Great technologies are never complete.
Instead, there’s a cycle of endless reinvention — we bring people in as close as possible for feedback, and then update and improve the user experience, which naturally leads to a simultaneous increase in user expectations. Innovation, by its very nature, is perpetual.
And paradoxically, the best innovations aren’t the most complex, but actually the most simple. At least, they come across as simple; creating an interface that’s simple but effective is harder than it looks. But when done right, it’s incredibly powerful. And incredibly human.
Paradox has recently been working on Contextual Conversations, the latest evolution of conversational AI that leverages generative AI to lend humanity towards job applications. Here’s what it means for the candidate and recruiter experience.
Why it’s so important that we design our experiences to be “conversational.”
Conversation is the original user interface. Since humans could think and speak, we’ve been using conversations to solve problems and get things done. That desire to converse is inherent.
I'm learning a lot about this intrinsic human experience now that I have a toddler. My little man is just now learning to speak his first words, but he can already pick up on the context of what I communicate to him. He understands my mannerisms, he understands my tone of voice. When I ask him for the time, he even looks at his wrist! Keep in mind, he doesn’t have a watch yet…
That’s a magical moment for any parent. Of course, it’s not really magic, it’s just who we are. We have instinctually become accustomed to conversation, to the point where we prefer conversation to almost anything else — especially when we want to get something done.
Over the course of my tech career, we’ve seen ourselves obfuscate away from that; everything became wholly centered around clickable interfaces. Which worked for tech-savvy people who were more comfortable using a keyboard than a pen. But the experiences were no longer grounded in human nature. So not everyone immediately understood, or liked, it. A very common criticism of bloated software sprouted up: "This is too many clicks.”
Conversation is the original user interface. Since humans could think and speak, we’ve been using conversations to solve problems and get things done. That desire to converse is inherent.
And if we distill hiring all the way to its core, it’s really just a series of many conversations. With conversational AI, we can tap into the most core aspects of human nature to make the hiring process more intuitive, contextual, and empathetic.
Ironically, our relationship with technology will start returning to more human experiences that have been intuitive to us for millenia.
How Contextual Conversations compare to what we’ve previously built.
We've always designed our product to be both effective and delightful. From the beginning, our north star has been to convert candidates through the hiring process as quickly as possible while putting a smile on their face.
But we plateaued. We hit the ceiling of how far traditional machine learning and enhancements to natural language processing were going to take us.
At Paradox, we're committed to continuously reinventing the candidate experience and innovating to help talent teams achieve higher records of excellence. Contextual Conversations are the latest expression of that. One that we've been building on for the last ten years, and one that we’re excited will help us break through that plateau.
Contextual Conversations are powered by our proprietary large language model, which we meticulously train on employer branding, specialized client content, and then fine-tune on millions of candidate conversations. As a result, our clients’ assistants are getting significantly better at capturing context and responding in an intuitive way: We’re leveling-up the candidate experience.
And speaking from an emotional level, the whole process is so much more human. The assistant is knowledgeable, can adapt and contextualize to the candidate's inquiries, represents the brand like the very best employees, and responds with empathy.
Think about talking with a real person, where conversation is a rapid, dynamic, ping-ponging cadence back and forth. We’ve now achieved that level of performance. Contextual Conversations keep up just like you're texting with a human.
How Contextual Conversations improve the candidate experience.
The application process with our conversational assistant was already memorable, and now it will be even more memorable. Because interactions become more pleasant and bespoke.
When I ask a question, the AI assistant is now able to answer that question with excellent accuracy and a contextualized, personalized answer in direct response to me. And as we progress on our vision, we will get to a place where content and jobs will be specifically curated for candidates — their preferences, their experience, and their future career ambitions.
What we’ve seen is that Contextual Conversations keep candidates interested, engaged, and excited about potential job opportunities. Which tangibly translates to more candidates at the top of the funnel, and a much higher conversion rate. You’re losing fewer qualified candidates to drop-off, all because you’ve empowered candidates to take control of their own journey.
This all kind of adds up, right? If we make the candidate experience more human — more intuitive to human nature — it makes sense that candidates are going to want to engage with it more. Because they feel heard. They don’t feel like they’re getting stock responses that every other candidate is going to get. It feels much more personal.
And in other words, conversations with AI now have an empathetic component.
Think about the important moments in life: graduating, falling in love. Getting a new job is definitely up there. So it’s important that we’re able to recognize and respond to any emotions properly to maintain that human element. To make the candidate feel safe and supported. If a candidate is expressing nervousness, we want to have a reassuring slant in the conversation. If the candidate is excited, we want to let them know we feel the same way.
How Contextual Conversations improve the recruiter experience.
What I really want to focus on for the recruiters is trust. Every time we’re building new products — especially with AI — trust is at the forefront. We want recruiters to be confident that the software is going to work, and augment how they work. Because when they really trust their own tools, they’re going to be more effective at their job.
So how do you build trust? Well, it comes with consistency. It comes with performance. And Contextual Conversations are both more consistent and more efficient at navigating candidates through the hiring process. And that has tangible benefits for recruiters.
For starters, they’re going to save more time. Previously, when assistants would get stumped, candidates could get stuck into a loop that would force manual recruiter intervention. But now, the assistants are smarter, those questions will be answered, and recruiters can spend less time in the software.
They can also trust that the conversational assistant is representing the brand faithfully. Hiring managers and recruiters can have confidence that the AI is only referencing what it has been given knowledge of, and can view any time how that response is contextualized to best serve the candidate experience.
We’ve invested heavily into the AI guardrails. Imagine putting your best recruiter in the position of answering all candidate questions. That recruiter is going to be incredibly knowledgeable, adjust their answer to directly and meaningfully respond to the candidate, and also represent the brand elegantly and tactfully in all scenarios.
And hiring managers and recruiters will be able to have assistant conversations on their own, as we are democratizing access for teams to have their very own subject matter expert in recruiting, market intelligence, talent psychology, and operations.
It's a big mission for our teams at Paradox. Again, it all comes down to trust — and we will continue working on winning continued trust that our software is making recruiters’ lives easier, giving hours back to them every week, and helping them achieve excellence.
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