by Eliza Daniels
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is revolutionising how companies attract, screen, and interact with potential candidates. While real, authentic human interaction will always remain at the core of recruitment, AI has apparent benefits and can be used to expedite elements of the hiring journey. Below are some innovative ways to leverage AI to hire top talent.
Sourcing and Screening
- AI-Written Job Vacancies: Crafting a vacancy description can be a time consuming and laborious practice, even for the most efficient hiring teams. AI has introduced another way. To generate requirements and advertise your opening, provide a prompt that is concise and includes essential details outlining specific hard and soft skills. Then, train your AI tool to reflect your company’s unique tone and style that align with your brand and culture. After receiving the AI output, ensure you conduct a thorough review, and make any necessary adjustments.
- Programmatic Vacancy Promotion: Certain AI programmes can deploy programmatic vacancy advertising to reach the most relevant candidates. This minimises the chance of over or underqualified applicants submitting themselves toward the opening, and helps to produce a shortlist of potential hires.
- AI-Powered CV Vetting: Evaluating CVs is a lengthy process, and often prone to human errors and biases. AI tools can analyse CVs, extract relevant information and rank candidates based on qualifications and competencies. This streamlines and expedites the initial screening, allowing recruiters to focus on applicants with the highest hiring likelihood.
Engagement and Scheduling
- Chatbots: AI generated messengers and chatbots can engage with candidates, answer relevant questions, and provide timely information about the vacancy. The automated interaction provides responsiveness and connectivity that may enhance the candidate experience.
- Automated Scheduling Assistance: AI tools can help streamline coordination through the analysis of participants’ diaries and suggest optimal availability for interview slots.
Metrics and Insights
- Metrics and Tracking: AI can help evaluate and measure the effectiveness of your recruitment process. Consider building automated formulas to report metrics and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) such as Cost Per Hire, Source Quality, Number of Qualified Candidates, Quality of Hire, Time to Hire, Offer Acceptance Rate, and Retention Rate.
- Employee Retention Insights: AI can predict which employees are at risk of leaving based on various factors (e.g., job satisfaction, performance, tenure). By identifying potential flight risks, organisations can take targeted proactive actions to retain valuable talent.
AI at Work
Hilton: Hilton deployed a chatbot to answer candidate’s frequently asked questions and provide personalised feedback. The AI powered bot also helps to schedule interviews and track the application status.
Amazon: Amazon developed an automated application evaluation software that compares applicant CVs to the profiles of current Amazon employees in similar roles, to predict potential fit.
Mastercard: Mastercard created an AI tool called “Unlocked” for their internal talent marketplace that matches employees with short-term projects, open roles, mentorship and development programmes, based off of the skills they want to develop.
Procter & Gamble (P&G): P&G harnesses AI to optimise its talent acquisition efforts through data collection and CV matching of technical skills and cultural fit.
Considerations & Risks
Hiring Bias and Fairness: AI algorithms can inadvertently perpetuate biases present in historical data. If the training data contains biases related to gender, race, or other protected characteristics, the AI system may unintentionally discriminate against certain groups. This bias can lead to unfair hiring practices, negatively impacting diversity and inclusion efforts. It is good practice to regularly audit algorithms for bias and ensure fairness in the recruitment process.
Privacy Concerns: AI systems often process sensitive personal information during the recruitment process (e.g., CVs, interview recordings). Complying with data privacy regulations (such as GDPR and anti-discrimination laws) is crucial. Mishandling candidate data can result in legal consequences and damage to an organisation’s reputation.
Over-Reliance on AI: Relying solely on AI for hiring decisions may overlook valuable human insights. Human judgment and intuition play a vital role in assessing cultural fit and soft skills. Conduct regular spot checks to ensure the system is making informed and balanced decisions, and that your company is not missing out on exceptional candidates who don’t fit rigid AI criteria.
While AI can be a beneficial tool to enhance aspects of your hiring process, it should not be considered a full replacement. At its core, recruiting is the business of people and their careers, and there are certain discussions that are irreplaceable with human connection. While automated communications may suffice for the more “interactional” moments of the process, more nuanced conversations around delivering feedback, vocational aspirations, and offering someone a job, should always be done human to human.
Interested in exploring how to integrate AI in your recruiting? Connect with Insight Global – we make hiring easy.
