When KPMG decided to bring generative AI into its hiring process, the professional services firm looked to strategically address issues to improve the experience since the company hires new employees each year from a large pool of campus recruits, experienced professionals, and senior talent.
In August 2023, KPMG launched an internal chatbot system, Kai, short for KPMG AI, in partnership with AI vendor Paradox.
“We have a very wide ecosystem of technology partners that we are always collaborating with to see how we can leverage their solutions to help bring better answers to our clients inside of the firm and outside,” said KMPG’s Sandy Torchia, vice chair of talent and culture. “It was a good collaboration with Paradox.”
The firm’s US recruiting team looked to Kai to help address two specific pain points in the recruiting process: improving how candidates interact with the company’s career site and reducing the time it takes for recruiters to schedule interviews with well-matched candidates.
For experienced hires, a group that spans a wide range of professional backgrounds and accounts for 53% of the company’s new hires each year, Kai helps surface relevant information from KPMG’s career page and job matches in its applicant tracking system. The tool, however, isn’t used for KPMG’s college recruiting nor as part of its senior talent strategy.
“The content on the web page is meant to answer a variety of different types of experienced hires’ questions,” Torchia said. “With Kai, we were able to improve the recruits’ experience by giving them this interface that they can interact with, and they ask questions to get information.”
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Between February 2024 and January 2025, Kai responded to more than 23,000 candidate inquiries, with one-third of those interactions occurring after business hours, according to Torchia. The tool’s ability to answer questions 24/7 gives KPMG a way to offer a consistent candidate experience regardless of time zone or recruiter availability.
“It also enables us to track data more accurately, to understand when people are interacting with KPMG, understanding what types of questions they’re asking,” she said. “Kai gives us an opportunity to better track that data.”
The tool doesn’t just benefit candidates. For recruiters, Kai helps automate interview scheduling and initial screening, cutting down the time it takes to set up interviews by 60%, according to Torchia. That efficiency gain frees up talent acquisition professionals to focus on exploring and reimagining recruiting strategy rather than rote work.
“We do always have a human in the loop to review the candidate for suitability and then to forward it to a hiring manager for review,” Torchia said.
She also noted that Kai is priming candidates ahead of linking up with recruiters, so when a recruiter and candidate do speak, the candidate is “more knowledgeable,” “more enthusiastic about KPMG,” and will “be better matched with openings.”
Torchia said she could see Kai’s ability to provide 24/7 answers from a portfolio of KPMG documents and information having applicability across HR and even across the firm.
