TARAH: Transforming Virtual Recruitment in the New Normal with Emerge
Forward-thinking companies like BPOs have turned to chatbots to ease the load of requests from consumers, clients, and at-home employees during the COVID-19 pandemic.
TopData Global Solutions, for example, is a company that provides front and back office outsourcing solutions for companies all over the world, which requires a mass of efficient employees who are skilled in Information Technology (IT) enabled services.
The need for such a workforce who are both competent in customer care and knowledgeable in IT proves to be an arduous task, especially for the company’s recruitment team. With limits to public events like job fairs, getting applicants into the fold and reaching out to viable candidates are impeded. To solve this, Emerge provided a chatbot system for TopData named TARAH.
TARAH is TopData’s automated recruitment assistant. Emerge initially developed the chatbot to answer the latter’s need to keep up with the number of messages received daily. The ultimate goal is no messages are left unanswered.
Darlene Tocmo, a recruitment head, affirmed they spent “five hours answering messages alone (not that we don’t like it)” until TARAH came. “We now have more time on our hands strategizing or planning our next recruitment activity!” she added.
Emerge, through TopData’s direction for efficient recruitment activities, like the Summer Virtual Job Fair (VJF), an online recruitment event handled by Emerge as well, and other series of VJF from 2020 to 2022, prompted further development on features like receiving and sorting applications and application requirements.
It doesn’t stop there. TARAH is leveled-up to attend to post-applications inquiries for the convenience of applicants via the Check My Application Status feature.
Furthermore, its informative feature provides a virtual guide for users checking with and about the company. The chatbot is programmed to give detailed information and almost-human spiels that help build trust and elevate the conversation experience to almost emphatic.
Ms. Tocmo encourages other companies to dive into digitizing the query system and recruitment process. “I guess the hesitation for some is that chatbots cannot understand the tone of a customer, and in a way, that’s true, but you can personalize every transaction like TARAH. It helps you manage your inbox, and repetitive questions from your audience will be answered right away,” she pointed out.
The project solidified Emerge’s commitment towards helping businesses grow. Richard Normor, Emerge CEO & Founder shared: “We greatly appreciated that TopData reached out to us pre-pandemic to help them with their recruitment requirements. Their open positions are highly-technical so to save time on answering inquiries from potential applicants with the same messages, they opted to have a chatbot in place. Now, they can focus on what’s more important, which is to intensify their recruitment marketing and optimize the recruitment processes.”
Emerge’s blueprint for virtual assistance efficiency, implemented to TARAH, is its ability not just to respond but answer 80% of frequently asked questions, with minimal need for immediate re-routing to human response. Highlighted in the development objective is that users and clients want better, faster technical support and customer service.
This is anchored on Emerge’s manifesto for the new normal where “Digital First” is the new rule.
Chatbots have proved their worth during the pandemic. They have enabled Human Resources (HR), recruitments, and customer service departments to engage with employees and consumers 24/7 and avoid long wait times for straightforward queries.
In the better normal, virtual assistance is here to stay.
