The Birth of Talynx: An AI-Based Intelligent Interviewing Tool

A consulting and advisory services firm based in the Middle East, in the market for more than two decades and serving clients across eleven countries, had reached an inflection point. Revenue had stagnated, its operations remained largely manual, and newer, tech-enabled competitors were beginning to close the gap that experience alone once protected.

The client engaged Catalyst Convoy to conduct an initial, on-the-ground assessment of its technology ecosystem — not confined to one department, but across the enterprise. The scope was deliberately broad, because the firm needed to understand where technology was helping, where it was hurting, and where two decades of manual process had quietly become a liability.

Although the assessment was to be conducted enterprise-wide, it became clear early on that the human resources department warranted particular focus. It was the organization's economic engine — the function through which the firm found, screened, placed, and billed for the talent it supplied to its own clients. Every inefficiency inside HR's systems and workflows had a direct line to revenue.

What Catalyst Convoy found was a department running on fragmented tools rather than a system: recruiters searching sourcing platforms, job portals, and an unstructured two-decade-old internal database separately, with no way for remote staff to access candidate history at all. Tracking and administration were handled through spreadsheets, shared folders, and email. There was no applicant tracking system and no CRM. Invoicing was manual, and payment follow-ups were inconsistent enough to create real revenue leakage. Leadership had no real-time visibility into pipeline value, time-to-fill, or recruiter productivity — and the firm's founder had become a personal bottleneck for reviews that a system should have been handling.

Following the current-state assessment, Catalyst Convoy worked with the client to define its future-state requirements against its diversification and growth plans, and charted a multi-phase technology roadmap predominantly built around the human capital department's users and how they interacted with clients across the business.

Two capabilities were identified as the priority for Phase 1: an applicant tracking system to bring order and visibility to the candidate lifecycle, and an AI-driven calling and interviewing system to increase interview throughput without a proportional increase in headcount.

Catalyst Convoy worked with the client to float RFPs into the market for both systems. Technical evaluation interviews and vendor demonstrations followed, with shortlisted vendors assessed on functional fit, AI capability, technical architecture, implementation support, and commercial terms.

What emerged from that process was a clear picture of what “good” looked like — and a price tag to match. As the evaluation progressed, it became increasingly evident that the licensing and implementation costs the vendors were quoting were not going to be feasible for the client, particularly against a backdrop of shifting macroeconomic conditions.

The changing economics brought the client's senior leadership and Catalyst Convoy back to the table. Rather than compromise on scope or delay the transformation, the two organizations reorganized the plan entirely: instead of procuring the ATS and AI interviewing system commercially off the shelf, it would be more economical to build them in-house using AI technologies.

This was a genuinely difficult proposition. The cost argument was sound, but the skill sets required and the volume of work involved were substantial for an organization that had never built software products before. Catalyst Convoy responded by deploying a senior consultant with expert-level, hands-on AI solution development experience to lead the build — and splitting the two deliverables, the ATS and the AI calling system, into parallel workstreams, each managed by its own Catalyst Convoy team lead.

Before writing a line of the product requirements, Catalyst Convoy tested five to six existing AI-based interviewing and calling systems in the market — some built around AI interviewing avatars, others around abstract AI voices — to settle on the right interaction model. The decision landed on an abstract AI avatar that would interview a candidate live over video call, rather than a voice-only experience.

Catalyst Convoy then did the initial business analysis and architecture work, developed a comprehensive product requirements document and project plan, and agreed the acceptance criteria directly with the client. A set of twenty users from the client side were selected as testers and worked closely with the Catalyst Convoy team throughout.

Development started with an MVP. Basic functionality was put in place first and tested thoroughly with the client's testing group before any further investment was made in the product.

Catalyst Convoy went on to comprehensively develop the product beyond its MVP roots. What it has become is a distinctive AI solution — now named Talynx — that interviews candidates live over video call, backed by a sophisticated fraud detection system alongside automated candidate assessment and reporting.

Talynx has surpassed the client's expectations. On its maiden venture into AI product development in the HR domain, Catalyst Convoy used this engagement to demonstrate not just its digital transformation capability, but its ability to design, build, and ship a genuine software product from the ground up.

Talynx is no longer an MVP — it is a full-fledged product, and it is currently undergoing extensive user acceptance testing across its entirety, with delivery expected around mid-August 2026. Later phases will further enhance the product with an AI avatar upgrade.

The applicant tracking system that was the other half of the original Phase 1 priority is being developed separately, led by another senior Catalyst Convoy consultant. Once complete, the plan is to integrate the two systems into a single platform. The eventual objective goes beyond the client's own internal use: to turn Talynx into a commercially viable ATS-and-AI-interviewing product for the wider market. Based on progress to date, there is good reason to believe it has a winner on its hands.

From enterprise-wide assessment to a live AI product in final testing — every work stream designed to function as a connected system, not a series of independent interventions.

What began as a technology assessment turned into something considerably larger: a client that could no longer afford the commercial solution it needed, and a Catalyst Convoy team that built it instead. The engagement moved the client from a fragmented, manual HR technology landscape toward a purpose-built AI interviewing product — with fraud detection, assessment, and reporting built in — designed around its own users and its own economics rather than a vendor's pricing sheet.

For Catalyst Convoy, the engagement is the firm's maiden venture into ground-up AI product development within the HR domain, and it has proven the model: deploy a senior AI development lead, run disciplined parallel workstreams, involve the client's own users from MVP onward, and let the product earn its way from pilot to platform.