With a massive number of individuals competing for a limited amount of jobs, sifting through applications and finding the right talent for your company can often be quite a headache. Applicants either lack core skills, don’t fit in well with your company culture, or simply back out after going through the interview process. While this is a reality your business will have to face no matter what, there are ways in which you can reduce the chances of this happening, and make your recruitment process a whole lot easier.

Integrating Artificial Intelligence into your recruitment processes might sound bizarre to some business owners, but it is actually a practice that is quickly gaining popularity today. In this article, we will fill you in on all the basics you need to know- from AI’s advantages and pitfalls to its impact on business and what you can expect in the future.

How Traditional Selection Falls Short

The reason why most business owners aren’t really familiar with the use of AI in recruitment is that a majority of companies still rely on traditional practices for scouting talent. Referrals, word of mouth and paper-based job postings are all practices they recognize and therefore rely on greatly, but the truth is that in today’s technological era, traditional recruitment is no longer sufficient in acquiring talent.

The amount of time and effort recruiters have to put into finding reliable, long-term talent for their company is usually astronomical. And even after they’ve spent long hours and combed through hundreds of applications and interviews, there is always the chance that either a capable applicant will quit in the midst of the process or hand in their notice after working for only a short while. This is a massive problem because last-minute back-outs and early resignations can tamper with your talent management and sometimes affect your business’s operations as a whole.

This, however, is not the only issue businesses face when following traditional recruitment practices. A traditional recruitment cycle generally goes like this- your business advertises a job opening, receives applications, reaches out to some applicants for interviews, conducts interviews, and then picks which individual they think is best suited for the role. Arguably the biggest problem with this system is that a recruiter’s assessment of a candidate’s talent and the value they can bring to the company is largely subjective and open to both conscious and unconscious bias. There is also the issue that oftentimes interviewers spend more energy selling the job to the candidate than assessing their aptitude for it to begin with. According to Forbes, up to 40% of a recruiter’s time can be spent on sorting through resumes alone, which clearly points to a lack of time efficiency and ineffectiveness in the traditional recruiting model.

Traditional recruiting methods are time-consuming, open to subjectivity and bias and can also be very heavy on the business’s pocket. These problems are further intensified because finding qualified candidates has become increasingly difficult in recent years. With about 52% of talent acquisition leaders saying that the hardest part of recruitment is identifying the right candidates from a large pool of applicants, it’s obvious that there is a massive lack of efficiency in traditional recruitment practices- which AI can hopefully mitigate.

How AI Can Fill In The Gaps

‘AI for recruiting’ refers to the application of artificial intelligence to the recruitment function that is designed to automate parts of the recruiting workflow, especially repetitive high-volume tasks.

AI provides recruiters with the ability to hire more efficiently and fairly and to shortlist candidates with a higher degree of accuracy. AI-powered tools can add a much-needed layer of intelligence to the recruitment process, as they can be designed to automatically go through thousands of resumes, saving recruiters precious time and energy. AI models can also be used to help recruiters in their assessments. They can be programmed to study past hiring data and analyze multiple factors to amount to a total score, which can then be used to determine the reliability and accuracy of the recruiter’s assessment of a particular candidate.

There are hundreds of other ways in which AI can be used to power your recruitment process, all of which are impossible to explore in the scope of this article. From helping with sourcing and pre-selection to answering candidate questions, setting up interviews, scanning CVs and beyond- the possibilities of AI recruiting technology are truly endless.

A common misconception is that integrating Artificial Intelligence into recruitment processes means that businesses need to eradicate the human touch entirely- but that is simply not true. AI is not meant to replace human intelligence, but to supplement it. Using AI in recruitment means that businesses can opt for a more effective approach to finding talent by establishing a strategic partnership between technology and human input.

What Does Recruitment With AI Look Like?

Using AI, companies can gather a talented team of individuals in much less time than it would take to choose them with human power alone. High-performing teams can be built based on specific criteria that the company can choose to set, such as expertise, educational background, client preferences, past performance and so on. An AI recruiting solution can help organizations search through thousands of applicants to find the individuals who will fit right in with the company culture and requirements. While the company’s recruitment managers will still be making the final hiring decision, they can use the important data they receive from the AI system to help them do this quicker, easier and with more efficiency. This helps reduce chances of bias, subjective error and other problems, and is more likely to result in successful hiring.

Using AI For Recruitment

The Good

AI recruiting technology is gaining popularity simply because of how much easier and more streamlined it can make the recruitment process. There are many benefits AI recruiting systems can bring to the table, time efficiency being one of the most important ones.

• The more the tedious, time-consuming tasks can be automated, the better it is for the company. Companies can use AI technology to answer candidate questions, send out job applications, set up interviews and screen applicants- all in no time at all! The best AI-powered technology will greatly automate your workflow, saving your recruitment managers precious time that they can put into assessing candidates and making a well-informed, careful hiring decision. This also reduces the chances of your company losing out on talented employees to faster-moving competitors.
• Another important use of AI is in helping companies find the right candidates from a pool of hundreds or even thousands of potential applicants. AI systems can be programmed to analyze people’s online presence such as social media and public data, and make predictions based on this assessment. It can also study the profiles of individuals who are already working at the company, and identify people with similar skills and talents. This is a very helpful technology that can be used by companies to target their adverts specifically at individuals who might be interested in the job and possess similar characteristics and skills to people the company has already hired.
• AI greatly helps in improving the quality of hire. It’s especially helpful in the recruitment of passive candidates, as it can quite literally search through the entire pool of possible applicants, allowing for a more inclusive, thorough and effective search.
• AI technology can also help improve the candidate experience. Instead of waiting hours or sometimes even days for a response on any query a candidate has submitted on the nature of the job, AI chat boxes and help-desks can give instant answers, increasing a candidate’s willingness and interest in the job offer.
• AI systems can also help eradicate bias from the recruitment process. There are hundreds of tools that can help recruiters write bias-free adverts, and also make data-driven hiring decisions instead of consciously or unconsciously losing out on capable and talented employees because of bias in the hiring process.

The Bad

As groundbreaking as AI technology might be, AI recruiting solutions will only serve businesses well if the potential risks and issues surrounding their implementation are properly addressed and resolved. Developing an effective AI solution that works for your company is no easy task, and there are many challenges you will have to face along the way. Some of the possible pitfalls include:

• As AI uses machine learning to mimic human behaviour, there are chances that AI may also mimic human bias. An infamous example of AI bias occurred in 2018, where Amazon’s AI recruiting system was found to have a bias against female applications in its hiring algorithm. While this doesn’t mean that the idea of AI in recruiting should be rejected entirely, it points towards a potential risk in the system that companies will have to work around.
• You will need a highly trained AI solution. This is essential because without proper training, it may offer mistaken suggestions which might end up hurting your business rather than helping it.
• You will have to carefully screen and reassess your recruiting process before training the system to follow it. Oftentimes, even with the help of AI, companies fail to build high-performing, long-term teams of employees because there are several glitches in their recruiting process. For AI recruiting to serve you well, you must make sure you are evaluating the right factors, reaching out to the right pool of individuals, and generally following an effective recruiting strategy.

• Adopting AI solutions requires the entire company to be on board with these changes, especially your HR departments since they will be making use of this technology the most. It’s common for HR employees to be sceptical of new technology, so it’s important you work as a team with them to answer any questions and address any fears or doubts they might have. You will have to communicate with your employees on why you are adopting this system, provide them with proper training on how to use it, and explain how it can make their jobs easier.

Artificial intelligence can result in laser-precision hiring that provides a necessary alternative to traditional hiring practices, but it doesn’t come easy. Your business must be prepared to put in the work to refine the algorithms and carefully train your teams for AI to truly enhance your recruitment process. However, once you’ve managed to tackle these challenges, recruitment with AI is undoubtedly a step in the right direction for your business.

How AI Will Impact Your Role As A Recruiter

Using AI in recruiting is bound to have an impact on the role of a recruiter and the place they hold in the process. This technology will allow recruiters to have more time to build relationships with candidates, hold insightful in-person conversations and determine the kind of individuals they are and how they will fit in with the company culture since AI will be handling most of the repetitive, time-consuming tasks. AI will give recruiters the space they need to conduct more pro-active strategic hiring, using data collected by AI to assess and improve the quality of hire.

AI for recruiting holds tremendous potential for the future, and when implemented carefully and strategically, is bound to make the lives of recruiters a whole lot easier.

A Look Into The Future

Often when companies are choosing to adopt AI in any sector of their business, their employees express concern that this technology will take over their jobs. Although this is a common misconception, that is not what the future of AI for recruiting aims to achieve.

Industry experts have expressed the belief that the future of AI for recruiting is ‘Augmented Intelligence’, which is the idea that human capabilities (such as empathy, understanding context, etc.) can never be completely replaced with technology. Instead, this belief suggests that technology should simply be used as a means to supplement and heighten human efficiency and intelligence, which is similar to the model most businesses are currently choosing to follow.

Although AI in recruiting hasn’t yet been embraced on a massive scale, early results of AI in the recruitment process show that it holds great potential for the future. Companies using AI-powered recruiting software have seen their cost per screen reduced by 75%, their revenue per employee improve by 4%, and their turnover decrease by 35%, which is extremely impressive.

With a number of AI-driven recruiting applications already thriving in the market, it’s clear that AI is actively transforming the recruitment industry. Businesses must take this opportunity to look into adopting AI into their organization or run the risk of falling behind in the future. AI isn’t going to replace workers in your company, just help make their work easier and free up time for you and your employees to address larger business concerns. If you’re planning on dabbling a bit in AI recruiting technology, now is a good time to start. Try out new tools, programs and software and see how well they work for your organization. While the path to recruiting with AI can be challenging, the outcome is undoubtedly very worth it.

Looking for some professional technical advice to resolve your business concerns? Mpire’s team of industry experts is only a call away! Reach out to us at hello@mpiresolutions.com or drop us a line at (617) 804-0539. 

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