Two ex-Googlers are using AI to guarantee interviews for tech job seekers

Two former Googlers are guaranteeing workers in the tech industry that they get interviews with their dreamer employers thanks to artificial intelligence.

The past year or so has seen AI deployed to tackle a broad range of issues, and with their startup Leap.ai, ex-Google engineers Richard Liu and Yunkai Zhou believe it can be used to crack the hiring conundrum in tech.

As things stand now, LinkedIn is the 800-pound gorilla that defines online recruitment. But it is far from perfect. Most HR and hiring teams shuffle through endless digital piles of resumes. Since head-hunting options inside LinkedIn, which sold to Microsoft for over $26 billion last year, are often quantitative rather than qualitative, working the service is typically a manual process that can be time intensive.

Leap.ai founders Liu (CEO) and Zhou (CTO), who both hail from China but are long-time Silicon Valley residents, believe that there’s a more efficient way to map an individual’s skills and experiences, while matching them to the demands and culture of would-be employers.

“I probably hired 500 people into my division,” Liu, who spent eight years with Google, rising to become head of engineering for Project Fi, told TechCrunch in an interview. “We learned that hiring is hard.”

“Your ability to learn, collaborate or take initiative are strong characteristics, but it is hard to get a feel for them from an interview. Curiosity and drive, in an interview process you can’t do too much to gauge that,” he added.

Leap.ai, which was founded 18 months ago and currently has 10 staff, maps out a range of data, including obvious areas like employment history, qualifications and skills and personal interests, career motivation and more, to assemble a more complete picture of a candidate’s career aspirations. Part of that process includes mapping out their ‘dream’ employer and ideal role.

From there, the system matches job seekers with its clientele of companies that are looking to hire, including Dropbox, Uber and others. By asking candidates to name the two companies they aspire to work for, Leap.ai believes it can guarantee an interview with at least one, particularly when they are startups and not huge corporates like Google.

That’s because, Liu explained, companies really value candidates who can fit their culture and are motivated to join them beyond financial gains.