When it comes to hiring, a new startup wants candidates to do all the talking

“I have personally interviewed thousands of individuals myself, as part of my previous career, so I am very familiar with how mind-numbing and impersonal the recruitment process can be, both for the recruiter and for the candidates,” says Hong Kong-based entrepreneur Max Armbruster. “I wanted to build a system that would make their lives better.”

His answer to the deluge of job applications is Talkpush, a service that helps companies automate the phone screening of candidates. Armbruster (pictured below) says it’s aimed at “high volume recruitment markets in Asia,” particularly large companies with over 5,000 staff.

The new startup claims that, using its service, a recruiter or HR department can sift through over 100 candidates’ voice messages in less than two hours. Companies can use Talkpush at various stages of the hiring process – as pre-screening in conjunction with written applications, or as validation of the shortlisted best candidates. That second aspect usually takes the form of a much more complex phone call involving, say, a scripted role play, simulating situations they would come across in their work.

Accessible

Armbruster, who’s the startup’s founder and CEO, stresses that the final call must still come down to an old-fashioned face-to-face grilling. “The candidates should be invited to meet in person or at least to do a live video interview at some point. Only recruiters can probe, verify, and apply judgment. Our software is only meant to capture and measure at this stage,” he says.

Talkpush’s Max Armbruster.

The phone-based interviews won’t please people who dislike leaving voicemails or who are uncomfortable with the idea of talking to “robots,” but Armbruster says it’s a very human and accessible way to shake up the hiring process. “[It’s] accessible to anyone with a phone line connection. As such it is the most universally accessible mode of sourcing and screening candidates that there is in the market.”

While large multinationals have more need for this kind of thing, the Talkpush team is also going after small businesses who can’t afford recruiters with a one-dollar interview service. It allows cash-strapped companies to invite a select few candidates to answer a series of pre-recorded questions over the phone. It can still save smaller companies time, and allows them to control how much it’ll cost by limiting the number of call invites it sends out.

Testing out in the Philippines

Talkpush has already attracted some big-name clients such as Sheraton Hotels and Lazada. So far it has clients in Singapore, Malaysia, Philippines, and China, with recruiters in the US now giving it a shot as well.

Although the startup has been aiming globally from day one, the team has chosen the Philippines for its first concerted push into the recruiting industry. “The Philippines is a great first market because human capital is the number one export of the country. From BPOs [outsourcing] to the foreign workers, the Philippines is known as the place where you find ‘good people’. No better place for us to launch, before attacking bigger markets in 2016,” Armbruster explains.

This is Armbruster’s fourth startup – his second that’s involved in HR. It was with Aqayo, which got acquired by Singapore-based HRboss, that he got so much experience in the hiring process.