St. Petersburg Officials Turn to AI Tools Vera and Gennadiy for Hiring

The digital service, powered by Gennadiy and Vera, was unveiled at the 10th St. Petersburg International Labor Forum. It marks the city’s first large-scale effort to integrate AI into recruitment for government positions.

The system helps HR teams at Smolny automatically build a “resume funnel,” filtering applications to identify candidates who match vacancies across executive government bodies. In pilot mode, the technology is already being used to process applications from candidates seeking to join the city’s youth personnel reserve program.

The interface runs in a browser window, with interaction handled through a text-based chat. Once fully deployed, HR staff will be able to submit queries such as “economist with at least two years of experience” or “candidate with a legal background.” The system returns the most relevant resumes within seconds and can also help clarify salary expectations or verify whether a candidate has specific skills.

Governor Aleksandr Beglov said the rollout reflects broader shifts in how governments operate: “This allows us to make St. Petersburg’s civil service truly modern and adaptive. We simplify the search and initial screening of candidates, free HR teams from routine tasks, and enable them to focus on more complex work, improving the efficiency of the entire system.”

The service was developed by the city’s Committee for Informatization and Communications, the Committee for Civil Service and Personnel Policy, and the Laboratory of Intelligent Services and Applications at ITMO University.