From Google Home to smart mobile assistants like Siri and Alexa, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is already reshaping our lives. If you’re reading this blog on a smartphone, you’re interacting with AI right now.
Advances in AI and digital innovations have enabled us to create phenomenal talent identification and assessment tools. While technology has an impact on every industry, AI is transforming the nature of work.
But let’s face it: most people don’t understand how AI works. They often use it as a buzzword. If we don’t understand how technology works, how we can use it to improve our business.
No matter how technology works, it can’t compete with certain human capabilities.
Before we talk about the impact of AI on recruiting, let’s define what AI is and how it works.
What is Artificial Intelligence (AI)?
Simply put, artificial intelligence is the ability of a computer or a computer-controlled device to perform tasks that require some sort of intelligence.
In other words, AI enables computers to mimic the problem-solving capabilities of the human mind. The self-driving car is a great example of artificial intelligence.
Here is how Wikipedia defines the term:
“Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence demonstrated by machines, unlike the natural intelligence displayed by humans and animals, which involves consciousness and emotionality.”
AI is the characteristics of a machine or a program to demonstrate intelligent behavior or act like humans. But the intelligence of a machine doesn’t work like a human brain. Instead, intelligent behaviors are directly programmed into a machine.
Let’s explore how AI is changing recruiting:
AI and Recruitment
Like other industries, recruiting has a lot to gain from AI and machine learning. If we analyze today’s advanced HR tools, we will see how AI is trembling up the hiring techniques, saying goodbye to old-fashioned inefficient methods.
Recruiters, HR leaders, and managers can analyze an enormous amount of data and make well-informed decisions based on that.
AI has incredible potential when it comes to HR and recruiting. It can address long-standing recruiting challenges by speeding up hiring and getting rid of repetitive tasks.
While artificial intelligence is making things easier for employers, it can substitute some HR jobs in the future. That doesn’t mean people will lose their jobs. Instead, it will create more job opportunities.
But one thing is for sure, AI is making recruiting easier and time-efficient. As an HR professional, you know how ordinary and repetitive tasks complicate the entire process and impact the end results in terms of cost and time. On the bright side, AI will allow you to focus on things that matter the most and hire the right people.
Initially, HR software was focused on automating low-level tasks, helping recruiters process and automate several administrative tasks. Today, we have tools that are capable of performing high-level tasks such as targeting certain segments and conducting virtual interviews.
The Benefits of AI
Let’s dig deep into some of the major benefits of AI in recruiting:
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Reduced time to hire
Recruitment is a people-first aspect of a business. Candidates don’t want to speak to a robot when going through critical hiring processes. They want to have authentic connections with hiring managers. After all, machines can’t answer every question.
That’s where you need to find the right applications of AI and other smart technologies. With AI, you can get rid of time-consuming processes and focus on engaging top candidates.
For example, Wiggli is a talent management solution that enables you to pre-screen applications and schedule interviews. Imagine how much time you will have when you don’t have to perform those tedious tasks.
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Improved candidate experience
AI isn’t all about automating or processing certain repetitive tasks. You can use it to create more personalized and engaging candidate experiences. It helps you serve the relevant candidates with the right content based on their interests and behaviors. During the hiring process, AI can ask candidates the right questions and present the right answers.
As a recruiter, you need to understand your audience before implementing intelligent robots or programs to interact with your candidates. Some candidates prefer to get initial information from a chatbot - they feel comfortable asking a robot general questions such as location or salary.
Here is an example:
Yodel is a delivery firm that implemented chatbots at the initial stages of a hiring process and witnessed a more than 50% decrease in applicant drop-off rate.
As candidates proceed with the process, they need more personalized and accurate responses such as how a candidate can progress in a company. That’s where you can limit the use of technology and strike human interactions.
The key is to determine when and where you should use AI to enhance the overall experience and get optimum results.
When your applicants get the responses, answers, and all the information they need quickly and seamlessly, they are likely to connect with you. If they find your candidate experience compelling, their chances of joining your organization increase.
So, use technology to improve every touchpoint in your candidate experience. From sending a welcome email to follow-ups, you can do a number of things to keep your candidates engaged and informed.
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Identifying best candidates for a role
In the post-pandemic era, recruiters are likely to receive a large number of applications. And it will get even more difficult to screen candidates. But your success largely depends on your ability to find the right person for the job.
That’s where you can implement AI to identify the right candidates. AI can screen candidates based on their traits, characteristics, and previous performances in the same role. It’s possible for a program to pull data from a company’s previous high-performing employees with considerably high accuracy.
This means you can fill open positions quickly while ensuring that you hire the best fit. Nonetheless, AI recruiting programs are still in their infancy stage. We will be able to see more exciting applications of AI in recruiting down the line.
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Reduced unconscious bias
A large number of studies find out that the hiring process is often biased and unfair. People have a bias in favor of maintaining the status quo. This is because change is uncomfortable. For example, if the majority of managers in a company are white men, status quo bias will lead the hiring manager to unconsciously hire more white men.
Unconscious bias can seriously damage your efforts to build a diverse and inclusive workplace. It has a critical and problematic effect on our judgment. In a workplace, unconscious bias can negatively impact various HR aspects: retention, recruitment, promotion, and diversity.
Even when recruiters write down job descriptions, certain words reflect biases. For example, words like “support” and “understanding” are biased towards female applicants. As a result, they end up having a limited pool of candidates that lacks diversity.
Solution? Artificial Intelligence.
If you want to make decisions based not on your underlying beliefs and experiences, use smart tools that are not biased. AI can help you identify the use of bias in different hiring processes. For instance, it helps you remove words from a job description that is biased towards a segment. This is how you proceed with a more diverse approach and expand your talent reach.
Here is another example of unconscious bias that can be removed with AI. A recruiter unintentionally decides to interview an applicant because they attended the same university. Such tendencies can lead recruiters to overlook more important factors such as a candidate’s skills or previous work experience.
When AI tools are implemented to shortlist candidates, you get rid of biases that come to play in manual scanning.
But there’s an important thing to consider here. AI programs or machine learning algorithms are subject to potentially biased programming choices. If a machine has the ability to learn from our behavior, it can learn to be biased too. The right mix of human and artificial intelligence can help you remove unconscious bias from the recruiting process.
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Quicker initial process
There are so many initial hiring processes that can be accelerated with the right AI capability. For example, as we mentioned earlier, the application screening process or conducting virtual interviews can be performed with the help of software. An AI program can conduct virtual interviews and make decisions faster than any HR manager.
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Data-driven recruitment
For the best hiring decisions, you need to rely on data. Your gut feelings can be wrong. However, data can’t. The use of gut feelings can produce good results when you don’t have the necessary information. But when you have more than enough data, data-driven decisions will produce the best results.
An increasing number of organizations now use AI as a decision-making tool for talent acquisition and evaluation. AI can improve the entire process by outsmarting ghost candidates, eliminating them from the database, and enabling more appropriate searches.
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Improved quality of candidates
You don’t want to end up hiring the wrong people after spending a lot of your time and money. The quality of your applicants depends on the initial candidates you attract with your efforts. If you’re unable to attract the right candidates or make them excited about your job, your chances of finding the best fit will diminish.
This problem can easily be fixed by adding AI to your recruitment process. Artificial intelligence can help you in a number of ways. For example, it assists you in creating the perfect job descriptions that clearly represent your needs or who you’re looking to hire. When you create accurate job descriptions, you’re likely to find more relevant candidates in your talent pool.
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Cost-effective hiring
No doubt, hiring is an expensive business affair. Companies spend a lot of money on posting jobs, screening applicants, hosting interviews, and training new hires. While AI solutions can add up to your hiring costs, it creates a more effective hiring funnel. Which ultimately has a positive impact on your long-term ROI.
Problems With Using AI In Recruiting
AI in recruiting comes with challenges too. Amazon stopped using its internal AI-based recruiting system after they realized that their program was biased against women. Their system received more applications from men and established that men should be the priority.
Although AI systems can be altered to become unbiased, Amazon completely scraped the project fearing their models may develop discriminatory hiring criteria. On one hand, AI can help you support diversity and inclusion; on the other, it can demote D&I.
Here are common challenges businesses face when getting things done with AI:
- Trust deficit
- Limited knowledge
- Data privacy and security
- Data scarcity
- Ai can learn human biases
However, companies will face fewer of these challenges as the technology is still developing.
To deploy an AI system, you need a lot of data so the system can mimic human intelligence. For example, AI needs data to learn how to screen resumes as precisely as a human recruiter. Another challenge is the human bias that may already exist in your hiring process. You don’t want to integrate those biases into your AI system.
Final Thoughts
With the unprecedented advances in recruiting technology, recruitment is likely to become less human. But we can’t take humans out of the equation as they will continue to play the central role in running business functions.
Even though AI is creating solutions for all kinds of businesses and industries, employers are somehow reluctant to adopt this revolutionizing technology. Some don’t trust machines, others consider AI as a threat to their own jobs. While machines perform repetitive tasks better than humans, you can use them to increase the value of your efforts.
All you have to do is understand different technologies and choose the right solution for your business. More importantly, use AI the right way. Ideally, a mix of human and artificial intelligence produces great results for organizations. It’s an opportunity for you to stay ahead of the curve and fulfill your HR needs with great speed and in a budget-friendly fashion.
AI is going to stay, unlike many recruitment trends that just disappear after some time. Embrace it and explore new opportunities to perform well in the talent market.
