Artificial intelligence is changing many industries around the globe, including recruitment. What you might be less familiar with, though, is how that transformation happens, what it looks like, and why.
This article will highlight AI in recruiting and how it will benefit your hiring strategy. Plus, you’ll learn AI’s impact on recruitment and HR while busting some common AI myths.
What is AI in recruiting?
Artificial Intelligence automates sections of the entire recruitment workflows that crop up frequently. It reduces the need to work on high-volume, repetitive tasks.
When used with your ATS, AI in recruiting allows for a better insight into your talent pool, a stronger relationship with potential candidates, and a decrease in bias.
So, let’s look at AI's benefits in recruiting in more detail.
The benefits of AI in recruiting
We touched on the many benefits of AI recruiting in a previous article, but let’s quickly recap how artificial intelligence will help you and your recruitment teams before we dig into some uses.
- It minimizes or eliminates redundant tasks so recruiters can focus more on tactical initiatives. In a study conducted by Aptitude Research, 42% of recruiters believe AI will help them become more strategic in their jobs. As recruiters face burnout and increased turnover, AI can provide a support system to improve the workload of recruiters.
- It helps improve hiring quality through job matching, standardized processes, regular analysis of recruitment data, and incremental process improvements.
- It reduces cost-per-hire by eliminating inefficient sourcing and processes.
- It allows hiring teams to do more and better work with fewer human resources.
Of course, whether or not your company reaps these benefits of AI recruiting will depend on how you use it, and which artificial intelligence tools can help augment your work.
The challenges of AI in recruiting
Based on the benefits, it appears that AI creates sunshine and rainbows! However, some challenges come along with AI in recruiting, such as:
- For AI to work effectively in recruiting, you need a lot of data to function. Moreover, HR professionals should delve further into the reasons behind the data to correctly understand and interpret results.
- The automated workflows will need routine testing, which can take time. If it’s not set up correctly, errors may occur, resulting in missed candidate interviews, applicant dropouts, and many more.
- Artificial intelligence isn’t human and lacks a human “touch.” HR must still rely on experience and intuition to make the correct decisions.
- It could cause issues in data privacy. HR must establish safeguards to protect employees’ personal information, like bank details and social security numbers.
5 ways to use AI in recruitment
Expediting processes, automating jobs, and leveraging data for continuous growth are all important concerns you should consider when adopting AI recruiting tools at your company.
Let’s look at how you can use AI in your hiring procedures:
1. Establishing a fair recruitment process
Creating a fair recruitment process that emphasizes diversity should be a priority for every HR team. Not only does a transparent and fair hiring process lead to a great candidate experience. It also leads to a better quality of hire because candidates are selected based on their likelihood of success in the position.
AI- enabled recruitment platforms can collect and analyze thousands of data points from every candidate who applies for a position and use historical evidence to make a decision on who to shortlist. For example, Recruitee can help you evaluate candidates in a structured and fair process by helping HR use knockout questions or quick assessments.
As AI is integrated into more and more parts of your recruitment strategy, this ability to take subjectivity out of the process becomes stronger and more consistent. The result is a near removal of bias from the majority of the recruitment process, and stronger diversity within your team.
2. Reducing errors in the recruitment process
Another critical use case for AI in recruiting is to reduce simple errors and omissions in the recruitment funnel. Unfortunately, due to the sheer volume of applicants that many companies receive, it’s easy for things to fall through the cracks. This might be as simple as forgetting to reply to an email or question or as significant as missing a qualified applicant due to human error. Either way, the result can be a poor candidate experience or missed opportunities to hire a top candidate.
Recruitment tech leveraging AI, such as Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) or chatbots, can identify these problem areas early to ensure everything is noticed during the hiring cycle. AI can continuously monitor and analyze a recruitment process for errors and omissions, suggest improvement areas and new processes to reduce mistakes.
Likewise, messaging applications like chatbots can be used to ensure that any time a candidate asks a question or sends an email, there’s somebody on the other end to answer.
3. Increasing the use of analytics and metrics
All of this talk of monitoring and analyzing the recruitment process brings us to perhaps the core use case of AI in recruitment: leveraging the abundance of analytics, metrics, and data. Before AI, this extensive collection of data wasn’t possible.
As you likely know, the last decade or so in many businesses has dominated big data collection. AI can help HR turn that data hoarding into actionable processes and metrics that drive real business results.
A word of advice:
A word of advice:
AI technology is only as good as the data you feed it. Companies that have diligently collected data about their employees are well suited to leverage AI for the next step in process improvement. If your company hasn’t collected much data historically, now is the perfect time to start your data collection and analysis using AI tools.
4. Making the process faster and more efficient
Effective recruitment strategies will always be driven by human input. That means that recruiters need to be freed up to think strategically, build and execute frameworks for success, and network with real people who will make a difference in their organization.
Certain recruitment tasks are just better suited to automation. Communication tasks requiring the same email or information to be sent out repeatedly are much better suited to a machine that can mass send messages at a set time.
Similarly, sourcing and screening technology has reached the point where machines can quickly scan hundreds of resumes and social profiles and match them to potential job openings. For instance, Recruitee automates manual tasks such as disqualification emails, evaluation requests, and more so you can focus on the tasks that matter.
By automating time-consuming tasks and focusing on the metrics that drive the best results, recruitment teams can drastically improve the speed and efficiency of their hiring process.
5. Enabling better assessments
Lastly, AI in recruitment can be used to improve how you assess candidates. This can be accomplished in many ways, depending on the technology you’re using.
Many ATS platforms will use natural language processing and other forms of AI to quickly analyze resumes for word choice and content to determine who should be shortlisted. Given that most resumes submitted for most jobs are unqualified candidates, this type of technology can mean significant time savings for recruiters.
Likewise, automating candidate sourcing can expedite and expand your outreach on social media, job boards, forums, etc. AI can be used to analyze hundreds of social profiles, for example, to find and message passive but high-quality candidates.
AI can even be used alongside traditional interviews to analyze things like body language and word choice, providing an extra layer of objective assessment that recruiters can use to make a hiring decision.
What are some myths about AI in recruiting?
In Eightfold AI’s The Future of Work: Intelligent by Design report, 73% of HR leaders surveyed said they are already using AI in recruitment and hiring while 41% intended to continue using it in the future.
There’s no stopping the use of AI when hiring people. But what are the common misconceptions about AI in recruiting? We’re going to debunk the AI recruitment myths one ‘nope’ at a time.
Recruitment AI myth 1: AI is a chatbox. And a chatbox only.
Conversational chatbots are the most common AI application used in recruiting. But AI hiring software offers so much more than a chatbox.
You can leverage the instant messaging technology to avoid candidates waiting for responses, allowing you to build rapport quicker without growing frustrated. If set up properly, you could also format frequently asked questions, so you don’t have to answer the same question a thousand times daily.
You can also automate other time-consuming tasks. Analyzing resumes, setting up emails based on conditional formatting, personalizing your messages for better rapport, and optimizing hiring ads for better response are just 4 of many features in solid AI recruitment software.
Recruitment AI myth 2: AI will make human recruiters redundant
One of the leading reasons some hiring companies and recruiters have yet to use AI software is for fear of being replaced by technology. Some recruiters are fearful that, in time, they’ll no longer be needed.
The myth lies in that. AI technology will not replace recruiters. It’s a tool made for recruiters to make their lives easier, allowing them to be more productive and focus on the more complicated tasks or tasks that require a human touch.
The jobs that require human work are often more rewarding, allowing recruiters to feel valued and content with their workload and to-do lists.
Recruitment AI myth 3: Recruiting AI increases bias
This myth stems from some unfortunate cases of AI software showing bias in some large companies. Take Amazon, for example, which was harboring a not-so-public bias against women, demonstrated and developed further by their AI software. That raised eyebrows, and many asked whether AI is an ethical choice.
However, the likelihood of this happening is incredibly slim. It’s far more likely that your AI recruiting software lessens and eliminates human bias.
In fact, about 59% of recruiters agree that introducing AI in recruitment will eliminate unconscious bias, according to research by Tidio. Some previous studies found that AI can effectively remove unintentional prejudices by focusing on skill sets and candidate experiences to support diversity hiring.
Recruitment AI myth 4: AI is only helpful for bigger, more established companies.
One of the key benefits of using AI in recruitment is the time you’ll save when hiring team members. Understandably, small business owners who have just started growing their teams believe AI isn’t aimed at them.
But the truth is every business hiring people can benefit from AI recruiting software.
Smaller businesses that are more focused on saving money could reduce their expenses in terms of cost-per-hire. This is down to fully optimized job advertisements, allowing you to hire quickly and effectively.
Recruitment AI myth 5: AI is hard to use, and you’ll need a specialist to set it up
If you peeked behind the curtain and discovered the in’s and out’s of AI recruiting software, you’d be amazed at how much technology is packed into it.
But, luckily, you never need to draw that curtain. You need only look at it from the outside. And it’s actually very simple to use.
You’ll likely make a few mistakes when you start using it, as we all do with any new software. However, it’s been designed to avoid overwhelming users at the forefront. Most of the time, setting up automation requires a little pre-planning, a few clicks, and a test or two. And it’s something you can do yourself. No expert is required.
How can AI affect and change the recruiter role and affect HR?
Now that we’ve debunked the myths - specifically that using AI in recruiting will replace recruiters and HR members entirely - let’s consider how it has and will adjust the lives of anyone who needs to hire people.
AI is a tool that should be used in conjunction with others. It enhances the process rather than replacing it. Using AI in recruiting means recruiters and HR members can be more involved and proactive.
Furthermore, the quality of hire will increase. Recruiters will have more time to focus on more complex and less tedious tasks.
Is AI the next step for your recruiting strategy?
So, is using AI in recruiting for you? Will it enhance your hiring process, save time, and boost your quality of hire?
The truth is AI can be a valuable tool for any company, no matter the size or stage of its life. If you plan on growing your team or, perhaps even franchising, AI will be a powerful tool for your time and your organization’s success.
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