It’s Time to Embrace AI as an Integral Part of Your Company’s Future

With the US unemployment rate currently sitting around 3.5 percent, identifying and securing high-quality talent is one of the main challenges the recruiting industry faces. In a market with more job openings than unemployed job seekers, there is no time to waste when it comes to filling positions.

And yet, nearly half of employers say filling a job today takes longer than it ever has in the post-industrial era. Recruiting has never been more challenging and expensive, so the process must become quicker, more efficient, and more cost-effective than it currently is.

Artificial intelligence (AI) for recruiting is a broad category that can take many forms, including conversational AI, machine learning, predictive AI, and recruiting chatbots. In one way or another, they can all help address the inefficiencies currently holding back the hiring process.

However, not all bots are created equal, and it’s essential to know the difference between a conversational AI (CAI) tool and a chatbot. CAI serves a deeper purpose than simply answering frequently asked questions — it assists in building strong relationships with candidates. Knowing this is crucial when it comes time to make your case for overall implementation to the executive level at your organization.

Below, we’ll talk about some of the key differences between CAI and chatbots to highlight how CAI can help lessen the load on hiring teams, allowing them to focus more on creating positive candidate experiences.

Build Rapport With Your Candidates

Before CAI, chatbots were limited in how they could interact with humans. They could be automate conversations, but only to field very basic questions with predetermined answers. CAI, on the other hand, combines AI and natural language processing technology to allow for more complex conversations. CAI’s machine learning algorithms continuously learn from millions of interactions, improving the accuracy of its responses and expanding the breadth of its knowledge along the way. CAI is able to learn the nuances of language and take into consideration how something is said, rather than just what is said.

A Gartner survey found that 40 percent of organizations name customer experience as the top reason for adopting AI technology. That makes sense, as an effective AI has the ability to ask intricate questions and remember specific details, creating a more meaningful conversation for customers. AI can deliver the same kind of meaningful conversations to prospective talent. The candidate feels truly valued, and the recruiting team gets the information it needs to make the best hiring decision.

For more expert recruiting insights, check out the latest issue of Recruiter.com Magazine:

Automate Your Interview Scheduling

CAI can also remove tedious administrative duties — like setting up meetings with potential candidates — from recruiters’ plates. It does this by automating conversations with prospective employees, gathering information, and coordinating interviews, all with minimal input from the actual recruiter. CAI responds faster than a human recruiter could and is sophisticated enough to speed the candidate through initial processing. This gives recruiters time to prepare for a more valuable interview, armed with useful preliminary knowledge of the candidate’s experience and skills.

Qualify Candidates Before You Meet Them

CAI is equipped to gather information about candidates’ qualifications, experiences, interest levels, and skills. Ideally, when building out the AI solution, the vendor will escalate certain high-value content and provide guardrails for dealing with moments when the AI can’t answer a candidate’s question. This ensures the AI does not get sidetracked when interacting with the user and will provide them with the smoothest experience possible.

CAI also gives candidates the opportunity to self-select out of the job if it isn’t quite what was expected after a quick chat with the AI. On the back end, the AI runs through the hiring data it is constantly collecting to evaluate candidate fit according to both hard and preferred requirements. It then presents this data to the hiring team, allowing them to make a more informed decision about which candidates to advance and which to decline. This again saves recruiters valuable time, allowing them to focus their attention on only the highest-potential candidates.

—

If your organization isn’t built from the ground up to acquire or create new technology, that’s okay: Many AI solutions for recruiting services can integrate with your applicant tracking system (ATS), customer relationship management (CRM) system, and human resource information system (HRIS). That seamless integration is another essential aspect of AI: You want this technology to act as an additional helping hand on your hiring team, not a technological hurdle to overcome.

Overall, chatbots are expected to cut business costs by $8 billion by 2022. Whether you are a 15-person staffing firm or a corporation with thousands of employees and millions in annual recruitment costs, AI recruitment solutions can help you open the door to company-wide hiring success.

Vinita Venkatesh is vice president of product marketing at Mya Systems.