In a competition styled after the television show “Shark Tank,” five gig economy firms competed for the votes of four judges on Thursday at Staffing Industry Analysts’ Collaboration in the Gig Economy conference in Dallas. And the firm AllyO was chosen by the judges.

AllyO is an artificial intelligence-powered recruitment platform that uses natural language processing and machine learning to automate the recruiting workflow. It’s based in Sunnyvale, Calif.

“All the finalists presented great business cases and it was tough choosing one above the others,” said John Nurthen, executive director, global research at SIA and one of the competition’s judges. “Allyo is part of an exciting and fast-growing market and has already been able to prove good traction for their product.”

It was just one session of the Collaboration in the Gig Economy conference. The event drew more than 800 business leaders from the ecosystem — staffing users, staffing suppliers and technology firms — to discuss the latest trends in the gig economy, including the human cloud. It ends today.

In addition, the audience of the “Shark Tank”-styled session had a chance to vote. They picked The Mom Project, a digital marketplace that launched a program connecting local corporations with diverse and experienced women returning to work. The Mom Project was included in a Staffing Industry Review Online story on the return of mothers to the workforce earlier this year.

The three other finalists in the competition were Workonomix, a platform that facilitates work identities and simplifies work engagement process using blockchain; Crowdstaffing, a curated marketplace that enables enterprises and MSPs to tap into a crowd of certified recruiters to find local talent; and Fulcrum, an online staffing marketplace aggregator for enterprise programs.

All five competing firms were chosen by nominations and they represented a diverse cross-section technology and business models.

The “sharks,” or judges, included:

• Jody Greenstone Miller, co-founder and CEO of Business Talent Group
• John Nurthen, executive director, global research, at Staffing Industry Analysts
• Marcus Sawyerr, CEO of YOSS USA.
• Jai Shekhawat, founder and former CEO of SAP Fieldglass