August 01, 2020

COVID-19 is accelerating hiring automation. “As COVID-19 has undoubtedly accelerated transformation, organizations are more than ever looking to hire talent remotely,” said Jahanzaib Ansari, co-founder and CEO of Knockri, which has been helping companies of all sizes screen and hire talent.

Jahanzaib Ansari says, using this type of software can overcome unconscious bias during the hiring process, and go a long way toward changing a company’s culture. It even holds Knockri accountable to their values. “Sometimes we don’t have large volumes of applicants because we’re not a large enterprise, but the more we grow, the more value our tool is providing us for our internal hiring as well,” he says.em about? What makes it interesting? Write a catchy description to grab your audience's attention...

TORONTO, July 28th, 2020  —  Knockri, a leading developer of artificial intelligence video-based soft-skill assessment and talent mobility solutions, today announced it has closed an oversubscribed seed round of $3 Million led by Differential Ventures with participation from Grand Ventures, MaRS IAF,  BDMI – Bertelsmann Digital Media Investments, Amplify Capital and others to transform talent acquisition and increase diverse hiring.

Knockri contributed report: The Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Toolkit explores the practical opportunities and risks that rapidly emerging technologies represent for diversity, equity and inclusion efforts. The toolkit outlines how technology can help reduce bias from recruitment processes, diversify talent pools, and benchmark diversity and inclusion across organizations.

Entrepreneur Network partner Mars Discovery District talks with Jahanzaib Ansari, CEO and co-founder of Knockri, an AI-supported skills assesment resource. 

Jahanzaib Ansari, Co-founder & CEO of artificially intelligent recruiting assistant company Knockri, notes. ‘As organizations are moving to a remote world, they’re no longer just looking to hire locally, instead they’re viewing the world as a global talent pool.’

The rapid evolution of machines and algorithms in the workplace could create 133 million new roles over the next five years. How will business and government leaders need to rethink their approach to talent management and development to ensure a positive future for all?

When an army general had to conquer an island, they instructed soldiers to burn their own boats so they couldn’t return home. There was no Plan B! The army did whatever it took to conquer the island and succeed in the mission.

Jahanzaib Ansari, co-founder and CEO of Knockri, joins BNN Bloomberg to discuss how his business is aiming to diminish unconscious biases during the hiring process and boost diversity in the workplace.

A new startup is aiming to change the interview process as we know it - by using robots to find the best candidates. Canadian firm Knockri has built an AI that reads the facial expressions and eye movement of job seekers in videos they record during their applications. It uses these subtle tells to analyse whether you have the necessary skills and rates you on how well you fit the job - such as confidence or collaboration.

Five Insights From Canada's Rapidly Evolving Labor Market - Jahanzaib Ansari

Jahanzaib Ansari, named among 22 of Canada's most promising young HR professionals by HRD Magazine.

A Canadian startup is using artificial intelligence to try to reduce bias in the hiring process. CBC News visited Knockri's headquarters to find out more about the promises its technology makes and the challenges it faces.

No great success was ever achieved without failure. This rings true for Jahanzaib Ansari, co-founder and CEO of Knockri, an AI soft skills assessment tool that helps minimize bias in the hiring process.

"We thought when we started Y Combinator that the most important quality would be intelligence. That's the myth in the Valley. And certainly you don't want founders to be stupid. But as long as you're over a certain threshold of intelligence, what matters most is determination"

Erica Alini takes a look at a new frontier in hiring techniques as it might be AI that judges you in your next interview.

"The importance of diverse data sets is hard to overstate for engineers. Knockri, one company I work with at MaRS, has developed a system to improve the screening of job applicants using AI that deliberately ignores characteristics of race, gender and disability status. The company is based in Toronto, where more than 50% of the population is foreign-born, because it could easily access multicultural data sets to train its AI platform."

“Companies like Knockri develop talent recruitment products that screen job applicants objectively. Built without the often bias-heavy elements of gender, culture and ethnic background entering the picture until final stages of interviewing. Their ultimate goal: to boost representation of minorities, women and people from diverse backgrounds on interview shortlists for tech jobs and in workforces fueling the global economy."

"AI-assisted screening of job applications reduces sexism, racism and ageism in the workplace"

“HR leaders need to do more to foster a culture of openness and honesty – one which gives employees a safe platform to speak up”

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) are two very hot buzzwords right now, and often seem to be used interchangeably. They are not quite the same thing, but the perception that they are can sometimes lead to some confusion.

“Whether it’s love for the same hockey team, or bonding over the same brand of lip balm, looking for irrelevant similarities with no evidence of correlation in performance predictors can result in employment inequity.”

Most founders these days use buzzwords such as machine learning , machine intelligence, big data, neural networks, proprietary algorithms and artificial intelligence liberally in their pitches. The problem is that every startup is making this claim, which means that all the presentations look very similar to each other.

"The AI tool ensures name, gender, race, and even accents are never a factor when short-listing desirable candidates."

"When algorithms are designed with recognition of the tendency for humans to exhibit bias in the hiring process, company co-founder and COO Maaz Rana says they can assist in talent acquisition "by consistently presenting an objective measure of someone, so it can be used as a reference to help make smarter and better hiring decisions."

“The ultimate goal is to be able to help every recruiting team in the world, who require strong front-line customer facing talent. Our AI system for HR uses audio and video analysis, assessing personality attributes to gauge how fit an applicant would be for a position based on employer feedback, industry knowledge and scientifically backed data”.

The last 10 years have been about building a world that is mobile-first. In the next 10 years, we will shift to a world that is AI-first.” (Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google, October 2016)