Workday to Acquire Paradox. A Bigger Deal Than You Think.

Today Workday announced the acquisition of Paradox.ai, the pioneer in AI-based conversational recruiting. As I detail in my podcast, this deal could be far more than an addition to Workday’s recruitment offering. It could significantly expand Workday into the front-line worker market, broaden the product portfolio, and deepen Workday’s AI expertise.

Paradox was founded in 2016, pioneering the use of chatbots (pre-AI) for recruitment and candidate experience. Since then the company has built out an end-to-end talent acquisition suite (including an ATS) built on conversational, chat-oriented technology that delivers speed, excellent job seeker experience, and a set of tools for assessment, interview scheduling, hiring, onboarding, and ongoing employee experience.

The company now has more than 1,000 customers and dominates the high-volume or frontline worker hiring market. While new competitors like Maki People are making major advances in this area (MakiPeople is definitely the new disruptor), Paradox brings Workday a complete solution for the thousands of companies like McDonald’s, FedEx, 7-11, and many more who need to hire quickly, frequently, and with precision.

(Paradox customers cite spectacular improvements in time to hire, quality of hire, and recruiter productivity. And I’ve talked with Paradox clients who tell me their new hires are so positive on Olivia they want to meet her when they start work!)

Paradox has the potential to change Workday’s growth trajectory as a business. Not only does the product expand Workday’s recruitment offering, it helps Workday expand into new industries (healthcare, retail, transportation, hospitality, airlines, entertainment) and also gives Workday a better mid-market offering. And as I explain in the podcast, the Paradox team and tools could have a major impact on Workday’s ongoing efforts to migrate its architecture to an AI agent core.

For MakiPeople and Eightfold and Phenom, they now face a bigger competitor in Workday customers. However as often happens, innovation slows once an ERP acquires a vendor, so the gloves are off for more innovation in talent acquisition. We will be publishing our big “Revolution in Talent Acquisition” study at HR Tech in September, come to my keynote in Vegas or Unleash in October to hear the details.

Listen to the podcast for all the details.

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Additional Information

Will Chatbots Take Over HR Tech? Paradox Sets The Pace.

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The Systemic HR Operating Model: How AI Transforms The Function

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