While there may be concerns that the increasing use of artificial intelligence in the workplace will reduce the need for human employees, one northwest Arkansas company is trying to turn that idea on its head.
Jordan Franklin founded Gumption in 2022 to use an AI platform to help clients find suitable job candidates for their companies. Franklin, who is the co-founder of the Fayetteville staffing agency Stratice, brainstormed the idea of using AI when one of Stratice’s clients asked for help finding 67 employees during a hiring phase.
What spurred Franklin to create Gumption wasn’t just the 67 job openings but the fact that those 67 openings had a single job description with eight supervising managers, each with their own priorities and personalities.
Gumption uses information Franklin and her team input to vet applicants based on clients’ criteria for not just the position, but the culture and other value points.
“At that point, I just kind of really started outlining: What are the problems, what are the takeaways, where could we save them money and time?” Franklin said. “The hiring team was managing everything on SharePoint and Zoom and a couple other platforms, and we were all communicating and cross-communicating. It was just a hot mess.
“I said, ‘There’s got to be a way to put this all in one location where we use some sort of AI to start streamlining each step of the process.’ That’s really where Gumption started.”
The catch was that Franklin was simultaneously running Stratice with her husband and co-founder, Scott, who insisted that Stratice become successful before Jordan branched out with her AI idea. Stratice’s success soon became clear — it was a finalist for Arkansas Business of the Year in 2022, and Jordan Franklin is a two-time Executive of the Year finalist — so Franklin went forth with Gumption.
“When it comes to AI and hiring, I think that a lot of the systems that are currently being utilized are matching the job description to a resume, and I don’t think that’s necessarily the right thing to be doing,” Franklin said. “Really we need to be matching the human to the team and then the position. Obviously, including their skill sets and things like that and making sure that they have the skills, but really matching the person to the team, and that’s where Gumption is.”
Passing the Test
The use of AI in the hiring process isn’t new. Many companies use it to sort through resumes to find applicants with proper credentials.
It can be tricky though, because candidates can use the same AI to format a resume. AI vetting programs such as Gumption work best with in-depth human input into the process.
“It’s an AI with a human input because it’s a very human-centric thing, hiring someone,” Franklin said. “You’re hiring a human. You’re not hiring a bot. I really think that digging in on that side of the house has been what’s made us successful.
“I will say the layers that are being used right now can weed out the right person. Or it can be duped by an AI resume.”
The selling point of AI hiring platforms is the time and money they can save companies. No company executive wants to manually wade through hundreds of resumes to find a few suitable interview candidates.
Kian Hassani, the chief of staff for Xtremis, said Gumption cuts the overhead for the company during the hiring process. Xtremis has offices in Washington, D.C., and Fayetteville and has used Gumption to add three employees to the AI radio frequency spectrum-monitoring firm.
“As we ramp up our workforce, her and her team have been incredibly helpful, because they’re trying to match the right human to our team, rather than the right resume,” Hassani said. “For us, it’s fantastic because we’re a lean team. We don’t have a ton of resources to dedicate to doing a bunch of interviews and reading a bunch of resumes.
“What Jordan and her team have been able to do is put the right humans in front of us, and they really take the extra step to make sure that the candidate is not just a great fit from a qualification standpoint, but they are a great fit for our culture and organization as well.”
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