Having spent the majority of his career working in Product Management at Microsoft working on HR-focused products, Humanly CEO and founder Prem Kumar understands firsthand the challenges of prioritizing diversity and inclusion in the hiring process, as well as its importance.
Through Humanly, Kumar has been able to address a common concern within the recruiting industry, and specifically the conversational recruiting space, which is the lack of tools and support for recruiters to be able to engage with candidates in a more human way at scale.
Conversational recruiting prioritizes informal conversation as a way to gauge a candidate’s suitability for a role beyond their skills and experience on paper and has been shown to deliver better outcomes for job seekers and recruiters alike.
However, Humanly’s mission goes beyond facilitating a better hiring process; at the heart of the business is a desire to help employer’s overcome unconscious bias in hiring, improve diversity and inclusion, and ultimately, counteract the effects of institutional racism.
Prioritizing Diversity
A diverse workplace not only benefits employees, but the business as well. Companies with greater diversity among their workforce have been shown to have a 19% greater innovation revenue than their homogenous counterparts.
Improving company diversity starts with a more equitable recruiting process; however, in spite of the evidence, many organizations still face difficulties in understanding how the nuances of their hiring process can affect the outcome.
For example, through their research Humanly discovered that when interviewers spoke at a pace of 150 words per minute or more, candidates for whom English was a second language were at a distinct disadvantage.
With Talent Acquisition professionals facing greater pressures than ever before, having to sift through an unprecedented volume of applicants and identify the best ones for the job, providing an equitable experience can be a real challenge.
The relationship between job-seeker and recruiter has long been a contentious one, but Humanly seeks to alleviate grievances on both sides by leading with empathy.
“Any time you’re having a two way conversation with a job candidate, we want to make that more efficient and more equitable,” said Kumar.
An Uphill Battle
The startup has seen its fair share of challenges, starting with the founding of the company at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Since then, Humanly has had to contend with economic downturn and market uncertainty, making investors reluctant to make big moves.
Add to that the rise of AI, and a work culture that’s shifting away from the traditional office model, and the Humanly team had their work cut out for them.
While Kumar acknowledges the importance of AI and its role in assisting recruiters, he maintains that recruitment is still a human-centered process, and it should remain that way.
“With the rise of AI, a lot of folks may be tempted to turn to technology for what were formerly human-driven processes. I think AI plays an important role, but how do we actually help it elevate folks?”
Founder-Friendly Support
“I had met Cherif [Habib] at a tech accelerator event series,” said Kumar, “and instantly felt a connection. Aside from being incredible entrepreneurs, the team at Formentera Capital truly cared about the problem we were trying to solve.”
Beyond being mission-driven, Kumar appreciated Formentera Capital’s commitment to helping startups move forward.
“Formentera Capital has certainly been there when we need them; everything from you know making intros to other potential customers to giving advice on our growth strategy, obviously the capital itself. So they’re very available, which I love, in spite of the fact that they’re extremely busy. It’s almost surprising how available they’re able to make themselves for folks in the portfolio.”
With the support of Formentera Capital, Humanly has 3X’d their growth as a company, expanding their customer base from about 15 clients to 300 companies that are actively working with Humanly to help improve their recruitment process. In the last year alone, they processed over a million applicants, most of whom reported that Humanly facilitated a “more equitable, fair and efficient candidate conversation.”
Humanly CEO & Founder Prem Kumar
Where They Go From Here
According to Kumar, “At the end of the day, we want to make any direct conversation with job candidates for high volume hiring more efficient and more equitable. So we definitely see ourselves continuing to invest in candidate experience, in diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging, and in leveraging AI to do that.”
Kumar sees the Humanly team growing rapidly over the coming months, with plans to 3X the size of the team by 2025. This would allow them to work with a higher number of candidates, increasing the breadth of their impact. To date, they’ve already impacted the hiring process in businesses like Microsoft and Worldwide Flight Services.
Two months ago, Humanly closed their Series A round, raising $12 million to help build the business and grow the Humanly team.
“We want to be the leader in two years from now in conversational AI for professional high volume hiring,” Kumar said, “And part of that is being a thought leader in ethical AI and using artificial intelligence in a way that is ethical and safe for our users. So those are some of the things we’re hoping to accomplish.”
Formentera Capital is an early-stage venture capital firm investing in tech-enabled companies that are good for the world.
