BEIJING -- Chinese tech human resource company JYI has secured tens of millions of yuan (millions of dollars) from Dark Horse Ventures through equity financing.
According to JYI, the new money will be used mainly for AI research and development activities, while some will be directed to services as the startup seeks to attract tech-savvy investors.
JYI utilizes AI and robotic automation technology to create a diverse range of products. The company's flagship product AI RecruiTas has been showcased in a software-as-service video. The service claims employment interview judgment accuracy of 90% or higher.
A team of JYI staffers well versed in the human resources industry leveraged their high-level specialized skills to design a product that is capable of quantitatively evaluating interviewees' answers and behavior.
AI RecruiTas, an SaaS-type AI video interview service, has established JYI's core competence by combining recognition capabilities with pattern and data accumulation.
The service is based on the "Talent DNA" AI scoring model of deep learning, all-industry knowledge graph and the situational judgment and conversation management model through sentence-level natural language processing.
JYI CEO Fang Xiaolei predicted that the use of AI will increase in the recruitment industry, resulting in the automation of the entire process from sending interview invitations to applicants to interviews and personnel management.
Fang also pointed out that as the 2003 SARS outbreak brought about changes in online shopping, the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020 has also brought about big changes in the entire recruitment industry.
Changes in the Chinese market were particularly noticeable.
Before the COVID-19 emerged, applicants and recruiters were both unaccustomed to the online interview process. But after it began to spread, places for recruitment and meetings transitioned to online ones to prevent infections.
As a result, video conference software products such as Tencent Meeting and Zoom have grown explosively. With the proliferation of video calls, it has become easier for JYI and other SaaS-type AI interview service providers to verify their products and solutions.
AI RecruiTas has now begun to be widely used in five industries -- online education, retail, medical products, fast-moving-consumer-goods and finance -- securing close partner customers in each industry.
When it proceeds to the next step in response to market expansion, JYI will ask these customers to try the already verified multimodal algorithm to adjust and make it an optimal model based on the result of the trial.
As a result, the time to customize a proof of concept, or PoC, for each customer will be significantly cut to one week from one month in the past.
With the improvement of recruitment efficiency, the role of human resources departments is no longer limited to recruiting personnel and managing their remuneration.
Further, more and more CEOs are beginning to expect personnel departments to contribute to enhancing their companies' productivity from the viewpoint of human resources.
But the reality is that personnel departments are very busy every day doing repetitive recruitment-related jobs and they cannot afford to spend time and energy thinking about corporate strategies.
The introduction of AI makes it possible to automate 80% of the recruitment process. It also conducts interviews with 90% judgment accuracy possible. As a result, personnel departments' work efficiency and reason for being will be enhanced.
As personnel departments are freed from the traditional recruitment process, they can focus more on organization management, assist their companies' strategic decision-making and contribute to boosting organization productivity.
The introduction of AI in recruitment not only meets companies' recruitment needs but also responds to the trend of functional changes in human resources departments.
"The automation of interviews and recruitment has a highly significant value for companies that interview and recruit huge numbers of people or companies that recruit professional engineers," said Hu Xiang, Dark Horse Ventures' management partner, in commenting on the venture capital company's investment in JYI.
"But at the same time, requirements for automation capabilities are also very high," Hu said. "I have high expectations for JYI as it is one of the few companies that can provide reliable AI interviews combining cutting-edge AI technology and a system of evaluation by humans."
36Kr, a Chinese tech news portal founded in Beijing in 2010, has more than 150 million readers worldwide. Nikkei announced a partnership with 36Kr on May 22, 2019.
For the Japanese version of this story, click here.
For the Chinese version, click here.
