PeopleGPT Review: Critical review of this AI tool for business
Recruiting takes up a lot of senior management time. And quite rightly. Building a high-quality team takes time and effort, and when done correctly, it pays off. The opposite is true. Analysis has shown the cost of a bad hire can fluctuate between 15 – 21% of that employee’s salary, depending on seniority. We know that AI is already transforming how many businesses operate. So it is little surprise that there are already a number of AI driven applications seeking to remedy some of the most common challenges associated with recruitment.
| Pros – Speedy interface with AI powered prompts and email outreach. – Detailed, AI enriched candidate profiles – Excellent search customisation | Cons – Dependant on quality data, which isn’t always available in some industries and countries. – Passive approaches are harder than those actively looking. |
This comprehensive PeopleGPT review evaluates how the tool by Juicebox is harnessing data scraping and AI to enhance recruitment practices. One of the interesting things about PeopleGPT is that it focuses principally on harnessing passive candidates, who constitute about 37% of the workforce available for recruitment at any one time. A significant but often overlooked talent pool. This alone provides benefit, as even if you didn’t use PeopleGPT as your primary recruitment method, combined with other methods, your talent pool increases by 37% and it costs you nothing extra (provided you use the free version).
Introduction to PeopleGPT by Juicebox
PeopleGPT is an AI-driven recruitment search engine that leverages sophisticated artificial intelligence and natural language processing to identify suitable candidates from over 800 million profiles on the web. PeopleGPT analyses vast datasets, crafting personalised outreach that resonates with potential candidates, particularly those who are not actively seeking new jobs but might consider exceptional opportunities. The outreach responses improve the more you use the platform, as the platform learns from your engagement.
Most impressively, we found that PeopleGPT was able to harness LinkedIn’s own data to provide you in depth search functionality that is typically reserved for more expensive paid accounts. This functionality demonstrates that PeopleGPT can be used beyond recruitment, with opportunities to use the search functionality to support business development activities.
How PeopleGPT Enhances Recruitment Strategies
The tool excels in identifying and engaging passive candidates and proactively offering them tailored opportunities aligned to their professional goals and personal aspirations. This capability allows businesses to extend their reach, and be a more active participant in identifying a suitable candidate beyond the traditional process of placing an advertisement and waiting for a suitable candidate to apply. The potential of this function cannot be understated as it is now possible to tap into a pool of high-quality candidates who are typically difficult to attract. We believe it makes an excellent adjunct to your paid job listings, particularly for key positions such as management or highly technical / specialised roles.
In the Australian context, where diverse sectors such as mining and finance are in constant demand for skilled professionals, PeopleGPT proves particularly beneficial. Our trials of the tool demonstrated good coverage of the Australian market, with the app able to be utilised for specialised jobs prevalent in Australia.
User Experience
We found PeopleGPT very intuitive and simple to use. We signed up for a free account to trial the software. The sign-up process was quick, and there were no overly pushy sales drives to convert us into the paid versions. Once we got into our account, plugged in a few search critera, we were able to quickly identify numerous potential candidates in the Australian mining and quarry sectors, and the software identified appropriate contact details for them.
The screenshots below show the home page of the app and illustrates how we used a plain text search enquiry to find a mechanical engineer in the mining or quarry industry in Australia.
Figure 1: The search interface
Once you’ve plugged in your plain text enquiry, the software then analyses it to develop the key search criteria, which you approve prior to the search. You can see it took the enquiry for ‘mining and quarry’ and then applied it to 14 companies it believed were relevant. This is where the platform may struggle. Individuals working for smaller companies may get lost in the listing. This may also be problematic for countries with less prevalent datasets.
Figure 2: Search confirmation
Importantly, you can edit the search criteria by providing further discriminators such as locations, experience, job titles, key words, other companies and other industries that you want included in the search.
Figure 3: Search refinement
And just like that, it returns a list of over 3000 matches. Of course, not all of these candidates are looking for a job nor would consider a new role, but through additional filters and rankings, you can start to sift through the data to explore possible candidates that you might want to approach.
Figure 4: Search results
The cool thing is, once you’ve found a candidate you like, its Email Outreach system makes the process quick and easy. Drawing on your previous history, including your writing style and tone and the candidate’s job data, the software will craft an outreach response and send it directly to the candidate, this smart outreach is designed to increase your response rates.
Figure 5: Email Outreach
This process of identifying a suitable candidate and emailing them a reasonable outreach email, took us no more than 5 minutes.
While there may be some challenges in actually converting identified candidates into new employees, PeopleGPT certainly makes finding suitable candidates easier. Additionally, the benefits of the broader opportunities presented by PeopleGPT, such as creating sales and new businesses leads and partnerships, should not be overlooked. And as we stated, its far more advanced than simply using a free LinkedIn account, and likely can identify opportunities that are only available to paid accounts.
Integration and Cost-Effectiveness of PeopleGPT
As of May 2024, the cost of the starter subscription is $99 (USD), with subscriptions going up from there.
While there are certainly more options and features made accessible through the paid subscriptions versions, we think the free version actually offers enough functionality to help you get started on enhancing the way you look at and conduct recruitment, and improve your recruitment outcomes. Where we think that paid subscriptions come into their own is when your frequently conducting recruitment campaigns or want to work collaboratively with your team on recruitment exercises. Regardless of whether you find your business conducting recruitment exercises monthly, quarterly, or even only once annually, given the time, effort, and cost associated with running traditional recruitment processes, we think the price is still reasonable value.
To give you an example, in our research, we were able to place a job advertisement with LinkedIn and receive over 100 applicants for no more than $150. Incorporate the cost of this LinkedIn advertising, combined with the free or a month PeopleGPT starter plan and you are still under the cost of placing an ad on other leading job platforms in Australia.
Conclusion: Is PeopleGPT worth it?
We think the platform is an exciting use of AI and will enhance the process of finding qualified and quality talent for your business. We do believe that converting searches into active candidates may be challenging, but that if you’ve built a strong business brand, have a good reputation there will be nothing stopping each and every candidate you reach out to at least considering the opportunity that you are offering. More broadly, it certainly provides the functionality and flexibility to enhance other functions in business such as sales or finding new suppliers.
This PeopleGPT review highlights another example of how AI is enhancing business functionality. Our own testing demonstrated rapid searching and filtering which has not typically been available in other recruiting platforms without significant cost. Finding the right talent is critical to growing your business, but it is also incredibly time consuming. We believe this is an tool which is worthy of at least a trial.
At Vitr Tech we love exploring innovative tools that make running a business easier. We spend our lives exploring tools like PeopleGPT, along with many others. If you want to know more about how you can embrace new and existing technologies to enhance your business or if you believe that your business is ready for a digital transformation, get in contact with us. We also offer a free digital transformation audit, where we work with you to identify impactful areas where technology can enhance what you do.
