine you have like say,000 applications. AI has saved you a lot of money and a lot of time and yet and directly I told you that hey, within this thousand these five are the top matching and you as a human recruiter or somebody from the company side decide okay, these five are there, let's now push them to level two screening. Now within the level two screening also you can choose whether it can be a human based screening or you want AI to do another level of skill based testing or anything of that sort of. So there again you have as a, as an employer you have a choice. Hey, I would like to use any standard third party tools like say hacker ranked skill set test. There's so many companies out there in Optumare you can feed in for level two. If you have any other third party tests that you rely and you believe this is the testing format and questions you can integrate with them, send in those and your AI recruiter will actually get conduct those tests for that candidate. Uh, let it be through a video interview or an in person video uh interview there and then make sure if a there is a recording of that and the person takes that test and then the test results are again given back to the employer. Now employer again can see the level 2 testing that is being done and then now, then later on they can decide whether to have a human interview or what are the next steps. They can custom design all of that. So when from an employer point of view it helps a lot. Um, first another point I would like to clarify from an employer's very uh, important to your audience is that the AI applications are here to stay and AI ah applications will come. Now like Optima, the way we are doing, there are few other companies also doing it and we also know so many other candidates also using a lot of AI application process or other stuff happening. So the recruiters and the employers on the company side have to be prepared for this future. So now you put up a job posting you, you should expect at least 500 or a thousand applications Coming in, many of them will be through AI. Uh, already there, I would say more than 50% are coming through AI applications. I believe the future you're going to have more and more of these applications coming in. It's only going to increase. You probably get to 95, 99 very soon. Uh uh, at that percentage level is very very soon. And you'll have as an employer you are going to have a flood load of applications coming in very very fast. Old days of you manually reviewing through thousands uh, of applications are all gone. I at least believe the old days where you put up a job posting, you had to spend money to advertise for a job like do it as a sponsored job or a pay per click model. I think that will go away very very soon. Uh, you going and doing ads on all of these places is going to go very very soon. So all of these things are big changes that are happening. As an employer you uh, two things would happen. One, expect you would have flood load of AI applications coming in. That's number one. Number two, you need to have an outbound campaign through these AI agents and AI recruiters that optimare also has AI recruiter and agents where we AI agents, AI recruiters go behind the matching candidates ourselves even if that person is not there within the Optima ecosystem the candidate, you have a matching candidate. Matching candidate is not within optimize ecosystem. Uh optimizer designed. The AI recruiter is designed in a way that hey, we have these matching candidates which are who have not applied. AI recruiters can follow up with them saying that hey, are you interested in this job? These are the questions. Looks like your profile matches with these requirements and we can, we can follow up and get their applications also. These are the two big changes that I believe that employers need to be prepared moving forward.

Speaker A: Yeah, I think it's um, it's interesting because I think that the, I think from speaking to so many talent acquisition professionals and talent leaders and founders, I think that there's a feeling that people, companies would prefer candidates not to use AI. They want to see that a candidate has like I suppose proactively visited their website, thought wow, that looks like a great company to work for and then spent time with their application. And whether that's right or not is subjective. But I guess what you're saying is it doesn't matter because this is happening, this is going to happen and this is the way. So we just need to kind of accept it and roll it because AI is like many things that AI is impacting it's not going to slow down, is it?

Speaker B: Yeah. So see, there is one wishful thinking. And what is going to happen practically as employers, I would say we have to be prepared that you're going to get a lot of AI applications. That is the future percentage is only going to keep increasing as time goes on. We have to have tools on our end to combat and be prepared for that situations. So you get thousand applications. You can't have a human go through thousand applications now. Now you need to have an AI on, on the employer side to, to screen through all those applications. Uh, that can do at least all the, whatever is the level one screening that can be done. All of that should be done. So in Optima, at least we have designed again an AI recruiter which can reach out to the candidates via email, via phone calls, via text messages, to WhatsApp messages, these mediums. We have already done whatever is the screening criteria, the basic level one screening criteria, all of that. The AI recruiter is able to do much more and eliminate 95% of the human, human work that is required in screening them.

Speaker A: I think what's. Sorry, go on, Larry. Sorry, carry on.

Speaker B: No, no, go ahead.

Speaker A: I was going to say, I was just thinking, I think one of the, I suppose more of the challenge now for, if you look at the candidate side of things is that you have to be very strategic and thoughtful around what you're listing on your resume. Um, because you. I see a lot of resumes, you know, I've seen so many. And sometimes you have to interpret what they mean or interpret what they've done from it. And if you're doing that one by one, you kind of can do that and you think, okay, I'll book in a call with this person and I'll find out more. But if we're using an AI filter, uh, you need to be incredibly specific as a candidate as to what you've done, what you've used and why, because otherwise it's not going to get picked up in, you know, via an AI filter, is it?

Speaker B: Yes, so that's, that's a very good point. So, yeah, so the, the candid point of view also they have to be prepared that there is going to be an AI recruiter on the other end that's going to filtering. So this is a very important point. Their resumes and their cover letters, everything have to be rewritten, um, and be prepared in a way that they say, give an example of what their preferences are. So at Optima, that is what we do also, we, uh, do Help the candidates screen through the resume, filter through the resume and help them say hey, this is what can we do? Can we rewrite their resume? Or we do give some basic sessions to the candidate in terms of the resume, in terms of their cover letter. All of them come in part of their package too. So and how we can answer some basic screening questions and based on the preferences of the candidate, all of that is taken care. Another thing that we also provide within Optumer is that um, there are sometimes candidates who are looking for two different complete sets of roles. Say suppose they are, uh, for example they're okay for a marketing role, uh, digital marketing. And the other end they're okay for say being in media, doing say live reporting, other stuff. If they have completely two different Personas or interests, they can create two different copilots within the same product. So for different, different opportunities they want to explore something else. Maybe they have till now being in a different field and then don't switch to another field. Then we help them create another Persona, uh, another copilot for the next set of object matching jobs that are going behind. So that again is again an option because I see a lot of candidates who are open for saying hey, I was doing this so and so in this industry till now this job, but I want to change this. So don't use my resume or I want to go attack this second sector. So help us do this so that all again we help them create a second Persona or a second copilot. You can see for that segment too.

Speaker A: So yes, what are some of the risks you see uh, with using AI driven tools to make hiring decisions, especially around things like bias or transparency.

Speaker B: To be honest with you, with AI things have become more clearer, uh, or less biased I would say. See there is uh, because the it is, it is very logical the way an AI thinks. It's all programming and parameters the way you plug in. Now I'm actually seeing a lot less bias because when the job description comes in it's text and the company saying hey, I want this and this skill sets in this person. This is the salary and this is the location and it's very clear cut black and white steps that is coming in. The AI is taking that and it is giving some basic options for a recruiter or an employer to modify what exactly they want in it and uh, what are their preferences. They're programming that into it and then based on that black and white instructions, the, the matching in all the applications, again the matching percentages are coming out saying hey, this person is meeting your 100% criteria, uh, of what all you, you put in, this person is meeting 100%. This person is 100 metric. So there, now I see that if that percentage wasn't there on your requirement anything then in the past there could be a lot of bias going in, could be through different, different. It depends upon who is the recruiter and how they're looking at it. Now it is very less biasing. In fact, I would say, um, I had, I had instances where uh, if there was no percentage number there saying 100% matching or 95% matching, 99% matching, that application would have actually been left out. They would have gone for a lesser qualified person because of some other bias going in there. Now that it's purely matched against the black and white text or the requirement that they're giving, the bias has gone down a lot. Uh, moving forward, how do you see

Speaker A: the role, if we think about AI taking on this and other elements of the recruitment process, obviously the manual and repetitive work, how do you see the role of the recruiter changing over the next kind of five years or so?

Speaker B: Um, I would say efficiency is definitely going to increase. So uh, the way I see this is, think of this way is as a company and as a recruitment operations, imagine a world, and very soon, at least in Optumare, within our ecosystem we're able to do it, is that you put up a requirement within a matter of hours, if not days. You're instantly able to get so many applications coming in and you can schedule some interviews. If you want to have a human interview before you finalize, yes, that probably will slow down the process a little bit. But what used to take say two months, three months to fill a vacancy, you could probably fill that in just two or three days itself. So speed of filling up vacancies is going to increase a lot. And that increase in hiring speed delivers, uh, helps companies increase their bottom lines too. Imagine somebody wanted to hire a 200 seater call center. Okay? Previously it used to take at least six months to fill up that entire call center with 200 members. Now with AI, you could fill that entire 200 seater call center within just a matter of weeks time. It's, it's only up on how many, how many interviews, human interviews you want to have or how many people. It's, it's, that is your limitation. That's it. Applications will come instantly and you could fill that up. So instead of six months of filling up a call center, you are now able to fill that up in say weeks. Time. Imagine how much bottom line effect it will have. So how much uh, you, you will have impact on the profitability of the operations and how. So companies are going to be very more profitable now. Faster results are going to come down two quarters delayed. What the project could not be finished in a matter of weeks time. So these are all going to add a lot. So their efficiency is going to increase. That could drive. Whenever efficiency of a role increases and their speed increases, that drives profit. I always see that there's their salaries going up or their value in the company going up, uh, much faster. So that good times. Um, I always give this example to my uh, to people generally out there when they say, when they're scared of hey AI is coming in, it's going to increase their efficiency. We are scared what's going to happen. Always tell them with a simple example that let's look at how the automobile revolution came in. Uh, the combustion engine revolution. Let's think about that before, let's take just the New York, uh, before there were automobiles and combustion engines there, there used to be horse carts and wagons and being transported, they were close to 100,000 uh, people using horse carts and horse car drivers and stable workers. Maximum, uh, a horse cart could probably take in what maybe like say 500 pounds for a maximum of 30 miles. Now because of a combustion engine, think of a big semi truck or a truck taking in close to £450,000 worth of cargo and they could drive maybe like say 2,000 miles in a day. Also the efficiency has become almost 100x. Yes, one truck is now transporting 500 carts worth of uh, goods. Like it's probably taken away jobs of 500 cart drivers and stable workers and all of that, one single driver, uh, semi truck driver is replacing 50 carts uh, worth of employment. But look at it on a bigger picture because we have so much efficiency being added in. Because there is trucks being there, you have, because you have a truck there which is sort of efficient. You have the highway industry, you have the oil industry, you have the automotive manufacturing industry. Then you have the industries to service those automotives. And because transportation has become so much faster and at low cost, you have such a big logistic uh, industry and a delivery industry. What used to probably say 50 years ago used to take say probably two months to transport from one end of the country to another end of the country now is probably being done in a day's time. That adds faster bottom lines and faster turnarounds and sales times. So this is going to. Whenever there is an increase in efficiency because of technology. I always see that you'll get a lot of better opportunities coming in. Uh, it's always good for the future and obviously increase the increase in efficiency is always going to boost the economy.

Speaker A: Absolutely. Final question Larry. What's one thing that TA leaders or talent acquisition leaders should do today to future proof their hiring strategy in a uh, inevitably AI focused world?

Speaker B: The same thing I would say is be AI prepared. Have yourself acute yourself that you are going to get AI, uh applications. You are going to be flooded with thousands of AI applied candidates. That is inevitable. Future coming in. You need to have an AI recruiter in your side and have uh, sought those filter those thousands of candidates. Have a recruiter in your hands. Not only that looks at the resume but communicates back with the end candidates, asks your screening questions, uh, so that in real time. Also if you need to get say, answers from specific answers from the candidate, uh, saying uh, through calls, emails or text messages, get it done so that you at least know that yes, the AI might have applied it, but the candidate is responding back to me in the call or the text or by email so that no, yes, I know that this person is interested, he's looking for a job, this meets the requirements. Now let's schedule the interviews and all that stuff. So be very prepared. Have an AI recruiter on your side is what I would say.

Speaker A: Larry, thank you so much for being a part of talent and growth.

Speaker B: Thank you. Thank you Paul. Thanks very.

Speaker A: Much. I hope you enjoyed that episode. However you feel about AI like in all the other areas it's impacting, it is inevitable, it is here to stay. So we need to learn to live with it and to adapt and uh, be as efficient as possible. Um, but look, if you're interested in being a part of talent and growth or know somebody who should be on the show, drop me a message. Paul, talent and growth.co.uk Cheers. See you next time.