AI Answered 1.8m Questions w/ Patti Tabris

The AI Revolution in Global Hiring

In this episode of HR’s "Most Dangerous Podcast," Chad and Cheese sit down with Patti Tabris to pull back the curtain on how a global custom

er experience giant manages 20,000 employees across nine countries. Patti shares her journey of moving from a consultant to a "rockstar" innovator, transforming a clunky, high-friction recruiting process into a seamless, AI-driven machine.  

If you’ve ever struggled to justify the cost of new tech or fought against 70% candidate drop-off rates, this conversation is your blueprint for success. Patti reveals how she secured funding for AI by identifying massive waste in legacy systems and turned those savings into a competitive advantage.  

💡 Key Topics & Teasers:

• The 1.8 Million Question Bot

• Killing the 40-Minute Assessment

• From 30% to 90% Conversion

• The "Human" Side of Automation

• Scaling Beyond High-Volume

"As long as there's problems to be solved in Talent Acquisition innovations... I'm always gonna have a job." — Patti Tabris   

It's time we go behind "the curtain". Enjoy!

PART 2 - AI Scheduled 100,000 Interviews

PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION

0:00:26.1 Joel Cheesman: All right, let's do this. You're watching the Chad and Cheese Podcast. I'm your co-host, Joel Cheesman, joined as always by Chad Sowash. And we are chatting with Patti Tabris of ResultsCX. She is the senior director of Talent Acquisition. Patti, welcome to HR's Most Dangerous podcast.

0:00:43.7 Patti Tabris: Great to be here.

0:00:44.6 Joel Cheesman: Great to have you.

0:00:45.3 Chad Sowash: And a return guest.

0:00:46.1 Joel Cheesman: A return guest.

0:00:47.0 Patti Tabris: Great to be here again.

0:00:48.7 Joel Cheesman: Three more and you get a velvet smoking jacket.

0:00:50.7 Patti Tabris: Ooh, I am going to work for that. That's my next goal.

0:00:54.8 Joel Cheesman: Aim high, Patti. Aim high. So a lot of our viewers, the organization is new to them, uh, and you are new to them. So give us the elevator pitch on you and the organization.

0:01:04.7 Patti Tabris: Okay. So I've been in Talent Acquisition for over 20 years, um, working in a variety of different roles. I actually had a consulting firm for quite a few years before I started with ResultsCX and, uh, ResultsCX, uh, brought me on as a consultant, wound up hiring me, and I've been there for over six years now.

0:01:24.2 Chad Sowash: Nice.

0:01:25.8 Patti Tabris: Um, as long as there's problems to be solved in Talent Acquisition innovations, uh, to implement, uh...

0:01:31.4 Chad Sowash: Always problems.

0:01:32.5 Joel Cheesman: It's problems.

0:01:32.9 Chad Sowash: Always gonna have a job.

0:01:33.2 Patti Tabris: Always gonna have a job.

0:01:34.4 Joel Cheesman: ResultsCX.

0:01:35.5 Patti Tabris: Yeah.

0:01:36.6 Joel Cheesman: What the hell do they do?

0:01:38.1 Patti Tabris: CX, call center, um, associates is a lot of our hiring. We are a customer experience company for Fortune 100, Fortune 500 companies that need assistance with their customer service.

0:01:46.6 Joel Cheesman: How many employees are we talking about here, uh?

0:01:55.0 Patti Tabris: Um, we're about 20,000 employees. We're global. About nine... We're in nine countries currently.

0:01:57.4 Chad Sowash: I hope so. 20,000.

0:01:59.8 Joel Cheesman: 20,000.

0:02:02.2 Chad Sowash: So you've been in Talent Acquisition for a minute, right?

0:02:05.4 Patti Tabris: Mm-hmm.

0:02:06.5 Chad Sowash: So watching what's going on with AI and technology today, just the velocity that it's moving, what's exciting you most about it? And second part of the question, what are you starting to implement around new technology?

0:02:19.0 Patti Tabris: Okay. Um, what I'm excited about is that we can use AI to take away the administrative tasks that recruiters have to do. I was a recruiter. My fun part of the job was not trying to set up a candidate for an interview or trying to reach out to them to remind them that they had an interview or help them get through an application or, um, I like talking with the people. And that's what recruiting's all about, is getting to meet as many people to see if they're qualified or not. Something that I've always said along my career is there's no, uh, good or bad company or good or bad candidate. It's just finding the right people for the right jobs. And so with AI, if we can implement AI to do some of that or all of that administrative work, then recruiters can spend more time with candidates and helping them find the right job.

0:03:17.3 Chad Sowash: So what have you rolled out thus far?

0:03:19.3 Patti Tabris: So we've been using, uh, AI, uh, for the last three years. Uh, we started, um, with an assessment that we found that, um, is part of the Paradox package now. Um, it's called Traitify. And that, uh, helped us simplify part of our assessment piece of the journey. And then we looked at how do we simplify some of the other parts. Um, the application was key for us. Um, candidate care. We have candidates coming to our career site asking questions all the time or saving their questions for the recruiters, and then they spend that time in the interview asking about the benefits, about, you know, work culture, about the company. So we have, um, AI, uh, via Paradox doing the, um, candidate care piece for us. So a candidate could come in and chat, ask a question, and Olivia answers, which is our AI, our recruiting assistant. Um, I like to say she's the best employee I've ever hired. Um, but in a year's timeframe, this past 12 months, she's answered 1.8 million questions.

0:04:39.7 Joel Cheesman: Whoa.

0:04:40.2 Chad Sowash: And she doesn't take a day off.

0:04:41.5 Patti Tabris: And she doesn't take... 24/7.

0:04:44.3 Chad Sowash: No sick days. No...

0:04:44.5 Joel Cheesman: She's underpaid. She's underpaid.

0:04:45.2 Patti Tabris: She's amazing.

0:04:46.1 Joel Cheesman: She needs to unionize.

0:04:46.6 Chad Sowash: You were talking about the apply process. What did... What did you change about the apply process?

0:04:51.1 Patti Tabris: So we changed it from a candidate coming in and having to fill out a form and type in their answers.

0:04:57.3 Chad Sowash: How long did it take?

0:04:59.6 Patti Tabris: Um, uh, from a timeframe, it, it... You know, we really weren't able to track how long it took. So I didn't have a lot of strong data or anything. By implementing this and using, uh, a tool like an AI recruiting assistant, now I have all kinds of data. We, uh, we now can see where we're losing candidates and if we are losing them. We've got, uh, 80% conversion rate of someone that hits, on average, someone that hits our career site on a job and chats with Olivia and starts the application to finishing it. They can finish the application in under 6 minutes, 5 minutes.

0:05:40.2 Chad Sowash: And that's mainly through chat or all through chat?

0:05:43.1 Patti Tabris: That's all through chat.

0:05:43.9 Chad Sowash: Wow.

0:05:44.7 Patti Tabris: Um, so a, uh, candidate comes in, looks at our jobs, we drive everyone to our career site, they click apply, uh, our assistant pops up, starts asking them the application questions. We have it programmed and set up so that if they don't... If they're not 18... Everyone should be 18 years to work for us.

0:05:59.9 Joel Cheesman: So screening [0:06:01.1] ____...

0:06:03.5 Patti Tabris: Screen some of that out. Yes, so it handles all of that, right through to offering them the assessment link, if that's part of the position workflow, to scheduling them for an interview, offering them up times on the recruiters' calendars. It's all integrated with our Outlook and our Teams to set up the, um, the interview. She sends them all the link, and then she does the follow-up. If they drop, if they've answered three questions and give us their basic contact information, and then, sometimes candidates are always on their mobile phone. Um, we want to get them where they're, where they're living. And so, I know myself, not applying for jobs, but I'm on my mobile phone standing in line, you know, for Starbucks or for a coffee at Dunkin' Donuts. And then when I get my coffee, I drop. So that happens with candidates doing an application. With the, uh, 24/7 assistant, AI assistant, she reaches right back out to them. "Wanna finish up your application with ResultsCX?"

0:07:05.7 Joel Cheesman: Well, if you've never tried a, uh, Boston cream with that Dunkin' Donuts,

0:07:08.6 Patti Tabris: My favorite donut.

0:07:11.4 Joel Cheesman: I recommend that to you. Wanna go back quickly, yeah, [0:07:13.0] ____ quickly, uh, something you said, I just want to make sure. There are no bad candidates or bad opportunities, just not the right fit. Um, I can tell you as an unemployed podcaster, there are bad candidates 'cause no one, no one will have me. Let's... Let's go back in time a second.

0:07:28.3 Patti Tabris: I think you're, you're in a good place.

0:07:31.5 Joel Cheesman: Thinking of unionizing. Um, I want you to go back in time, the, the days before automation and all these things were going on. We've, we've heard from a lot of organizations that had to pull teeth and twist arms to get new technology implemented. What was it like for you?

0:07:48.0 Patti Tabris: It was challenging, um, because it was new technology. Uh, it wasn't, you know, it was out there, but it wasn't being used, especially in our industry. Um, I like to think of us as one of the people on the forefront in our industry. David, who is my, uh, sales contact with Paradox, who we use for our AI is... It took two years of conversations, and he, he hung in there with me. Um, I had to figure out how we were going to find the funding for it.

0:08:18.1 Chad Sowash: That's the how. How'd you get it?

0:08:19.3 Patti Tabris: So, I was very lucky. Um, I brought up the, uh, assessment piece of it. We were spending a lot of money on an assessment program that we were using that took 40 minutes for the candidates to complete it. Yeah.

0:08:38.8 Joel Cheesman: Drop-off's gotta be crazy.

0:08:39.7 Patti Tabris: For high-volume associate-level positions.

0:08:43.8 Joel Cheesman: Oh, wow.

0:08:45.5 Patti Tabris: And I was fortunate enough that our CHRO at the time asked me to look into it because it was coming up for renewal. Uh, what? I was doing corporate recruiting, and I was like... I started looking at what data we can gather and everything, and I was... We had 30% completion rate.

0:09:02.2 Joel Cheesman: Ooh.

0:09:02.9 Patti Tabris: I was like, "We're losing candidates. We're bleeding candidates because they're not completing this assessment."

0:09:05.7 Joel Cheesman: 70%.

0:09:09.0 Patti Tabris: And, um, so, you know, I just said there's gotta be something out there. I love to read, I love to look at the internet, find different things. So I just started researching what we can use in replacement for it and look at some options. And I found Traitify assessments, which was not part of Paradox at the time. We, we loved it. It's based on the Big Five, the same as our other. It gave us everything we were looking for, but the candidates can complete it in less than five minutes. Um, and it was something that I thought would work well with our high-volume hiring. So we looked at a few others, but we decided on that, and I was able to use some of the money that we had from that large assessment...

0:09:57.8 Joel Cheesman: The savings.

0:09:58.1 Patti Tabris: The savings of making that switch to introduce, um, my company to the AI recruiting assistant.

0:10:06.1 Chad Sowash: And 30% went to what?

0:10:09.1 Patti Tabris: 30% went to, uh, close to 90% completion rate.

0:10:13.6 Joel Cheesman: That's better than 30%. I can check, check my math...

0:10:15.3 Chad Sowash: Boom. That's a big boom.

0:10:17.1 Patti Tabris: It was like, it just all of a sudden, like, it just brings in a whole 'nother level of standards.

0:10:21.8 Joel Cheesman: So you're a rockstar.

0:10:22.1 Patti Tabris: I... You're always... You're only as good as your last win. So we're looking for the next win.

0:10:25.4 Joel Cheesman: Life's tough as a CX.

0:10:28.7 Patti Tabris: So I'm looking for my next win here.

0:10:31.5 Chad Sowash: I love that you're entree to literally AI in this space and kind of like the broader ecosystem, um, was assessments. Because a lot of companies, their foray into this today is scheduling. Because scheduling is... First and foremost, it takes so much time and generally recruiters or whomever, they're doing that after hours because they've got to interact with somebody who is off work or what have you. But now you have Olivia, like you said, working all the time can actually make that scheduling happen. Did you roll out the scheduling aspect and if you did tell us a little bit about this, the obstacles, uh, and also success behind that.

0:11:12.0 Patti Tabris: So we rolled out a package of Olivia and we rolled out from Canada Care, which is answering all those questions that we talked about that to me... That's a, that's a hidden, uh, benefit that people don't always talk about is that front end keeping those candidates interested and letting them know and answer their questions to save that time in the interviews. Um, and then we have job search so that she helps candidates find the right job on our career site. Um, then it processes right through to the interview scheduling. The biggest challenge is based on what ATS you use and if they are, uh, how their APIs are set up and if they have the API to feed the candidate's application back into the system.

0:12:03.8 Chad Sowash: All the candidate data into your system, because you need that as a system of record.

0:12:07.8 Patti Tabris: Exactly, exactly. So, um, we have... We did a really interesting integration. Um, the ATS we are still using and, uh, we have been using for 12 years and they created the API for us. Um, I was fortunate enough that I had built a good relationship with them and they were interested in experimenting with it. And so we were able to connect Paradox Team with the Talent Link team and they built it together. So it's sometimes it's just a matter of being persistent and enough to get your partners to help you out.

0:12:47.5 Joel Cheesman: That's right?

0:12:48.1 Patti Tabris: Yeah.

0:12:48.8 Joel Cheesman: So let's dig into some more numbers. You mentioned going from 30% to 90%. Do you have any numbers around retention or what it meant to more candidates becoming, uh, employees? How about dollars and cents? How much were you saving through the new technology?

0:13:04.6 Patti Tabris: So just from a time standpoint, it's hard, it's hard to throw out dollars and because we're global and I do have that data for our internal folks. But, um, from a time savings. So we did... So in a 12 month period, we talked about the time savings. Think about answering 1.8 million questions, if... Uh, that alone is a few people. We would have to just answer those questions. Um, we also looked at the numbers that we have from interviews scheduled. So Lydia scheduled over 100,000 interviews for our recruiters in the last 12 months. So that's...

0:13:50.4 Joel Cheesman: Days. Weeks of [0:13:51.3] ____, right?

0:13:51.5 Patti Tabris: Weeks. No, that's weeks of a few people doing that scheduling. So based on where we would have those people located and everything, we've been able to work out this cost savings.

0:14:01.4 Chad Sowash: So did you have recruiters doing the scheduling or did you actually have schedulers doing the scheduling? What was the process? And...

0:14:07.7 Patti Tabris: So it depends... We weren't... When we first implemented this, we weren't as standardized as we are now. And that's a big part of what... That's a byproduct of making some of these changes. Especially for a global company, we were a little bit more, um, segregated, different country groups, doing what worked for them. And we were in the process of trying to bring everything into more of a Global policy policies and global procedures. And so it helps when you have a goal of something that you're putting together. So not just we're standardized and to standardize. So um, it allowed us to get um, better processes in place.

0:14:47.4 Joel Cheesman: Curious about the branding perspective. I didn't know ResultsCX until we sat down and chatted. I don't think it's a well known brand. So you get traffic in. It's a bad experience. They feel bad about ResultsCX now they come in. It's a good, efficient, uh, process. They feel good about the brand. And we've talked to you previously about the referral system and how there's almost a family type or you know type feel the organization, has the technology enhanced the brand in that way that, that people feel much better coming in and their first reaction to the brand is positive versus what it was before.

0:15:21.5 Patti Tabris: I like to think so. I, I believe so. I think having, um, a chat or a conversation with someone rather than filling out a form is a warmer experience right off the bat.

0:15:34.2 Chad Sowash: Whether it's a bot or not a bot.

0:15:35.7 Patti Tabris: Exactly, exactly. So, and I don't think everybody realizes it's a bot when they're chatting. They're just chatting and they're filling it out and they're asking, you know, if they ask a question. And we could go in the back end and review some of the conversations which we do to make sure we don't... We're always tweaking it, trying to improve um, how Olivia's answering everything. And, uh, it's still technology, you have to keep maintaining it. But, uh, we've seen where different, where different candidates have even asked Olivia out on a date. So they don't know who they're talking to.

0:16:12.8 Joel Cheesman: But that's one of the less freakier things that people have said, uh, to your, to your chat box.

0:16:18.7 Chad Sowash: Uh, this is a great opportunity not just to engage candidates, but also to engage employees and keep them around longer. Have you guys started to use any, uh, any AI or conversational or contextual, uh, type of AI to be able to engage candidates so that you can focus on keeping them engaged.

0:16:37.5 Patti Tabris: So from the candidate perspective, we also have added surveys. So we do surveys throughout the apply process and the interview scheduling process to get their, you know, their input. And then, uh, we do react on that and we work with Paradox to improve things. But we're also working currently on some of our onboarding conversations because as we... After we hire a candidate, we have onboarding, we have information we sent out to them. Not just, you know, it starts with the welcome Letter, "happy to have you joining the team," but there's other conversations that we can have, and we're in the process of implementing some of that through Olivia. They're familiar with her from the beginning of it. Um, we're looking towards using contextual AI to build out a database for her to answer questions on pre boarding. And what do I need to do for my first day? I think that's a great opportunity for us. I'm really excited about that. We're in the process of doing that now.

0:17:35.8 Chad Sowash: Yeah. And think of the recruiters who didn't have to answer questions.

0:17:38.6 Patti Tabris: Exactly.

0:17:39.5 Chad Sowash: Now the employees who are going through the onboarding and then talent management side, not having to go through the FAQ stuff. They can just focus on the face.

0:17:47.6 Patti Tabris: Yeah, exactly. And, um, there's, there's so much more that we want to do with Paradox, I think. Um, and we're looking at, um, there's an opportunity as they've developed their ats. And how do we use that? Um, we're only currently using scheduling for our, uh, associate positions in conversations and working with our corporate recruiting team of how we can get scheduling in place for that. It's a little more complex, scheduling an engineer over a call center associate. But, um, but I think there's some great things happening at Paradox that we're ready to do that now.

0:18:25.3 Chad Sowash: Starting at High Volume I think we've seen a lot of companies doing that, and I don't want to say because it's the easiest, because there's a lot of... There's a lot of scale that happens there with the traffic, but it is from the, you know, the requirements being... And then moving into more complex, which is exactly what you're doing. That's an interesting dream.

0:18:45.1 Patti Tabris: And it's also important, I think, when a... When a team is looking at implementing AI, you have to remember our goal. And maybe it's me. I look at it, my goal is to satisfy my customers. And I'm an internal support for all of our recruiting teams. So I support the candidates coming through to make the easiest, quickest, best journey possible for them. And I support our recruiting teams globally to have the easiest, quickest way of hiring these people, but getting the best interviews and getting the best information. So to be able to do that, I want them to see very seamless, very easy journey. And then behind the curtain is all the magic that we do.

0:19:31.2 Joel Cheesman: All right, that is Patti Tabris with ResultsCX. She is the Senior Director of Talent Acquisition and Innovation. Patti, thanks for joining us.

0:19:40.2 Patti Tabris: My pleasure, my pleasure.

0:19:41.5 Chad Sowash: Lots of fun. Thank you so much.

0:19:44.6 Speaker 1: Wow, look at you. You made it through an entire episode episode of the Chat and Chase podcast. Um, maybe you cheated and fast forwarded to the end. Either way, there's no doubt you wish you had that time back. Valuable time you could have used to buy a nutritious meal at Taco Bell, enjoy a pour of your favorite whiskey, or just watch Big Booty Latinas and bug fights on Tick Tock. No, you hung out with these two chuckleheads instead. Now go take a shower and wash off all the gilt. But save some soap because you'll be back like an awful train wreck, you can't look away. And like Chad's favorite Western, you can't quit them either. We out.