Five years ago, mroads founder Rahul Kukreti created a program that would allow any small business owner to create a custom app using a template and a few clicks.

That failed.  

Rahul Kukreti. Photo Courtesy mroads

But Kukreti learned something along the way: That recruiters, hiring managers and human resource departments struggle to find talented candidates out of the hundreds of potential applicants.

The problem is magnified when you consider how many applicants lie on or embellish their résumés — Kukreti estimates 80 to 85 percent of resumes are misrepresented.

MROADS’ TOOL HELP REDUCE COST PER HIRE

“Everybody is going to use Monster, Career Builder, LinkedIn to find candidates,” he said. “A lot of time gets wasted and the cost per hire goes up.”

Kukreti and the rest of the team at Plano-based mroads completely shifted the company’s focus to build a new type of video interviewing tool. The team also has an office in Irving and in India.

The result is Paññã, what Kukreti calls “Skype on steroids.” It’s an artificial intelligence platform that companies can use to conduct interviews with potential candidates.

“It’s about eliminating the pain points that we see in the marketplace that prohibit companies from finding the right talent in the right amount of time,” Kukreti said.

They’ve already secured clients such as Ericsson, Mobi TV, Sabre, and Intuit.

Paññã is a web-based video conferencing tool that only requires a webcam and a username and password. Everything is stored in the cloud so there’s no additional hardware or software required.

The AI component comes in when it’s able to recognize facial and speech patterns as the applicant answers questions. If an applicant pulls up a browser to Google an answer during the interview, the program picks up on that.

TOOL HELPS PREVENT PLAGIARISM, MISREPRESENTATION ON RÉSUMÉ

The system makes life easier for the person conducting the interview, who may not have the technical competence to know whether the applicant is exaggerating about their skills and abilities.

It comes with multiple choice questions ranging from easy, medium and hard that the applicant answers either during the interview or on their own. This allows anyone to conduct the interview and the end result is an auto-evaluation that grades how well the applicant answered the questions.

The goal is to prove that the job seeker really has the knowledge and know-how that they put on their résumé. This prevents plagiarism and misrepresentation.

Developing an HR hiring tool that uses AI and video conferencing wasn’t mroads’ original intent, but Kukreti said the goal is the same as it was when they were creating an app template.

That is, to solve a big problem in the business world, he said.

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