AI Is Here, But There’s No Need for Recruiters to Worry
Many people are concerned that artificial intelligence (AI) is going to take their jobs or somehow make the world a scarier place to live. While there may be some cause for concern — especially in the distant future, which our limited predictive powers can’t quite glimpse — as far as we can tell for now, AI is mostly going to change the world for the better.
This cutting-edge technology is transforming healthcare, education, and transportation before our eyes — and it is having a massive impact on recruiting, too. To get a deeper understanding of how AI and machine learning are helping both recruiters and job seekers, I want to dive into a few statistics collected by AllyO on the subject of AI-based recruiting chatbots. Let’s see how this technology is already making a positive difference in peoples’ lives:
1. Robots Don’t Get Bored
Human beings don’t want to get stuck doing repetitive tasks for the majority of the workday. It leads quickly to burnout and attrition.
Luckily for recruiters, AI today can handle many of the mundane tasks on a recruiter’s to-do list, including scheduling interviews and conducting boiler-plate screening conversations with applicants. According to AllyO’s data, automation can save a recruiter two whole days’ worth of time each week! This allows human recruiters to spend more time on strategic, high-touch work, such as building strong relationships with best-fit candidates.
2. Closing the Blackhole
Anyone who has ever applied for a job online has experienced the dreaded resume blackhole: You submit your application, and 80 percent of the time you never hear a word from the employer on the other end, according to AllyO. This is frustrating to say the least.
However, employers using AI to manage the tops of their recruiting funnels can respond to every single applicant who applies for a job. Recruiters don’t need to take time out of their days to tap out an email to every candidate who applies — if they remember to at all. Instead, AI builds communication right into the process, automatically notifying candidates their applications have been received and updating them as necessary.
3. Everyone Gets a Chance
A resume rarely tells a candidate’s full story. As a brief document of two pages at most, it simply can’t. Unfortunately, it’s all many recruiters have to go on before making their initial decisions about who should move forward in the process. As a result, it’s easy for employers to miss out on great talent.
Employers that use chatbots, on the other hand, can screen almost every single applicant for a role. Not only does the AI take this time-consuming task off the recruiting team’s hand and create a fuller picture of each candidate, but chatbots can also cut down on unconscious bias that often prevents the right person from getting the job.
4. A Better Candidate Experience
According to AllyO, 92 percent of candidates are satisfied with automated recruiting, compared to the 15 percent of candidates overall who say their candidate experiences are positive. The dramatic difference in satisfaction can be attributed to all the factors mentioned above, plus additional perks of AI like faster applications and on-demand support from chatbots.
The Economic Benefits of Automation
To best appreciate the positive effect of AI on recruiting, it’s important to understand how the above benefits can translate into dollars-and-cents figures your CFO can appreciate.
For example, decreasing the amount of repetitive work a recruiter has to do each day has a positive effect on retention, thereby cutting down the amount of time and money that must be spent recruiting new recruiters. This also gives recruiters more time to think strategically about their processes, leading to more opportunities to streamline and optimize hiring practices.
Similarly, the more positive candidate experience created by AI can be a massive money saver. For example, Virgin Media found that a significant portion of its rejected candidates had such negative experiences that they cancelled their Virgin Media cable services and switched to other providers. Overall, this was costing the company more than $5 million a year. By creating a better, more responsive candidate experience, Virgin was able to mitigate these losses.
While no new technology is totally free of negative repercussions, all the available evidence suggests we should be excited about the long-term benefits of AI. Recruiters and employers today should be on the lookout for ways to start leveraging on jobs data this exciting new technology in the here and now.
A version of this article originally appeared on the SelectSoftware blog.
Phil Strazzulla is the founder of SelectSoftware.