When AI is brought up in the recruiting context, there is often talk about whether these technologies will, in fact, improve the workflow more than harm it in scenarios where human touch has been historically paramount. As AI and automation become increasingly popular, there’s no denying the benefits it brings to streamlining workflows and processes, in addition to helping alleviate the burden of administrative work. AI and automation technology is being developed to help make life easier for hiring teams. Here’s how those teams can benefit from AI and automation.
Sourcing Candidates
Sourcing is a major time-consuming task for hiring teams. With AI, automation software can analyze large sets of data (resumes, job boards, social media, candidate databases) to look for specific parameters and skill sets the recruiter has put into place, in addition to what the AI is continuing to learn over time. Those who have been pre-screened by the automated software can then be passed to recruiters who can reach out to the candidate.
Screening Candidates
Recruiters spend a lot of time scanning through hundreds of resumes. However, approximately 75% of resumes never get seen by a human. This means that many qualified candidates may not even make it through the screening process due to the high volume of applications.
AI-backed technologies can help with the screening process by pulling from a library of questions that have been pre-defined by the business or tested across multiple companies, in addition to engaging with candidates at scale in real-time, 24/7. These AI solutions often lean on machine learning to automate the resume-screening process and in some cases use Natural Language Processing (NLP) and cognitive services to conversate with candidates. AI can form questions and answers to further screen pre-qualified candidates so that recruiters then engage with qualified candidates during the next step such as a technical screen or writing test. This will alleviate the time-consuming tasks that recruiters face with initial screening, freeing up their time to engage with qualified candidates.
Engaging with Candidates
Since recruiters have so many tasks at hand, their time is limited to only engaging with the candidates who they want to move forward with. However if 250 candidates apply to a job and only one gets it, there is an enormous opportunity to keep the other 249 engaged as future candidates, which can turn candidates into company advocates or even potential customers.
Checking References
One of the last steps in the hiring process is the reference check. A recruiter will typically reach out to 2-3 references, which could consume about 1.5 hr of their time per candidate. Now multiply that with the number of job openings the recruiter is responsible for, and you’ll find that a recruiter can spend up to one full working day just doing reference checks each week.
These reference checks can even leave employers open to liabilities such as what questions they ask certain candidates. Instead, using automation can help ease this burden as the bot can reach out to the reference and initiate and engage in conversation in a repeatable, consistent manner.
Another benefit here is that reference checks can be moved up in the cycle. With automation, you no longer need to just get references for the finalists, but do so earlier in the process to inform great in-person interviews. These systems can be set up in a way where references are asked questions with no obvious yes/no answers (as the reference could be biased due to being hand-selected by the candidate), but instead ask questions that help the employer gain a better understanding of the candidate and their work behavior and styles.
When AI and automation are implemented well, it can help streamline processes that recruiters are overburdened with. Automating these steps in the hiring process can help recruiters spend more time engaging with candidates and improving the overall candidate experience.
