How AI agents are redefining talent acquisition

After studying civil engineering at KU Leuven, Jacob Claerhout started his career as a venture capitalist at the French firm Partech, building a marketplace for recruiters. Today, he lives in London and is part of the Forbes 30 Under 30 community. “At that time, the world of venture capital was still an old-fashioned, wealthy men’s club. As a Belgian and a member of the LGBTQ+ community, I gave opportunities to people who are underrepresented and don’t identify with the majority. If you always let the same people make decisions, you overlook parts of the world that could develop certain technologies and solutions to shape the future.”

The end of traditional applications

Two years ago, Jacob founded his own company, Holly, together with Boris Gordts, whom he met during his student days and who was one of the first employees at DataCamp. With their start-up, they aim to tackle the inefficiencies in the current recruitment process. “Companies send hundreds of messages to candidates, hoping someone will be interested in the position. Candidates do the same. This leads to a tremendous waste of time and resources. The company doesn’t know the candidate, and vice versa.” Holly addresses this information asymmetry by using agents that act on behalf of both candidates and companies. “The recruitment process will evolve into an agent-based internet,” Jacob Claerhout explains. “By using unstructured data, you can understand someone in a more intuitive way.”

Autonomous agents

The start-up has developed two agents. On one side, there’s Holly, who helps companies recruit talent by interacting with their systems and better understanding the company. “By providing a job description and answering questions, you get a list of candidates. Once the company approves them, Holly reaches out to them.” On the other side, there’s Hunter, the career agent for candidates. “Hunter will WhatsApp and call candidates to get to know them better.” Both companies and candidates will deploy these agents to act on their behalf. “Candidates use a career agent (Hunter) to navigate their professional journey and find the right company, while companies will use talent acquisition agents (Holly) to build their teams.” These two agents ensure that their respective owners get to know each other on a much deeper level. “A job application will look fundamentally different because computers are now doing the work for us. By enabling agents to collaborate on a large scale, the company not only improves efficiency but also the matching process. This results in people finding roles where they gain more job satisfaction,” Jacob Claerhout explains. “Better matching also means more satisfaction at work and higher retention rates.”

Less bias

The use of matchmaking in recruitment brings a lot of advantages.

Want to know more? Want to know more? You can read the full article in the September issue of HRmagazine. Jacob Claerhout talks about the impact of technology on human interaction and the adoption of HR technology.

Want to hear Jacob Claerhout live? On October 3, he will be the keynote speaker at HRtech 2024.

About Jacob Claerhout

Jacob’s groundbreaking work in AI recruitment has earned him a spot on the prestigious Forbes 30 Under 30 list, which highlights the most influential young leaders across various industries shaping our future. This Belgian entrepreneur has gained global recognition as the CEO & co-founder of Holly, an innovative AI recruiter platform. In his keynote, Jacob will explore the transformative impact of AI-driven autonomous agents on talent acquisition. 

Join us in October to learn from one of the brightest minds in HRtech!