When you think about artificial intelligence in recruitment, what do you imagine? Those who fear AI may envision shrunken talent acquisition teams, complicated recruiting platforms or candidate sourcing algorithms gone haywire. But the future of AI recruiting features far less doom and gloom. In reality, AI-powered recruitment will elevate hiring and relieve busy recruiters.
It’s true that more than one-fifth of U.S. workers are worried that technology will take their jobs. Although, there’s also evidence of positive thinking toward AI, particularly among HR pros. According to Gartner, 81% of HR leaders have experimented with or implemented AI solutions to boost workplace efficiency.
How Will AI Recruiting Change TA?
As recruiters begin to experiment with AI, it’s becoming clear that the technology will transform the profession. In fact, the same Gartner survey above revealed that more than three-quarters of HR leaders worry that if their organizations ignore AI, they will lag behind early adopters.
Their fear isn’t unfounded: Recruiting departments that procrastinate on AI adoption will dull their competitive edge and fall behind those who sharpen their practices with new and developing tools. Reluctant recruiters may feel comfortable with their old habits, but they’ll soon realize they’re missing the insights, efficiencies and opportunities their competitors are using to win more and better talent.
So, what benefits can TA teams gain from AI-powered recruitment? Below, we’ll discuss five powerful outcomes of artificial intelligence in recruitment.
#1: AI Recruiting Will Enhance Recruiter Productivity
The No. 1 benefit of AI in recruitment? Efficiency. AI tools could potentially generate an exponential increase in productivity among recruiters and hiring professionals.
This estimate sounds overly dramatic until you consider the power of AI. Working manually, a recruiter may be able to follow up with 100 candidates in a day, assuming she’s hyper-focused and skips lunch. But with an AI-enabled tool, a recruiter can follow up with as many candidates as she wants.
How? The AI tool computes more information than the recruiter can by herself. And it’s making decisions for her. The recruiter isn’t removed from the process, but she’s operating at a faster pace with AI.
Let’s consider another scenario: Let’s say a recruiting department wants to improve its employer’s social media presence. Without any AI tools, the team could spend a couple of weeks developing their strategy, brainstorming and creating copy, editing their work, finding accompanying images, generating graphics and scheduling posts. With AI tools, that work can be accomplished in a matter of days.
#2: AI in recruitment will elevate the candidate experience
As AI lightens recruiters’ workloads, it will also improve the candidate experience by making it more personal and engaging.
Consider an AI-powered recruitment chatbot. Running on machine learning and other forms of automation, chatbots can showcase an organization’s employer brand from its very first interactions with candidates. Chatbots can give job seekers information about the interview process, tell candidates about company benefits and even prompt someone to fill out an application. In short, chatbots establish an organization’s employer branding early in the application journey, boosting the quantity and quality of candidate interactions.
AI tools can also elevate the candidate experience at the end of the application journey. When candidates lose out on a job opportunity, many complain about a lack of communication from the employer. AI tools can make sure every rejected candidate receives a thoughtful response that not only conveys the company’s decision but also outlines several points of feedback for the candidate to consider. This automated but personalized outreach helps even crestfallen applicants feel valued and understood.
#3: AI-Powered Recruitment Will Net Better Candidates
It’s a common frustration among recruiters tasked with hard-to-fill roles: They have few candidates, and the candidates they do have aren’t impressive. AI recruiting can help.
Automated candidate-sourcing tools are a powerful resource for recruiters seeking strong applicants. On their own, recruiters could spend the whole day sifting through resumes and cover letters. But with AI, recruiters let the tools do the work. Once a tool is told what qualities to look for, it can dig into thousands of resumes and pull the top 100 applicants in a matter of minutes.
If a recruiter is looking for nurse practitioners to fill a job at a health clinic, she can ask an AI tool outfitted with machine learning and predictive analytics to find applicants whose materials showcase the experience and background that’s right for the role. Because the recruiter outsourced candidate selection to a tool, she now has more time to build strong relationships with the best applicants.
#4: Predictive Analytics Will Hone Hiring Decisions
As AI tools progress, their ability to find the best candidates will only grow. Experts say that predictive analytics — like automated candidate-sourcing tools — will one day yield even deeper insights from candidate resumes or past experiences. By using data to forecast future outcomes, predictive analytics will give recruiters more insight into a candidate’s future performance and success within a particular organization.
Predictive analytics also give HR greater insight into the future behavior of current employees. For example, the tools can predict when employees are most likely to switch jobs or when they’re ready for a promotion. As predictive analytics grow more powerful, organizations can use them to foster better employee engagement and equip recruiters with the information they need to source for open roles more proactively.
#5: Reduce Bias with AI in Recruitment
As recruiters learn to use automated candidate-sourcing tools and other types of AI, the impact of their unconscious biases will shrink. AI in the recruitment process will intensify recruiting’s focus on the skills offered by candidates, as opposed to the universities they attended or the companies they worked for previously.
A shift to skills-based hiring via AI tools will help recruiters build a more diverse and inclusive workforce. But recruiters will need to implement these tools with plenty of human supervision. While the tools hold great potential for reducing bias, they also need regular auditing to ensure they remain impartial.
We’ve now walked through five ways AI will impact recruiting. While each of these changes will profoundly impact the profession, this list is by no means exhaustive. AI will transform recruiting in many ways, and there’s no doubt that some changes will come as a surprise.
Check out Bear Claw ATS + CRM to learn more about the tools you need to elevate AI in your recruiting: https://bearclaw.io/