At OpenText World 2025 in Nashville, the intersection of technology and humanity takes center stage—especially in talent acquisition. In this OpenStudio interview, we explore how OpenText has infused AI into recruiting processes for candidate discovery, interview scheduling, and career site interactions, while maintaining a firm commitment to human-to-human connections in hiring. From implementing Aviator for HR help desk automation to setting guardrails that preserve the human element, discover how OpenText balances innovation with the values that matter most when building teams.

Watch the full interview:

Introduction

Ajit Yohannan: OK, welcome back to Music City Nashville. There's a lot of music in the air. We're sitting here in OpenText World. We have a CMA Awards night happening today. And so many exciting things. I'm also excited about my next guest who is here in OpenStudio. Greg Hauser, Vice President, Global Talent Acquisition & HR Corporate Development at OpenText. Welcome to the show. We go along back. We did our first OpenStudio way back in 2023, I think.

Greg Hauser: Yeah, I think that's what broke the internet.

Ajit: That's absolutely—we were viral, first viral video of OpenText.

Greg: I'm glad we could do it again.

Ajit: So thank you so much for doing this, Greg.

OpenText World 2025 Experience

Ajit: I just want to talk about what's been your experience at OpenText World this year. I want to hear your thoughts.

Greg: Yeah, I mean, it's just exciting to be with all of the partners, the customers, and then obviously all the team members that put it together. There is an energy, there's a buzz here, and that's kind of, it's almost like electric. Obviously we're here in Music City, and so we've seen so many—it's actually been great to see infusion of music into technology, and we saw a glimpse of that at the keynote yesterday, which was pretty awesome, but it's been a great event so far.

AI in Talent Acquisition

Ajit: Yeah, that's great. I also want to specifically ask about—I'm talking about a lot of things happening—but talent. As you head a talent acquisition team globally for OpenText, I want to talk about talent and AI. What's your thoughts? How do you see—I want to know about how you're seeing the changes overall in the industry, and then we'll come to the OpenText part of it.

Greg: Sure. In recruiting specific, if I was going to break it down, there is a lot of infusion of AI, mainly for automation and doing kind of those tasks that take a long time to complete, more administrative type tasks. But from a talent acquisition perspective, we've embraced AI. We've implemented into our process, and we're using it on a daily basis, whether that is finding candidates that have applied to our organization, whether that is scheduling interviews all done through AI, or even just applying. The interaction that you have with our career site—there is a backend AI agent that's helping you decide what's the best fit for you. So we've infused AI into our process already, and we're just going to continue to build on that. What I'm excited about is how OpenText is really looking at HR as a key function that they can help automate. And as we're looking at Aviator, for instance, and how does that interact with our career site, etc., so that we can use it to harness the power of AI for the TA process.

Guardrails and Human-Centered Hiring

Ajit: That's awesome. And how do you, as a TA leader, how do you make sure that the guardrails are in place? How do you know that the systems are not being misused? They're not bad agents? How do you make sure of that? Because now anything is possible.

Greg: You're right. And I've been asked, like, can we automate interviews? Can we just do all AI? And we've taken a little bit more of a—not a cautious stance. We still believe that our recruiting and talking to talent needs to be human to human, because ultimately we're hiring humans. We're not hiring AI agents. Or we create them. But we're never going to eliminate that as a key part of our process. So I think what we've been following is just setting the tone of what are our guardrails. What are our boundaries? Where do we want to infuse AI and what do we see the value? And then bringing that to life and then exploring kind of the new things, whether that's assisting with interviews or helping with the feedback loop once a candidate's gone through, the interaction with the candidates, keeping them up to speed on what's going on behind the scenes. All of these things, I think, just elevate our brand and elevate the experience for anyone. But we're never going to take away and just do complete virtual AI bot interviews, not at OpenText, at least while I'm here. I don't think that's going to happen.

Team Enablement and Communication

Ajit: That's reassuring. But how do you make sure that your teams are enabled on these new technologies? How do you bring them up to speed, what to use, how much to use, when to intervene? How do you do that?

Greg: Well, I think 99% of all problems can be solved with just effective communication. So we talk—we talk about what our use cases are. We talk about what makes sense for the organization, and then we set the parameters on what are the tools that we have in play and what they can do. There's only so much they can do. And so we've set that kind of guardrail for not only the technology, but then also the users, which are the global talent acquisition advisors and partners.

Sharing Innovation with Customers

Ajit: That's awesome. And are you also sharing these examples with our customers and are you also involved in the process? We saw today one of our biggest customers, IBM, coming and talking about how they're using, so do you get an opportunity to share with our customers as well?

Greg: Whenever I get a chance to talk to a customer and tell and have that conversation of the art of possible, that's part of what makes this event amazing—just spending time with customers. But yeah, you're right. IBM and their Watson technology interacting with ours and the whole concept that OpenText is an open forum to connect all in a secure environment—there's nothing out there that has that. So talking to customers and telling the story of how we're automating our HR help desk and ticketing system and using Aviator to help solve the common questions that come in on a daily basis that rack up thousands of tickets for someone to go through and mark through. But now we're seeing it in action in our customers. And so while we tell the story, we can do it. It's awesome to see how they're using it. And I think it's just going to continue to evolve. I would love to help with our HR team or the technology to more infuse into talent acquisition. But stay tuned because we're working on some agents on the TA side that I think will potentially make it to our customers.

Music Break: CMA Awards Preview

Ajit: That's awesome. That's the best case of using our technology. I know you're not just a talent guy, but a very talented guy. So I'm going to ask you to put you on the spot and we're getting ready for the CMA Awards night. You want to lead us into a song, a song or whatever you want to do.

Greg: Well, it is the CMAs. I'm a Zach Bryan fan, and I don't know if he's going to be here or not, but I like Godspeed. Have you heard that song? You know, I guess I could start singing it if you want me to. [Sings] "I'm living on Godspeed. Only God and my mama know what I need." Oh, I think that's how it goes. I could be completely wrong. I could be butchering the lyrics, but if I have it in front of me karaoke, I think I could do well.

Ajit: I think it sounded good. I mean, you know, I'm sure you'll get letters saying he butchered the—

Greg: So that was not the lyrics, but yeah, I mean, I'm on the spot. What do you expect?

Ajit: Everybody's a musician in Music City.

Closing

Ajit: Yeah. But thank you so much, Greg. It's always a pleasure talking to you and look forward to all the innovations that you're bringing for the talent community and hope our customers can utilize it, our employees can leverage it. And yeah, we all reap the benefits of this technology. Any final words to our customers, our listeners?

Greg: No, I think everyone that I've talked to is just really loves the direction OpenText is heading and the new technology and the innovation. It's important, the innovation that's coming out. But I'm just excited for this upcoming year. It's going to be a great journey.

Ajit: Awesome. Thank you all for joining in and thank you, Greg, once again for coming.

Greg: For having me. Appreciate it. Thank you.

About OpenStudio

OpenStudio is OpenText’s media hub for thought leadership and innovation. This series explores stories of progress and success from industry experts, visionaries, and trailblazers. Our goal is to inspire, inform, and connect audiences with the people and ideas shaping the future of the digital world.

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