Tengai - Robot in recruitment processes

The Swedish municipality of Upplands-Bro has started experimenting with the robot Tengai in their recruitment processes since June 2019. Tengai is one of the first interviewer robots developed with the aim to make the recruitment process less biased than traditional interview practices would do. The robot is adopted by the recruitment and staffing agency of the municipality, which has already made their recruitment processes less biased. For the last 10 years already, the agency has not used resumes in their recruitment process and growingly taken an interest in data-driven recruitment tools. Consequently, having a physical robot was regarded as the next step in preventing biases in hiring decisions. The idea behind the use of the robot was to avoid that a human person was present at the beginning of the recruitment process in order to neutralise any psycho-social prejudices. The Tengai robot is the result of a collaboration between the municipality staff and the AI consultancy Furhat Robotics. After the Tengai robot was released, within a week, it was decided to adopt its services permanently. For the company this was also a first time, the municipal recruitment and staffing agency being their first public sector client. The Tengai robot is seen to complement the recruitment process nicely, having been designed not to perceive the age, gender, clothing, background or other looks of interviewed persons. The municipality is using Tengai to first identify candidates with the highest general performance score, in order to make a shortlist for future selections. Here, Tengai works in collaboration with existing staff, as the recruiters analyse competency checks and schedule an interview appointment with Tengai. The robot then conducts the interviews to assess the candidates by analysing their behaviours, problem-solving capacities and other skills. If needed, the robot is able to ask follow-up questions. The interviews are then analysed, combined with the competency scores. Tengai then makes a first selection of promising candidates. The recruiters of the municipality will conduct the final interview with candidates to assess their motivation. The first results following the adoption of the Tengai robot have been regarded as successful and brought significant media attention to the municipality due to the innovative approach to recruitment. According to one of the directors of the municipality, the Tengai robot has made the selection and hiring processes faster, cheaper and more unbiased, freeing up crucial resources to be spent on other tasks.