From 50 initial competitors, five of the most innovative recruiting startups in the world were chosen to pitch it out on the main stage of Hiring Success. Watch now!

The first annual Recruiting Startup of the Year competition from Smartrecruiters saw fledgling recruiting companies from Germany to Washington State battle it out on social media to see who could leverage their networks for the most votes, to be one of five finalists to make their pitch to the 1,000+ TA leaders and executives at Hiring Success 18.

The campaigning was fierce, but from 50 initial contestants, JobPal, Recruitsy, Talent Savant, and Recruiterly distinguished themselves as especially promising in their field and flew to San Francisco to make their case for first place at the third annual #hire18.

Before they took the stage, the startups had to meet their “Shark Tank”, aka the six judges who would determine the winner: Matt Gallo, partner at Insight Ventures; Ted Wilson, partner at Silicon Valley Bank; Tejas Maniar, Partner at Mayfield; Jeff Diana, Investor and high-growth consultant; and Rebecca Carr, Smartrecruiters’ VP of product .

The Prize was $10,000 in media spend from HR.com, an article by Talent Tech Labs’ executive Director Jonathan Kestenbaum, and a gold level sponsorship to next year’s Hiring Success Conference.

First up, JobPal. A builder of recruiting chatbots with a custom language processor built especially for recruiting. They leverage messaging applications like Whatsapp and Facebook Messenger to make the candidate experience smoother and save recruiters time.

Judge Jeff Diana said he was impressed by the 15 percent conversion rate these bots get on average, but cautioned against losing focus. “They scared me a little when they talked about moving into the broader employee experience. My advice is to go crush the recruiting market first.”

Up next we had Recruitsy. It’s Yelp meets recruiting: a public rating system of recruiters and recruitment agencies. Candidates can see reviews for individual recruiters as well as agencies, and agencies can use the platform to build their brand, target problem areas, and reach out to candidates.

Of Recruitsy, Judge Matt Gallo was convinced of the need, his only question was how they would gain critical mass?  “In these reviewer marketplaces, it tends to be a winner take all or winner take most. How will you grow quickly enough to put out competitors?”

Following these recruiter focused tools we take a look at Honeypot.io, the job board for developers and other computer engineers that turns the application process upside down by making the employers apply to candidates who are vetted by the site. Established in October 2016, this platform already has over 50,000 candidates (all of which are only on the site if they are actively seeking work) with 1,000 more signup weekly.

Honeypot.io presented an interesting conundrum to Judge Ted Wilson. “I think the approach of candidate first is unique and clearly developers are willing to sign up,” said Wilson, “but usually we talk about passive candidates as the best candidates. How do we change the narrative and convince employers that the candidates who are raising their hands for jobs are really the ones to look at?”

Recruiterly is a brand-building and social network tool for recruiters and recruiting agencies, so employers come to them. The goal is to change the perception of the recruiting industry and allow recruiters to showcase their skills.

Judge Tejas Maniar was on board for the product but he wanted to see more passion. “Recruiterly established the need superbly but I want to see a double-click on the enthusiasm and excitement.”

To wrap up we had a presentation from Talent Savant, a mission-based recruiting agency that answers staffing needs without the hard sell, outrageous prices, or irrelevant resumes. The goal is simple, get people jobs and get employers the workers they need – it’s called ‘pro-human hiring!’

Talent Savant was the only no-tech startup pitching for Recruiting Startup of the Year, but judge Rebecca Carr felt they held their own. “I think it’s great how this startup puts forth its personality,” she said. “Their brand of mission-driven recruiting gives them a unique flair and cuts through the noise.”

(Talent Savant presenting with the Recruiting Fairy)

After the presentations, the judges deliberated live on stage. The startups were appraised on the criterion of vision, do they have a mission that people can get behind? –  influence, is their idea innovative enough to break through? – and presentation, can they make people believe in their company in just five minutes?

In the end, Honeypot was awarded first place! The judges were impressed by how this job board has been able to turn candidates into active players in the employment search and want to see how the platform grows.

“In the world of startups,” says CEO and founder of SmartRecruiters, Jerome Ternynck in his closing remarks “there are no winners or losers, only hustlers working to change their world, creating and grabbing opportunities, embracing effort, and learning from every failure as well as every success – that’s really what it’s all about.

Declared obsolete once Zuckerberg’s attempt went kaput in January, at least in the recruiting space, chatbots are not only holding on, but thriving.

They called it M. It was Facebook’s virtual assistant. Offered through Messenger to a select group of Californians in August 2015. It was supposed to trigger actions based on keywords in chat windows. Users could make dinner reservations, or book a vacation, and if the query became too complicated, an on-call human would quietly take over. The idea was to help the AI learn, and eventually release the feature to all Facebook users, but money-sucking M never made it past beta testing. It was put to sleep in January this year, only ever having reached 10,000 users. But does M’s failure to launch speak to the extinction chatbots as a whole, as no less an authority as WIRED proclaimed recently?

If we take anything from the HR technology conference Unleash’s Startup Competition, held March 21 in London, it’s that chatbots are alive and kicking. At least in the recruiting world. Despite the array of flashy AIs, ARs, and VRs that made up the contestant pool of 30 startups, vying for the grand prize of 30,000 GBP last week, it was two good old-fashioned chatbot platforms, Jobpal and RoboRecruiter, who scored the highest with the Unleash judges.

WIRED’s eulogy for chatbots is predicated on the idea that voice assistants like Amazon’s Alexa are more effective and less costly. M always needed expensive human labor because people could and were encouraged to ask it anything, whereas Alexa’s purview is much narrower, with most user requests being simple commands like “Alexa, turn off the lights.”

The problem of scope is not so relevant to recruiting chatbots, however, since tasks are easily defined as interactive faq’s, re-engagement of former candidates, and scheduling interviews. Even if only those three tasks were automated, the time saved is significant, up to 40 percent, as estimated by CEO of ideal.com Somen Mondal.

“Imagine,” writes Mondal, “if all [those admin tasks] was automated out. That’s two out of every fiver hours back to the human recruiter.”

To get more insight into why Talent Acquisition hearts chatbots, we caught up with London Unleash Startup Competition judge, Carl-Christoph Fellinger – TA expert and on-the-ground recruiter with over a decade of practical experience – to pick his brain about why, despite being given last rites, two of the six finalists were chatbots. (And three of the remaining four had chatbot capabilities.)

“I judge the startups on whether they address a real need,” explained Fellinger. “I want to know they understand the root cause of the problem they propose to fix, and if their solution is actually applicable.”

The need for automation in recruiting is clear, and an Allegis survey found in 2016 that 66 percent of job candidates are comfortable using a chatbot for the first steps of their application process.

“Communication with candidates causes a significant amount of work for companies,” Fellinger observes, “but it’s also important to businesses that applicants have a good experience, so chatbots are a good solution.”

Anecdotally, it seems that people applying for jobs are more comfortable with chatbots when asking initial questions, especially about salary. Anna Ott, head of Unleash Startup ecosystem and the director of London Unleash’s startup competition, found that in her year-long experiment with a chatbot called hubbot (built by Jobpal), the most common question was some version of ‘Where do I get the most money?’

“ [With Chatbots] the power of information extraction is entirely in the hands of our candidates,” says Ott, “whereas in a traditional recruitment process, I as a company would have been in charge of what information I provide to a candidate.”

But if chatbots are so great, save recruiters time, and are loved by candidates, what are they doing in startup competition? It would seem the technology is already perfected. But not quite: 70 percent of chatbots fail, Facebook found in February 2017. Why? Usually for one of three reasons: their purpose isn’t clearly defined, the goals are too ambitious, or it’s launched prematurely.

We are still a ways away from the ‘Google’ of chatbots, but recruiting wants to be the industry to find it.

Fellinger points out the obvious: “Chatbots satisfy the need for dialogue with candidates and save the company money.”

And the latter, more than any buzzword, is the most exciting thing for most businesses.

Retire ‘what’s your greatest weakness?’ from your interview repertoire, and try one of these,  fresh from the mouths of the brightest new recruiting startups.

Candidates are sick of stock questions and hiring managers are equally unenthused about cookie-cutter answers.  We turned to some of our Recruiting Startups of the Year nominees to help you if you’re in an interview-question rut.

We selected 10 of the 50 recruiting startups vying for first place at  Hiring Success 18, in San Francisco, March 12-14 to give us their favorite interview questions – the ones that really help you get to know how someone thinks.

Once you’re done reading, cast your RSOTY ballot here before March 1st. Your vote determines which six are flying to California to pitch their ideas to 1000+ Talent Acquisition leaders and puts them in the running for the grand prize.

One of these six will be selected by a group of C-Suite experts and industry analysts for the ultimate prize of a Gold Sponsorship to Hiring Success 19, worth $10,000, which includes a branded booth and dedicated demo-room for potential customers to interact with their product.

Relocate.me is a job relocation platform for software developers seeking long-term employment opportunities abroad.

Founder and CEO, Andrew Stetsenko

One of my most beloved interview questions is, ‘what’s your favorite book and what are you reading now?’

I always try to ask questions that go beyond a someone’s professional traits. It’s always interesting to find out what they do outside of work –  do they play sports, do they volunteer, do they like to travel? These questions give me a sense of a candidate as a whole person beyond just checking off skills. 

HeyJobs is a candidate sourcing platform for high-volume hiring demands. Through tech – and data- enable performance marketing for jobs and a modern application solution, HeyJobs delivers significantly more quality candidates for clients than their existing solutions.

Founder and CEO  Marius Luther 

“Tell me about the topic you are most passionate about in life. In 3 minutes, help me become an expert in that topic by explaining it.”

I love this question because it helps me find out a) how passionate/driven the person is, b) how logical he can explain, c) whether he is an exciting personality. Also, this way I learn about a new topic every interview. 

GoodTime.io is the first Talent Operations Platform that provides intelligent interview scheduling for recruiting teams. We seamlessly schedule high-volume phone interviews and complex onsite interviews, allowing companies to scale efficiently while focusing on higher value talent acquisition activities.

CEO, Ahryun Moon

“What kind of advice would you give to your current manager to help them grow into a better manager?”

Recruitsy is the smartest way to connect candidates and hiring managers with the best recruiters. We bring the candidate experience to the forefront with the first-to-market public rating and review platform built exclusively for the staffing and recruiting industry that features over 30,000+ recruiting agencies.

Founder and CEO, Kurt Smith

What is your ‘why to buy message’?  Which translates into their elevator pitch and 30 second sale for why I should hire them. Our personal/career brand is everything and we should be prepared to quickly describe our value proposition. I’m looking for what makes this person unique relative to their peers. It’s also a question that they typically haven’t rehearsed coming into the interview.

Are you an experienced recruiter looking for a great employer? Are you a great employer looking for an experienced recruiter? In either case, Recruiterly could be the one-stop platform for you.

 Cofounder, Jamie Robshaw

A favourite ‘type’ of question is one that challenges the industry without bias and is asked with the entire purpose of working towards a better solution. One question we recently asked a series of some of the top global recruitment industry influencers was to call ‘bullshit’ on one myth in recruitment. That evoked some great responses and lead to some very interesting discussions. There are so many strong feelings about the misconceptions in the industry…on both sides of the fence! 

JobPal builds chatbots for the recruiting context and industry with a strong focus on user experience.

Founder, Luc Dudler

As a first question I always ask: ‘Regardless of this conversation, our company and your current job what do you want to do professionally as a next step?’ You can get a lot from it. 

Ratedly monitors anonymous employee review websites and sends you alerts when new ones are posted online.

Founder, Joel Cheesman 

“If you’re in here a year from now resigning, what would be the likely reason?” I love this question because it throws candidates for a loop, forcing them to think on their feet, and gives employers real insight into how to retain that candidate. 

ROIKOI surfaces candidates who are diverse and pre-screened for talent, fit, and likelihood to join a company. ROIKOI customers make 1 hire by contacting just 25 passive candidates in the platform, save $10K per hire, and most notably, improve employee diversity.

CRO, Houston Perry

favorite interview question is: “Do you have any questions for us?” It gives the candidate an opportunity to showcase their knowledge and passion for the company they want to join. 

Journey is a game based interactive simulation which allows companies to quickly screen candidates by assessing skills such as communication, collaboration, leadership, influencing, and emotional intelligence.

CEO, Rajiv Roopan

“Tell me about an interesting problem that you came across and how you went about solving it?” 

Botmatic automates the process from candidates application to employees on-boarding with chatbots.

CEO, Arthur Boivin

My favorite question interview is “Do you have a motto?” Well, one for hiring is “Go to bed with a dream, wake up with a purpose.” Hiring is all about finding purpose between a company and a candidate.