- Chipotle is using AI chatbot “Ava Cado” to hire 20,000 workers for burrito season.
- AI hiring tools streamline recruitment but can frustrate applicants.
- It’s unlikely AI hiring chatbots are going anywhere soon, they just have some kinks to work out.
Evalyn Mendoza has applied to work at Chipotle twice in the last 12 months. Last June, submitting her materials was a breeze. This January, the 33-year-old worked with a new kind of recruiter: an AI chatbot named “Ava Cado.”
After asking some simple questions about her name, contact information, and availability to work, Ava Cado scheduled an interview for Mendoza at a Chipotle location 35 minutes away in Selma, California.
But the chatbot misled her. “There was pretty much no way to really contact them,” Mendoza said of trying to reach the store. Upon arriving, the manager told her there were no open positions and that the AI system had mistakenly scheduled the appointment.
“I was really frustrated at that time because I had that problem with McDonald’s and other AI,” Mendoza said. “Having this problem be the third or fourth time that I’ve had issues with AI — it was just getting to me.”
Chipotle is one of several major companies that use AI-powered recruiting. Paradox, the company that supplies the software for Chipotle’s Ava Cado, has been working with other large retail, fast food, and service companies like Lowe’s, FedEx, and McDonald’s to hire new talent using AI. Other workplaces like Mastercard and Stanford Health Care partner with Phenom’s AI-recruiting platform. A recent survey by Resume Builder found that 70% of surveyed business leaders were using AI to hire.
We’re about to enter “burrito season,” Chipotle’s busiest time of the year from March through May when customers awaken from their winter slumber craving the fast-casual Mexican grill. This year, the chain is firing up Ava Cado to help hire 20,000 new workers to meet the demand.
“‘Ava Cado’ has helped streamline our processes in order to capitalize on top talent faster and remain competitive in high volume hiring,” Ilene Eskenazi, Chipotle’s chief human resources officer, wrote in an email to Business Insider.
While companies like Chipotle are reaping the benefits of expediting their hiring process, it hasn’t necessarily made it easier for every candidate to apply.
Mendoza said the opaqueness of the AI hiring process has left applicants like her stranded and isolated.
“It’s made the whole process a lot less personal and I feel like that’s why it’s become a harder time finding a job through AI because it just treats the people like me like a number,” she added.
Pros and cons of AI hiring
In a press release, Chipotle said applications have nearly doubled since it started using the recruiting software Paradox to power Ava Cado last October. The completion rate has increased from 50% to over 85% and the average time it takes for a candidate to start work after applying has been cut from 12 days to just four.
Adam Godson, the CEO of Paradox, said the key to recruiting for these kinds of roles is making it easy and fast.
“That’s actually the paradox for which we’re named,” Godson said. “By using technology, you actually spend more time with people and not software.”
Answer a few fact-based questions like contact information, availability to work, and ability to physically lift items and voilà, a candidate is scheduled for an interview that could happen as soon as the next day.
“If you make it easy with the device they have, through text messaging, for example, and you can make it fast, then people will come to work,” Godson said.
More and more companies are trying it out, said Andrew Chamberlain, a former chief economist at Glassdoor, even if small businesses aren’t likely to use such technology.
“Less than 1% of employers have 500 or more employees, but those are really huge companies, and they employ a lot of people,” Chamberlain said, referring to Glassdoor’s US research. “This is the future that they’re going to increasingly invest in this technology, and they’ll be more and more automated.”
He added that young people, those without a college degree, and lower-skilled workers in retail and customer service are most likely to encounter AI in their experiences. While companies stand to gain dividends from this hiring technology, candidates applying for roles might not equally share those benefits.
“I wouldn’t be very excited about going through an interview process just dealing with a chatbot,” Chamberlain said. “The tools are better today than ever before, and they’re getting better. They’re definitely not as good as talking to a human being.”
On Reddit, at least half a dozen posts in Chipotle-themed forums discussed the difficulty in scheduling an interview. Candidates described arriving at a store for an appointment with a manager only to be stood up. Managers described having AI schedule appointments outside of their stated availability.
In written statements to Business Insider, Paradox said that clients have the option to integrate their calendar to schedule interviews automatically. Chipotle said that Ava Cado notifies managers when interviews are scheduled.
Godson said Paradox incorporates a short survey that allows candidates to rate their interactions with AI chatbots in the hiring process—98% of applicants, he said, report satisfaction. For Chipotle, that rating is nearly 89% positive, according to the fast-casual chain.
With any emerging technologies, there will be bumps in the road. One of the drawbacks and risks of using automation in the hiring process, said Chamberlain, is that it could negatively impact how they perceive a company’s work culture. This could impact hiring as more and more young people are already feeling more alienated from work.
“If they get a reputation from their AI tool, that somehow this terrible place to apply, it definitely will hurt them in the long run,” Chamberlain said. He said that companies might lose out on the best candidates if their reputation is tarnished. “It’ll cancel out the benefits they’re expecting to get.”
So far, there’s been no AI backlash at Chipotle. Since announcing their hiring spree, the company has seen a 20% increase in applications, Chipotle representatives said. And it doesn’t seem they plan on firing Ava Cado any time soon.
“We will continue to leverage AI to relieve General Managers of administrative tasks, so they can focus on their day-to-day operations and providing excellent hospitality for guests,” Eskenzani wrote.
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