Empowering AI, Executive conversations, Interviews

The Hiring Freeze and the Future of Artificial Intelligence in the Staffing Agency: A Conversation with Matthew Vaughn

Lorenzo Meriggi / July 2, 2020

Based in Tampa, Florida, Full Stack Talent is a premier technology staffing agency focused on creating long-term strategic partnerships for its clients. Their team recruits people specializing in technology, such as software developers, cyber security cloud engineers, and AI experts and helps them find permanent positions in companies across the country. 

Matthew Vaughn, Director of Talent Services at Full Stack Talent, recently spoke with Francesco Rulli, Global CEO of Querlo, about the challenges that COVID-19 has created for the company and the role that Artificial Intelligence might play in the future.

At Full Stack Talent, recruiting is trying to master two things—efficiency with finding clients on the sales side and efficiency finding candidates on the recruiting side. However, as Matt described, COVID-19 affected this process as many companies stopped hiring and began utilizing existing staff for purposes that they would normally bring in someone new for. Additionally, many companies have had to tighten their budget, which for some companies implies laying off office administration and hiring new people that they need but for a lower salary. Matt also noted that people who might have received better job offers with greater benefits have been choosing to stay with their companies for a sense of security in this world of uncertainty. Furthermore, it has been harder to find both clients and companies that are currently hiring and are stable enough to continue to bring people on.

When asked about AI in the future, Matt discussed how the company hasn’t had the best experience with it. Full Stack Talents uses AI tools to both monitor sales trends of companies and to screen candidates to determine if they are qualified. However, the screening candidates aspect has created a lot of challenges as the AI tools can’t properly break down a person’s job history to determine how qualified they are for a certain position. Nevertheless, using AI to screen candidates would save Matt and his team a lot of time and he is hopeful that it will become more useful in the future.