Appian CEO Matt Calkins said many companies are deploying AI incorrectly. It starts with something as simple as reviewing résumés.
“We’re trying to be all modern and everything, but the reason I don’t like that is we’re trying to hire at a very elite level, and I think if we use AI, we’re going to start checkboxing,” Calkins told Business Insider during a recent dinner with reporters.
AI has upended job hunting and hiring.
While major companies like Google and Salesforce told Business Insider earlier this year that they use AI to assist in reviewing candidates, many still rely entirely on recruiters for filtering applications. Companies have said that using AI to help with the influx of initial applications, ideally freeing up recruiters to focus on top candidates.
Business Insider found that some applicants are going back to paper résumés to try to cut through the mountain of applications. Some hiring managers are returning to in-person interviews, craving more direct interaction.
Calkins said he fears that if Appian relied on AI to whittle down applications, they could miss out on a potentially special hire. Founded in 1999, Appian is a cloud computing and enterprise software company.
“We were supposed to be better than that,” he said. “We were supposed to spot the magic in people when we read their résumés, and it didn’t take AI to screen for, I don’t know, did you do well in school or something?”
‘They’re off doing silly things that aren’t going to matter.’
It’s not just on the hiring end where companies are missing out, Calkins said. He pointed to an MIT study, which found that 95% of companies have yet to see a return on their investment in generative AI. Calkins said it’s incredible to see “the technology of the century” deployed so poorly.
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“It’s happening because we’re so ignorant about how to actually put AI to work,” he said. “It’s not so hard, you need to connect AI to real work. Instead of having it do side jobs, you need to connect it to the big jobs.”
Calkins said AI would be much better deployed by addressing the massive challenges that large companies face. One such problem, he said, is how corporations are “just inundated” with all kinds of communication every day.
“Most corporations get a million pieces of incoming communication,” he said. “And some are on paper, and some are on fax machines, and some are on emails, and some are texts, and some are calls that are transcribed. And they’re on all different topics, right?”
Appian has had great success addressing this, Calkins said, saying their AI can understand everything from emails to handwritten notes, route the job, and then upload it to the correct database with 99% accuracy.
“It’s just amazing, but it’s also boring. It’s back office,” he said. “Nobody will understand it if you do a Super Bowl ad about it. And so, the world is just more or less unaware of the real answer for how to use AI, and they’re off doing silly things that aren’t going to matter.”
