The recruitment process can take up an inordinate amount of your HR team’s time and energy, especially if your organization has a high turnover rate. Wouldn’t it be great if you could use artificial intelligence (AI) to streamline and automate the process?
While handing over the entire recruitment process to an AI-powered chatbot is neither realistic nor desirable, the reality is that there are plenty of AI recruiting tools out there that hiring teams can use to take the hassle out of the hiring process.
Here’s what you need to know about AI recruiting software, and how to use AI tools to reduce your time-to-hire and increase your employee retention rate.
What Is AI Recruiting?
AI recruiting refers to the use of AI-powered tools to streamline talent acquisition. While it might seem risky to entrust your hiring decisions to an AI algorithm, most AI recruiting tools are designed to assist your human recruiters, not replace them.
AI-driven recruiting tools can be used to automate repetitive tasks, facilitate interactions with candidates, and assist with candidate sourcing and decision-making. Here are a few kinds of AI technology that can benefit hiring managers:
- Generative AI: Generative AI tools are used to create content. You can use them for things like writing a job description or crafting an outreach email.
- Natural language processing (NLP): Natural language processing can be used to parse written or spoken language, such as a resume or interview transcript.
- Conversational AI: Conversational AI tools can interact with job applicants and guide them through automated job interviews or skill assessments.
- Machine learning: Machine learning models are used to glean information from large data sets so you can make better, data-driven hiring decisions.
What Are AI Recruiting Tools Used for?
Even if you’re using other types of HR tech or AI workflow automation, implementing AI in the recruitment process can raise some questions about how to use it. Here are four parts of the recruiting process that can benefit from AI technology:
Candidate sourcing
First, recruitment automation tools can help you increase your talent pool by sourcing qualified candidates. From posting ads on job boards to finding passive candidates on social media, sourcing can be a time-consuming process. AI-driven tools do the hard part automatically and present you with a shortlist of potential candidates.
Resume screening
AI recruiting platforms use natural language processing to scan resumes for skill sets, qualifications, and other keywords to match job openings to the best candidates. For example, you can use an applicant tracking system (ATS) to sort incoming resumes, and keep job seekers up-to-date on the progress of their application.
Scheduling interviews
AI recruiting tools can be used to schedule interviews or even conduct video interviews as the first part of the screening process. Recruiting teams can use AI chatbots to guide candidates through an online skills assessment to screen candidates and ensure that only high-quality candidates make it to the next stage of the hiring process.
Onboarding
It’s important that your recruitment strategy leads seamlessly into the next stage of the hiring process: onboarding. With employee onboarding automation, you can welcome new hires to your organization quickly and efficiently, even if you have a high-volume recruitment process and need to onboard multiple employees at once.
What Are the Benefits of AI Recruiting Software?
Implementing AI recruiting isn’t just about empowering your human resources team — it’s also about providing a great candidate experience so you can attract the best talent to your organization and boost your employer brand. Here are three big advantages of using AI-powered software to streamline your recruiting process:
Automate routine tasks
HR professionals have a lot on their plate, and routine tasks like writing job descriptions and scheduling interviews can distract them from more important responsibilities. Using AI tools to post job ads, screen candidates, and conduct preliminary interviews or skill assessments can reduce their workload and speed up the hiring process.
Recruiting teams can even use AI chatbots to field inquiries from job seekers, keeping them informed throughout the process and improving the candidate experience.
Reduce unconscious bias
Unconscious bias in hiring refers to the ways that recruiting teams make decisions that favor some types of candidates over others. Even well-intentioned hiring managers can unintentionally favor candidates with a similar background or educational profile.
AI recruiting tools can help to reduce unconscious bias by matching candidates to job openings based on their qualifications. Some tools can even create candidate profiles without identifying information so hiring managers can make decisions without taking the age, race, or gender of the applicant into account.
Increase retention
An efficient recruiting and onboarding process helps you make a good first impression and retain top talent at your organization. By streamlining the application process with video interviews and automated skill assessments, applicants can spend less time on paperwork and more time getting to know your company’s values and culture.
Plus, by broadening your scope with AI-powered candidate sourcing, you can reach a wider talent pool and increase the quality of hire.
Challenges with AI Recruiting Methods
AI recruiting is a rapidly evolving field, and every HR platform has its own set of features and functionality. Whichever platform you choose, here are a few challenges to keep in mind when implementing AI recruiting for the first time:
Biased algorithms
Although AI recruiting tools can help reduce unconscious bias, they can also reinforce biases that are built into the AI algorithm. For example, Amazon discontinued a hiring tool that reportedly “disadvantaged candidates who went to certain women’s colleges presumably not attended by many existing Amazon engineers.”
To avoid this kind of bias, you’ll need to ensure that your algorithms are audited and updated often, and trained on culturally diverse data.
Applicant privacy
While some job seekers may welcome the convenience of AI recruiting software, others may have concerns about their privacy. What will you do with their video interview? How long will their resume be stored in your applicant tracking system? Will you use content from their skills assessment to refine your AI algorithm?
Organizations can address these concerns by being transparent about data collection, encrypting sensitive data, and only collecting the data they actually need.
Lack of human insight
An overreliance on AI can result in a lack of human touch throughout the recruitment process. No one wants to be hired or fired by ChatGPT, and your resume screening tools may overlook qualified candidates for arbitrary or technical reasons.
For best results, use AI platforms to streamline and guide the recruiting process, but make sure that a human hiring manager always has the final say.
Revolutionize Your Recruiting Process with Pulpstream
AI recruiting platforms can automate key parts of the hiring process, such as writing job descriptions, screening candidates, and scheduling interviews. When used effectively, these tools can broaden your talent pool, reduce unconscious bias, and improve the candidate experience by offering real-time updates on their application status.
Pulpstream is an HR management tool that you can use for everything from recruiting to onboarding. Pulpstream’s AI-powered solutions include workforce analytics, employee onboarding automation, and RapidBee, an AI-fueled employee service center.
Our cloud-based platform is compliant with all major security standards, and integrates with other tools like your HRIS or CRM. Plus, you can create custom GPTs to answer questions about your company policies, employee benefits, and more.
Request a demo today to see how Pulpstream can transform your hiring process!
