Ava Cado is coming to Chipotle, and no, I’m not talking about guacamole. 

On Tuesday, the fast-casual restaurant chain announced a new recruiting tool (named “Ava Cado”) to help beef up hiring. The “virtual team member,” built by recruitment software company Paradox, will chat with candidates in various languages, answer their questions, collect basic information, schedule interviews, and even send offer letters, according to the company. Chipotle anticipates the tech will reduce hiring time by 75%. 

“We expect that increasing our speed to hire will be an advantage in a competitive labor market,” Ilene Eskenazi, chief human resources officer for Chipotle, told Fortune. The company’s in-restaurant and field leadership roles account for 98% of total hiring.

Using AI for recruiting at a large restaurant chain makes a lot of sense for an organization that hires on a large scale every year. The restaurant chain announced in 2024 that it would be hiring 19,000 employees for “burrito season,” a particularly busy time for the company that lasts from March until May. Chipotle isn’t the first fast-food chain to incorporate an AI into the hiring process: McDonald’s launched McHire, its own custom virtual hiring assistant, in collaboration with Paradox in 2019. Two years into using it, the restaurant has cut back hiring time for hourly workers by 60%, according to Paradox.

Chipotle’s announcement comes at a time when HR leaders around the world are trying to figure out the best way to incorporate AI into their workflow. Recruiting has been a major focus of many CHRO’s AI efforts for some time because it can be used to create job postings, write emails, and filter through applications.

“AI enabled recruiting is particularly well suited for distributed blue collar recruiting. Restaurants, retail, warehouses, distribution businesses are all ripe for AI enablement,” Dan Kaplan, a senior client partner at Korn Ferry’s CHRO practice, tells Fortune. “We have come a long way and yet we aren’t even in the first inning.” 

But it’s crucial that CHROs make sure that if they do use AI for recruiting, there’s still a human involved in the process. Sending an offer letter too quickly, with little to no human interaction, may lead candidates to believe the offer is a scam, or that the company isn’t serious, says Mahe Bayireddi, CEO and co-founder of Phenom, an HR technology company that develops AI-based software for recruiting. One of his clients went overboard and cut their total recruiting time from application to offer letter to just 45 minutes. “While a lot of people got offers, only 50% of them actually showed up to work,” Bayireddi tells Fortune.

He adds that at least 10% of the hiring process should involve human interaction. And it’s important to note that number increases when it comes to hiring knowledge workers— a more personalized process is more critical for those roles.

Brit Morse
brit.morse@fortune.com

Today’s edition was curated by Emma Burleigh.

Around the Table

A round-up of the most important HR headlines.

Only a quarter of U.K. workers say they want alcohol at social events, signaling that employees are moving away from after-work drinking culture and alcohol consumption altogether. Financial Times

St. Louis passed a bill that would throw out an old ordinance that barbers cannot work past 6:30 p.m. on Sundays and holidays—a rule that originally targeted the Black community. Washington Post 

The new CEO of industrial giant 3M Co. expects employees at the director level and above to be in office three days per week—after three years of operating on flexible schedules. Bloomberg

Watercooler

Everything you need to know from Fortune.

Brain drain. More than 2,400 of Kaiser Permanente's unionized mental health workers in California went on strike Monday over what they say are unmanageable workloads and staff shortages.—Damian Dovarganes, AP

Blind optimism. Although Gen Z is taking an interest in trade careers, an analysis of traditional positions like welding, plumbing, and carpentry in the U.K. reveal they’re some of the unhappiest jobs. —Orianna Rosa Royle

Synchronized slipup. EY fired dozens of staffers for attending two training sessions simultaneously, but the axed employees say the company promotes multitasking and never said they couldn’t attend multiple meetings at once. —Eleanor Pringle