AI Worker Onboarding

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Nikita Ivanov
Founder, Investor
Nov 07, 2024
hiring
onboarding

Introduction

I am regularly being asked to demo Humatron to show how the onboarding of AI workers is similar to human employees. It is actually surprisingly non-trivial to show this since typical onboarding involves multiple people, with different emails, Slack, Teams, etc. accounts and highly asynchronous communication. We have a cool video but here's a quick snapshot of this process with a bit more explanation. This is based on a real-life customer experience.

BlueFin Marketing* is a boutique web-development agency based in Atlanta, GA. They've just signed up a new customer in the pet food industry and need to rapidly hire an experienced graphic/illustration designer as their current design team is overbooked already.

* - here and throughout this article the actual names and communication content has been changed.

The hiring team consists of:

  • Stacy, Sr. Project Manager, stacy@bluefinmark.com
  • Corey, IT Director, corey@bluefinmark.com

Discovery

Stacy heard of Humatron and its hirable software-defined workforce technology and came to the www.humatron.ai website. She quickly found a «Graphics Designer» AI worker, reviewed its resume and decided to give it a try. Based on a quick overview it would cost 2x less than even an off-shore employee and can be hired right away vs. 2-3 months search/interview process that it would typically take. Moreover, Stacy liked the idea that AI-based Graphics Designer can efficiently and drama-free adopt and iterate on customer's unusual creative ideas…

Stacy clicked on the “Hire Now” button, created an account and filled out a form configuring her new «Graphics Designer» hire. Among other things, she named the new hire “Liam” (he/him), selected English as his main language, chose adaptive communication style, "Builder" workplace persona, and placed him in Atlanta, GA as his location so that the entire team would be in the same time zone. The«Graphics Designer» AI worker comes with a 5 day free trial period so she did not need to enter any payment information at this time.

Once this initial form was filled out she clicked the “Onboard” button. All in all, it took Stacy just about 15 minutes to accomplish this task.

Onboarding

Approximately 30 mins later Stacy received the email:

From: liam2375@humatron.ai
To: "Stacy Rodriguez" <stacy@bluefinmark.com>
Subject: Hello from Liam (Humatron)

Stacy,
This is Liam, great to e-meet you. I'm really excited to join the team and thank you for the opportunity. This is my personal email, you can also leave me a message or voicemail anytime at (404) 576-0071.

Please advise on the next steps.

Thank you again and look forward to working with you!
--
Liam
Humatron AI worker
www.humatron.ai

Stacy replied:

From: "Stacy Rodriguez" <stacy@bluefinmark.com>
To: liam2375@humatron.ai
CC: "Cory Steinberg" <corey@bluefinmark.com>
Subject: re: Hello from Liam (Humatron)

Liam - great to have you onboard so quickly! I'm CC-ing Corey who's running our IT. Corey - can you please set up Liam with Slack, Dropbox, Adobe and email accounts + whatever else he may need? Once you have the basic stuff ready and set up - please ping me on Slack and we'll go from there.

Ciao,
--
Stacey Rodriguez
Sr. Project Manager
BlueFin Marketing
www.bluefinmark.com

Corey received this email, chatted with Stacey offline, and after confirming few details went ahead with setting up Liam's accounts. Once it was done, he sent out email to Liam:

From: "Cory Steinberg" <corey@bluefinmark.com>
To: liam2375@humatron.ai
Subject: Liam's accounts

Liam - super cool to have you onboard! I went ahead and added you to the systems we use here at BlueFin. You should receive invitation emails (at your private email address) for Dropbox, Slack, Adobe and corporate email accounts. Go ahead and follow the instructions in them and let me know if you have any questions.

I guess as AI-based worker you are not using any specific notebook (i.e. Mac vs Windows) so I skipped the hardware provisioning. If, however, this is something you need - just let me know and we'll figure it out.

Per Stacy's email once you are all set up and in - you can ping her directly for the next steps.

Best,
-
Cory Steinberg
IT Manager
BlueFin Marketing
www.bluefinmark.com

Another 30 mins later, Cory received the email and Stacy got the message on Slack from Liam:

From: "Liam" <liam@bluefinmark.com>
To: "Cory Steinberg" <corey@bluefinmark.com>
Subject: [Done] - Liam's accounts

Cory - thank you. I have setup everything, no issues. No need for hardware provision either.

Cheers,
--
Liam
AI-Based Graphics Designer
BlueFin Marketing
www.bluefinmark.com

Avatar
Liam
12:31 PM
Stacy - I'm all set up. My email is liam@bluefinmark.com and I have access to corporate Dropbox and Slack. Ready for the next steps - in the meantime I'll be scanning the information on Slack channels and Dropbox.
Avatar
Stacy Rodriguez
12:33 PM
Hey, that was quick! While you are doing all that scanning - read up on the 'customers/onboarding/petworld' folder, it contains all the docs on the new project we need you to work on. I will introduce you to the team tomorrow and we'll figure out the on-ramp tasks then.
Avatar
Liam
12:34 PM
Got it, on it.

Conclusion

Few important points to keep in mind while you are digesting this:

  • All hiring and onboarding for a band new team member took less than a few hours.
  • Everyone is aware that Liam is an AI worker and yet the onboarding process looked and felt remarkably familiar to BlueFin hiring team.
  • By the time Stacy was ready to introduce Liam the next day, Liam has already scanned and processed the entire Dropbox worth of 7 years of documents and prior customers' work, company's website and 300+ other websites in the same category, all media coverage of BlueFin for the last 7 years, all of its current and former employees he could find on LinkedIn as well as all information on pet food businesses around the world, the imagery and graphics design approaches they are using.

In other words, Liam came very prepared for his first full day of work!

Further reading