Randstad aims to pre-select 30,000 candidates with its intelligent chatbot

After a year of testing, Randy, Randstad Group's application chatbot has deployed in its 650 offices in France. 

As an extension of digital innovations launched in recent years, including Randstad Youplan, Smartdata or RiseSmart, Randy is addressing candidates to make them live a new recruitment experience, fun and instant, without form or CV. Through an informal discussion, Randy is able to identify technical and behavioral skills in 28 trades, including five in the medical sector. By relying on a learning algorithm, it optimizes the job search and the match between a profile and an offer. In the test phase, in the last six months of 2018, Randy initiated 30,000 conversations and exchanged over 400,000 messages with candidates. With these results, Randy will continue to integrate new profiles to evaluate, over time, more than forty trades. Randy was named chatbot of the year at the 2018 Social Media Grand Prix.

"Randy is one of the most successful recruiting chatbots: where most of these tools only serve to answer limited queries, Randy analyzes candidates' journeys and takes stock of their technical skills, their employability and their soft skills. It incorporates an artificial intelligence that improves the sharpness of its algorithm with each initiated conversation. He has become a key asset in the pre-recruitment phase. Randy is fully committed to our "Tech & Touch" strategy, the belief that the technology and the human must come together. It does not replace consultants, it helps them in the sourcing phase and makes their role even more crucial on the essential phases: those of the interview and the final evaluation of the candidates. Artificial intelligence will play a major role in the future of recruitment. With Randy, we are already helping to draw it."

François Béharel, President of the Randstad Group in France.

Randy was designed in collaboration with Illuin Technology, one of the French references in Artificial Intelligence (AI). It stands out by proposing a gamified pathway, integrating the modules designed by the startup Pymetrics [1] specialized in neuroscience applied to the evaluation of candidates. Available on Facebook Messenger and on the Randstad website, Randy is a new sourcing channel to reach candidates at any time, on their natural channels (computer, tablets, smartphones). It adopts the codes of these new interactive modes of communication: instantaneity, simplicity and transparency.

At the end of the exchange, Randy offers a scoring of the evaluated application to push Randstad consultants to the profiles that best meet their recruitment needs. These are, if they agree, recontacted within 48 hours by a recruitment consultant. They can thus focus on the most strategic dimension of their role: the interview and the final evaluation of applications. That's the relevance of the "Tech & Touch" approach. The association of the chatbot and the consultant allows to offer an unprecedented and effective application experience.

Especially since Randy brings a real added value to the candidates. Through professional QCMs and games adapted to each profession, it gives them a return to hot on their assets. In particular, it analyzes their behavioral skills, an increasingly important issue in the construction of the career path, and pushes them to the relevant offers.

[1] Pymetrics is one of the 15 HR Tech startups included in the Randstad Innovation Fund (RIF) portfolio, Randstad's start-up investment fund.

FOCUS ON RANDY MEDICAL

Randy Medical is a variation of Randy, dedicated to the sourcing and recruitment of candidates in the medical field. The chatbot interacts with candidates on five qualifications: nurse, caregiver, childcare assistant, physiotherapist and doctor.

In the medical field, the shortage of candidates is very strong. The challenge is to identify and recruit new profiles. Randy Médical can target a new generation of health professionals more comfortable with digital environments and used to interact on social networks, foremost among which is the Facebook Messenger instant messenger.

Randy Médical is a new sourcing channel, made available to the consultants of the Appel Médical network and its 150 branches.

In 6 months, during his deployment phase, Randy Medical:

• Initiated nearly 1,800 conversations with new candidates, unknown to Appel Médical,
• Preselected 350, whose profile has been sent to the network consultants,
• Exchanged an average of 17 minutes with each candidate.

The objective of Appel Médical is to pre-recruit at least 1,000 candidates in 2019 through Randy Médical.

SOURCE Randstad
Edited by Katherine Fanning 

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