Curated Intel from the Talent Tech Industry
December 3-10, 2023:
• Making the job ad business model click: Indeed steps away from pay-per-applicant pricing;
• Doing HR from afar ain’t easy: HRCI survey finds remote recruiting, onboarding a challenge;
• Checking to see if something’s fishy: UK examines OpenAI’s governance links with Microsoft;
• Wondering if recruiters are next: Artisan AI raises additional funds to create digital workers;
• Accepting the world according to ChatGPT: xAI’s Grok recites info from its OpenAI competitor.
PLUS
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Indeed Is Making Changes to Pricing Model for Employers After Complaints of Confusion and Unexpected Costs
Job site Indeed is rethinking its "pay-per-application" system for employers following complaints from businesses stating the service caused a slew of confusion and unexpected costs, The Wall Street Journal reported. In October 2022, Indeed announced that it'd be switching from a pay-per-click pricing plan (paying when applicants click on a job ad) to a pay-per-application model (when a candidate starts or submits an application). The shift was intended to improve the quality of candidates and allow small businesses to only review (and pay) for applications that seemed promising. However, the new model led to some businesses incurring hundreds — and in some cases thousands — of dollars in unexpected costs. One problem for employers with the pay-per-application model was that they had up to 72 hours to reject applications, otherwise, they'd be required to pay a fee per application.
HR from afar: Practitioners say remote work poses challenges for recruiting, onboarding
Although remote HR is less prevalent than a year ago, many organizations are still conducting HR functions remotely, which can pose challenges for recruiting, hiring and onboarding, according to a Nov. 30 report from MindEdge Learning and the HR Certification Institute (HCRI). In a survey of 1,030 HRCI-certified human resources professionals, more than half said recruiting is harder than before the pandemic. Only 8% said it is easier. In addition, 35% said remote onboarding is more difficult than in-person onboarding while 17% said it is easier. Thirty percent said remote interviews are less productive than in-person interviews; 24% said remote interviews are more productive.
UK examines OpenAI’s links with Microsoft
The UK’s competition regulator is asking for industry views on Microsoft’s partnership with ChatGPT maker OpenAI ahead of a potential investigation. The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) said it was seeking comments to establish if a “merger situation” had arisen between Microsoft and OpenAI following the recent chaos at the generative AI startup. Last month Sam Altman was ousted as CEO by the OpenAI board, then quickly reinstated following a staff revolt. When the dust settled, Microsoft gained a non-voting board seat at OpenAI. The CMA cited “developments in the governance of OpenAI” as a factor in its invitation for comments. The CMA will review if this – alongside Microsoft’s $10bn investment into OpenAI – has “resulted in an acquisition of control” where Microsoft has “de facto control or more than 50% of the voting rights over another entity”.
Artisan AI Raises Additional Funding; doubles Valuation to $30M
Artisan AI, a San Francisco, CA-based AI startup that plans to build human-like digital workers, raised additional funding from a Sequoia scout, which has doubled the valuation from $15m to $30m. The company, which recently raised a $2.3M pre-seed, will be participating in the W24 Y Combinator batch. Founded by 22-year-old CEO Jaspar Carmichael-Jack (me!), who previously founded an international branding agency, and CTO Dr. Rupert Dodkins, who obtained his PhD in Astrophysics from the University of Oxford and has 8 years of machine learning experience, Artisan AI creates human-like digital workers, called Artisans, who automate job functions from end to end. Artisans are designed to add to teams rather than another SaaS tool for teams to use. The first Artisan, Ava, launches on December 11th. She automates the sales process, with a feature-rich SaaS platform managed entirely by talking to her on Slack. Ava prospects with a database of over 250 million leads, writes hyper-personalized emails, replies to prospects’ questions, and books meetings into human SDR’s calendars. Next year, the company plans to release 5 further Artisans to do everything from marketing to financial analysis.
Elon Musk’s new AI bot, Grok, causes stir by citing OpenAI usage policy
Grok, the AI language model created by Elon Musk's xAI, went into wide release last week, and people have begun spotting glitches. On Friday, security tester Jax Winterbourne tweeted a screenshot of Grok denying a query with the statement, "I'm afraid I cannot fulfill that request, as it goes against OpenAI's use case policy." That made ears perk up online, since Grok isn't made by OpenAI—the company responsible for ChatGPT, which Grok is positioned to compete with. Interestingly, xAI representatives did not deny that this behavior occurs with its AI model. In reply, xAI employee Igor Babuschkin wrote, "The issue here is that the web is full of ChatGPT outputs, so we accidentally picked up some of them when we trained Grok on a large amount of web data. This was a huge surprise to us when we first noticed it. For what it’s worth, the issue is very rare and now that we’re aware of it we’ll make sure that future versions of Grok don’t have this problem. Don’t worry, no OpenAI code was used to make Grok."
Save Money & Grab a Seat at TAtech North America & The World Job Board Forum
Snag deep savings and grab a spot with Super Early Discounts at LIMITED SEATING TAtech North America & The World Job Board Forum. Avoid FOMO, register right now for the only conference in the North American market that is specifically designed both for job board and talent technology company CEOs, their direct reports and rising stars and to accelerate the bottom-line growth of their enterprises. Why the rush? Because the conference will be held June 4-6, 2024 at The International Spy Museum which has a limited seating capacity and the Super Early Bird Discounts end this month, on December 31, 2023. Whether your company is a niche or general job board, aggregator, talent marketplace, online classifieds business, programmatic platform, chatbot, conversational AI solution, ATS, recruitment marketing solution, CRM platform, interviewing or assessment system or talent technology consultancy, this event will supercharge your sales and your profits. So, register today and accelerate the success your company achieves, today, tomorrow and into the future!