Artificial Intelligence is entering more profound and deeper into our everyday lives. If until recently we have searched and synthesized information from countless different sources, now it is just a click away. We've shared before that our team recognized in this innovative technology an opportunity to streamline a number of processes and offload administrative tasks, allowing us to work more efficiently and deepen our focus on people.
That's why we took the bold step to launch a partnership with the AI platform Eilla. Thus, we can proudly call ourselves the first HR company to integrate artificial intelligence into our daily operations.
After the first pilot months of our partnership, we invited Nikola Lazarov, CEO and Co-Founder of Eilla, and Yoana Atanasova, Recruitment Consultant in Sales & Marketing, Finance & Administration, Pharma & Healthcare from our team to talk about the intersections between AI capabilities and HR needs.
Nikola, what is the story and motivation behind the creation of Eilla? What challenges have you encountered along the way?
Nikola: I've been involved in artificial intelligence for more than 7 years. In 2020, I started a Masters in Artificial Intelligence at the University of Cambridge, with a focus on Large Language Models - LLMs (like GPT). A few years later I started working at a London hedge fund - Marble Bar, where I optimized investment strategies using Artificial Intelligence. Over the years, I watched how fast AI models were evolving, but the advances made in the field in early 2022 convinced me that it had reached a level that could completely change any industry.
That's when I contacted Nikolay Babulkov, Co-Founder of Eilla, who is also an expert in the field and with whom we already had a similar idea a few years earlier. Back then, the models were still not good enough. Eventually, the team was joined by Peter Petrov, the company's third Co-Founder, who immediately saw the potential and agreed to lead the commercial side of the business.
Thus, our joint efforts gave birth to Eilla as a platform offering over 100 different AI-based tools. Our goal is to make researching, analyzing, and creating documents more efficient. Having said that, I would like to add that our specialization is the financial industry and business consulting, and our partnership with you, Manpower Bulgaria, has opened our doors to the world of human resources.
How do you see the application of AI tools like Eilla to change business processes?
Nikola: Eilla is an extremely powerful tool when it comes to optimizing business processes that involve large amounts of information and data. Our system finds the most relevant information according to the task the user has set from thousands of pages, internal documents, and web data, analyzes and reflects on it, and provides the sources used. You can guess how much time such a tool can save a business.
What are your impressions on the potential of applying such tools in the HR industry after our pilot project together?
Nikola: It's extremely difficult to imagine the limits of the application of an AI tool like Eilla, due to its continuous development. Therefore the horizon of potential seems limitless.
The HR industry is a new field for us and we are in the process of generating new ideas for developing and using the technology almost every day. Our partnership with Manpower Bulgaria sheds light on the most useful tools in our arsenal and leads us to new ideas for innovative applications that will automate much of the repetitive tasks and free up HR consultants' time to focus on people, enabling deeper analysis and shorter decision-making times.
Yoana: From the perspective of an HR consultant and daily user of Eilla, I can say that the platform allows me to focus on what is at the core of HR: building relationships with candidates and maintaining a positive organizational culture. Through the tools in the platform, we automate much of the administrative and time-consuming tasks associated with recruiting, and so Eilla frees up our HR teams to focus on individual candidates.
Often, exponential digitalization is seen as endangering people and trampling on the human factor in the working world. The field of HR, and more specifically the hiring process, is all about finding the right people to join a team. By automating some of the process and its administrative steps, Eilla allows us to focus on the stages that require a personal touch, such as building a warm connection with candidates and assessing their fit with job descriptions and company culture.
How do we keep the focus on the person if we rely on impersonal algorithms and automated systems?
Yoana: Let me give you a concrete example - instead of spending hours putting together job descriptions, drafting job postings and posts to promote relevant positions, Eilla's advanced algorithms quickly create the necessary text written in an engaging way. So instead of starting from a blank sheet, we focus on refining and polishing the details.
This is a small part of the benefits of this tool. The key is that Eilla can schedule interview questions, write follow-up emails, and solve case studies.
I save nearly two hours a day, which in my new routine we use to work on more focused communication with potential candidates. From my experience so far, artificial intelligence is not designed to replace humans in any field, but specifically to help them be more efficient and thus free up time and energy in their daily lives to improve their personal skills and competencies.
