How many times have you applied for a job, waited anxiously for an offer or a refusal and never heard anything back? But could a robot streamline the recruitment process, and is a rejection letter from a robot better than no letter at all? This year, the Washington Post reported that Ikea Moscow used Robot Vera to conduct preliminary interviews and provide feedback to applicants. Anne Keegan, professor of human resource management at the College of Business, University College Dublin, explains Robot Vera. "Robot Vera is a video-enhanced chatbot that uses machine learning to continuously refine her conversational skills based on more and more practice with applicants. Robot Vera recognises emotions and gathers data based on the answers given by job applicants to her questions. She then distinguishes applicants based on this information to make predictions about job suitability. She also sends follow-up letters to applicants," she says.

Robot Vera's AI scans CVs on the Internet or within the customer's own databases and conducts interviews by phone with candidates it matches.robot Recruiting and HR processes offer many opportunities to employ artificial intelligence (AI). That's why SAP and startup Robot Vera are joining forces to develop an AI assistant to take over routine HR tasks. Recruiting is a time-consuming business, with thousands of small steps needed to identify suitable candidates for vacancies. Because of the workload, companies risk losing recruiters who tire of the routine.

The World Economic Forum has forecasted that robots will eliminate 75 million jobs by 2022. However, they also predict they will create 133 million new jobs, a net gain of 58 million. Whatever the future holds, talk about automation is never going to be far away when it comes to work. In the quest for profits and ever-increasing growth, organizations are constantly being challenged to cut costs, which technology can help them do. This is the reality of modern-day Business.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is becoming a strategic imperative with various nations announcing centralized plans and initiatives to remain globally competitive. Automation is on the rise due to recent breakthroughs in deep learning, the availability of big data, decentralized computing via the cloud, and improved AI algorithms. "For governments, there is an urgent need to support both firms and citizens to ensure that they benefit from the AI-powered digital economy. This means preparing workers for rapidly changing job requirements, facilitating AI investment and adoption, and solving for broad-based, productivity-driven economic growth." Globally the most active AI hubs are in Silicon Valley, New York, Beijing, Boston, London, and Shenzhen [1].