AI- the new normal in recruitment

Technology has been a part of the recruitment process since the early 2000s. Of course, back then, it was limited to posting the job online and allowing people to contact the firms. But in the last two decades, technology has transformed the recruitment world in ways that no one had pictured before.

The present-day involvement of technology in recruitment can be seen from the beginning until the last hiring stage. This transition from sticking to traditional methods versus involving technology hasn’t just reduced the time taken in hiring but also eased the recruiter’s burden by helping them source, screen and interview candidates. And just like other fields, it is safe to say that technology is here to stay in the recruitment world as well. But what are the hopes for the future?

Most companies have already started integrating Artificial Intelligence in their recruitment process and reaping its benefits. Here are some of the benefits that will influence you to choose AI if you haven’t already.

Benefits of using Artificial Intelligence in Recruitment Tech

Faster and relevant sourcing

The way recruitment was done traditionally, where all the tasks were taken care of manually, recruiters were supposed to work eight days a week for 25 hours to hire within the time asked by the management. Yes, we know what you are thinking, there are only seven days in a week and 24 hours in a day, but that’s how challenging and time-consuming the recruitment process is with the traditional style. Automation of the recruitment process has proven to reduce the task of 14 hours per week for recruiters. So, the recruiters can work on candidate experience instead of manual grunt work.

COVID affecting hiring USPs

Every recruiter should use AI in day to day recruitment. Using AI and ML tech enables us to spen less time sourcing candidates and more time talking to them. It is important to talk to the candidate to communicate the vision, work culture of the organization. This helps the candidates understand the impact they will create.

Dennis Wilfred

Talent Acquisition – APAC at Equinix

Removal of unconscious bias

Unlike us, technology doesn’t have a brain or emotions to pass judgement or form bias; it runs on the code, and you can decide what the code will be. You can let the algorithm fetch the candidates by just letting it know the requirements, and it will eradicate unconscious bias from the initial stages of hiring. Of course, when you interview a candidate, you will have to be mindful of not letting the preferences get the best of you. You can rely on chatbots that use NLP (Natural Language Processing) or assist in evaluating candidates in the later rounds of interviews.

Reduce the cost of hiring

You might think that involving a product or a service that helps you bring AI into your recruitment process will result in a higher cost of hiring. Well, that thinking is a little off track. In reality, it will end up reducing the cost for you. How? Well, take this example- You use an agency to source candidates, and you have a contract that you will pay them 10% or the CTC that comes to about 50 thousand for a position. But it takes up to two months to find the candidates you want to interview. Resulting in a high cost to hire. On the other hand, a company provides you with a product that does everything from sourcing to onboarding candidates costing the same amount per month. But instead of a couple of months, you can close a position within two weeks. Hence, do more hirings for a lesser cost. And as a recruiter or a company, that’s what we like to hear.

Improve candidate experience

Contrary to what one might believe that involving technology might provide an impersonal and inadequate engagement because of mass emails, appropriately using the right technology will provide an extremely personalised experience. There are a lot of companies that allow you to templatize your messages and emails that you can send to your candidates and keep them in a loop. They take care of your burden of candidate engagement to a great extent by keeping track and communicating on your behalf. Take Inbox by Instahyre, for example.

Forecast for the future

Chatbots as interviewers

Technology these days is genuinely advanced and dynamic to fit the needs of different companies and industries. However, many companies have already started using chatbots to interview candidates for the preliminary stages to eradicate bias as much as possible and speed up the process. It is expected that more and more companies will onboard chatbots for interviewing as they can assess certain personality traits of candidates apart from validating the answers. All recruiters have to do is prepare the questions, as they generally would, and feed the same chatbots to conduct the interview.

Virtual hiring post COVID

Given the ease and reduction of time virtual hiring offers, there are high chances that companies will prefer to hire and onboard candidates virtually even when things can finally get back to the pre-COVID scenario. Honestly, in this whole scenario, if there has been one boon that all of us can agree on is virtual hiring, both for recruiters and candidates. It saves time, and both choose their convenient time, plus both can go about their day to tasks as it protects the data.

AI will conduct onboard training

COVID made everything virtual, young kids are taking classes from through online mediums, and a similar possibility can be seen in companies for training new candidates. Documentation and sessions to get the new employees ready to start can be conducted through short video clips and AI-supported lesson plans or games to understand and track the employee’s progress. This will prove to be the biggest game-changer yet as it often takes months to train and onboard candidates appropriately. But this can significantly reduce that time without compromising the quality training they deserve.

Equip instead of replacing

Currently, we look at the market to find new talent, but with proper usage of technology, you can train and use your existing talent to fill up the positions instead of looking for them. Of course, it’s not possible if you are opening more jobs, but if you see that your existing employees can be trained to fill a higher position, why waste time finding a cultural fit. You can save the sourcing time and money and invest in your employees instead. This will also help your brand image as an employer too. The candidates will want to join if they see you help your employees to move up the ladder by enhancing their skillset. 

Technology will revamp and revolutionise the recruitment industry even more than it has so far. The best thing is to get on board and start involving technology as much as possible to recruit the best candidates and retain them. AI is a powerful tool, and it’s high time to reign in all its strengths.