Tezi Develops AI Assistant for Recruitment Leaders

The excitement surrounding artificial intelligence (AI) agents is palpable, and Tezi, a nascent startup, is in the midst of developing an AI assistant aimed at revolutionizing how human resources teams identify the ideal candidates for job vacancies. This innovative bot is designed to meticulously comb through applications, pinpointing those that align with the specified hiring prerequisites, coordinate interview schedules by finding available slots in the recruiter’s calendar, and proceed to notify candidates via email.

The enterprise recently publicized a $9 million seed investment intended to accelerate its path toward launching a widely accessible product.

Presently, Tezi has commenced the deployment of its alpha product to a select group of inaugural customers this very week, embodying the company’s ambitious vision, as shared by CEO and co-founder Raghavendra Prabhu. While acknowledging the longstanding use of automated screening by HR departments, Prabhu pointed out that the advent of advanced large language models (LLMs) opens up new vistas for creating a more sophisticated tool for the recruitment process.

“We believe that merging reasoning with natural language processing offers us a unique opportunity to craft a solution that significantly diverges from the traditional software tools used in this arena,” he remarked.

Jason James, the co-founder and COO, highlighted the limitations of existing solutions, stating, “Imagine receiving a thousand applications for a single position. Previous AI, ML, or algorithms could identify top resumes efficiently; however, a human would still need to undertake the tasks of sending emails, scheduling interviews, etc. What’s now feasible is a seamless, end-to-end workflow that transcends mere basic sorting,” he elucidated.

The founders are cognizant of the necessity for human involvement in the recruitment process at this nascent stage, with aspirations for eventual full automation as the technology matures. They note that the quality of candidates sourced through any job search relies significantly on the caliber of prompts and descriptions used.

Understanding the potential for automation to inadvertently introduce bias, the team is proactively seeking ways to mitigate such effects as much as feasible. They aim to impartially evaluate resumes based on the input from hiring managers, striving to minimize any form of bias introduced by their algorithms.

“At the moment, if bias exists in the employer’s criteria, it’s beyond our capability to eliminate it entirely. Our focus lies in ensuring our algorithms do not contribute additional bias,” James added. The intention is to avoid reliance on historic hiring trends, focusing instead on skills and other requisites defined by the hiring manager.

With training performed on 250 million profiles obtained through licensing from data providers, the team has been refining their models with technologies from OpenAI and Anthropic, tailoring them to meet their specific hiring needs.

As a fledgling company launched at the outset of this year, Tezi has initiated collaboration with 15-20 design customers. The goal is to address any initial teething problems, paving the way for a broader beta release in the near future.

The inaugural $9 million seed funding round was spearheaded by 8VC and Audacious Ventures, with contributions from Liquid 2, Afore, Prime Set, South Park Commons, and several key industry influencers.