“Artificial intelligence is an amplification of people. On average we save recruiters 5 hours per day by reducing repetitive tasks. Those five hours that they spent on repetitive tasks can now be used to keep in touch with the candidates. We believe that AI does not replace the creative skills and human criteria that are necessary in the selection processes. Our thesis is how technology works with the human and not a replacement”, says Mateo Cavasotto, CEO of Emi Labs, an Argentine startup that has just announced that it received an investment of US $ 2 million to develop its personnel selection system.
A platform based on AI
Emi Labs, which in addition to offices in Argentina has in Mexico, also operates in Chile and Uruguay plans to expand first to Brazil and then to the rest of Latin America, is a conversational platform based on Artificial Intelligence that serves as a meeting point between candidate and company throughout the entire process.
Recently, it was selected from more than 12,000 startups around the world by Y-Combinator, the most important global accelerator that worked for example with Airbnb and Dropbox, and received an investment led by Khosla Ventures, one of Venture Capital’s funds most important of Silicon Valley. This capital will be used to strengthen operations in Latin America and invest in the development of the platform through the growth of the Technology and Machine Learning team.
The mission
“Our mission as a company is to automate processes, operational and repetitive tasks. Help companies that hire a large volume of candidates to do it more efficiently, focusing on the candidate, understanding that in these massive searches there are thousands of candidates who are running, that there are thousands who do not have an answer, who cannot ask in what does the job consist of, that they don’t have an answer of whether they were left or not”, says Cavasotto.
And he explains: “These companies when they hire positions for branches receive thousands of candidates. They had to evaluate a person for the data they had in the curriculum, which does not say much, and then call them to validate if they were interested in the position they were looking for, the company validate the conditions of those candidates and then coordinate interviews. A lot of time-consuming and repetitive tasks that human resources teams had to do. What we think is that there is an opportunity with technology to implement artificial intelligence through a chat so that companies can talk to 100% of the candidates”.
The perks of AI
The CEO of Emi Labs believes that thanks to Artificial Intelligence “it is no longer necessary to read the CVs, because the platform is the first point of contact between all the candidates that are running and all the companies and then when a candidate is running it is redirected to a chat where the position is explained, answers them and asks them the questions, to make a pre-filter, and then only there to coordinate an interview with the human resources team”.
Benefits, according to Cavasotto, there are several. “The most direct is to hire better candidates and faster. Emi reduces the entire process by 80%. Second is the quality; because before you relied on a static CV, you did not get to talk to all the candidates and with Emi you have the possibility that if 15,000 candidates are running you can talk to everyone, know them in depth and understand who are the best for the position”. Another important point, and highly valued by companies that prioritize their role as an employer brand, is the candidate’s experience. And it is that a potential candidate is a potential client, and vice versa. Emi currently works with banks, retail and mass consumption chains, and consultants, among other large employers.
Strategies, companies and investments
Casavotto argues that recruitment is a global problem and that is why there also points the company’s strategy. “The investment is going to be used to make the team grow in quality. And to explore and risk in new regions. Today we are in Argentina, in Mexico there is another office, and next year we are going to Brazil. We also have clients in Chile and Uruguay”, he says and remarks that“ Latin America is a super interesting market”. “The plan for the next year and a half is to strengthen ourselves in the region and grow. We see the 5-year plan both giving value to companies and candidates”, he adds.
And he concludes: “We want to give candidates more tools to develop why they remain or not in a position. And on the company side we see ourselves growing from the recruitment side. We are entering into everything that is internal selection. What drives us crazy is employability”.
Also published on Medium.