Jim is starting to pay dividends in recruiting

Since being launched last year AI-powered recruitment chatbot Jim has had a huge impact for Southeast Asia’s biggest bank. On average, DBS recruiters now take about eight minutes to assess a candidate, compared with about 30 minutes before the bank deployed the chatbot.

While the process has sped up, so too has the quality of screening. About one-third of the candidates who passed Jim’s vetting went on to get jobs with DBS, compared with only one-seventh under the previous human-led system.

One of the main reasons for this improvement is that chatbots, and AI in general, have less bias than a human recruiter, who might assess candidates based initially on age, gender and educational background.

DBS is one of a growing number of major banks looking to improve their hiring processes via artificial intelligence. Experts say AI works well for high volume hiring where there are significantly more applicants than roles available. In 2018, about 5,000 applicants applied for 400-500 jobs as DBS wealth planners.

Jim reviews resumes, collects answers to screening questions, conducts psychometric assessments and answers basic questions on topics such as hiring response times and career progression.

However, a human recruiter then looks at the results and makes a final decision on whether the applicant should proceed to a face-to-face interview.