On the Talent Hunt: AI chatbots for staff built by my startup help us work smarter and attract new staff

I founded Pand.ai in 2016 to build artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots that help businesses improve operational efficiency and marketing effectiveness. We have 16 full-time employees across Singapore and Malaysia.

As a startup, we struggled with manpower issues from day one. Initially, our biggest problem was to convince talent to not only join an unknown startup, but to also accept a lower salary than the big multinationals.

The pandemic exacerbated this problem as demand for local tech talent shot up.

This was especially challenging from mid-2021 until March 2022.

With insufficient manpower, we were often forced to turn away business opportunities, especially those abroad.

Many of our employees were also asked to wear multiple hats.

To our surprise, our young employees welcomed this as they get to embark on an accelerated career path, exposed to more “higher-level things” than they would otherwise experience in similar positions at other companies.

In terms of processes, we also came up with “AI employee” chatbots to improve our productivity.

We already had the technical know-how to build sophisticated AI tools, so it didn’t take long for our engineers to create an AI chatbot that solved one of our own problems: Handling myriad human resource-related matters.

This chatbot allows all employees to apply for leave and submit claims from either their Slack or WhatsApp app at any time.

It checks for the validity of each submission (such as ensuring an employee has sufficient leave), sends it to the appropriate manager for approval, and at the end of the month, sends a self-generated analytics report to management for review.

We later created more “AI employees” chatbots to support the team, from project management and bug tracking to report generation and employees’ compliance training.

These chatbots lessen the workload for our employees, thus allowing them to focus on higher value activities.

Today, we are no longer facing a labour crunch in our core business. Our “AI employees” chatbots actually make us more attractive to prospective employees.

Candidates told us during interviews that they were interested to work with us because they found us to be "cool" because of the "AI employee" chatbots we built.

We were able to hire five more employees, including three software engineers, in the last six months alone.

Our manpower shortfall now comes exclusively from our new business-to-consumer unit offering an insurance broker chatbot service to help users find insurance products.

We set up the unit less than four months ago and are looking for two software developers and one business leader.

We want to hire those with prior insurance-tech experience, and this talent pool is significantly smaller, which is why we are still facing a shortage in this unit.

Other than “AI employees” chatbots, another one of our “secret weapons” to plugging the manpower gap is interns.

Gen Z interns are often highly skilled, so we treat them as equal team members and give them real work. Several of our full-time employees (including a team lead) started with us as interns.

ABOUT THE WRITER:

Chuang Shin Wee, 44, is the founder and chief executive officer of home-grown startup Pand.ai, which builds artificial intelligence chatbots for businesses operating across Southeast Asia.

If you are a business owner with an experience to share or know someone who wishes to contribute to this series, write to voices [at] mediacorp.com.sg with your full name, address and phone number.