Land a job interview with Chipotle and you may meet a team member named Ava Cado, who can answer your questions about the company or onboarding. She might email you if your interview goes well.
Ava isn’t a real person. “Ava Cado” is the name of Chipotle’s artificial intelligence hiring platform, built by a recruiting software firm called Paradox. Since its implementation last year, Chipotle has reduced its hiring time by 75%, CEO Scott Boatwright told Fortune on Monday.
“This not only helps us keep our restaurant staffed, but ensures we have the best talent that’s available in the industry,” Boatwright said. The hiring speed could help Chipotle open more than 300 locations this year, a new one “almost every 24 hours,” he added.
Specifically, the AI hiring platform is built for “chatting with candidates, answering their questions about Chipotle, collecting basic information, scheduling interviews for hiring managers, and sending offers to candidates who are selected by managers,” according to a Chipotle press release published on October 22.
Boatwright took the helm of Chipotle in November, after previously serving as its COO. His company isn’t alone: 25% of U.S. organizations use artificial intelligence tools for HR-related purposes, according to a 2024 survey from the Society of Human Resource Management.
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Some of the upsides seem clear: You can automate boring or rote administrative tasks, and provide job seekers with instant answers to their most commonly asked questions.
The practice may come with downsides, though. If you’re a job seeker hoping to chat with a recruiter, and you’re met by a chatbot that can’t answer your specific question, you could walk away with a sour impression of the company, notes a Nov. 4 Indeed blog post.
AI-enabled hiring could also come with increased cybersecurity risk, if the platform you use retains interview recordings, resumes or other pieces of personal information from job candidates to help the AI learn. Companies that create hiring platforms tend to take data security pretty seriously — but any data transmitted over the internet from your organization to an AI’s learning database has the potential to be exposed.
And, as Boatwright noted, using AI to grow a business means little if your product or service isn’t good enough for humans to buy.
“We don’t look to replace the human experience, we look to remove waste and expand or enhance the team member experience,” he said, adding: “Customers come to Chipotle for the food.”
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