The role of artificial intelligence in the hiring process

Recruitment processes have historically been time-consuming and repetitive. Many companies have leveraged artificial intelligence (AI) to efficiently manage large datasets, resulting in improved precision and productivity. In its simplest form, AI serves as an automation tool that enables us to address substantial, complex, and repetitive tasks, yielding high-quality outcomes. HR automation acts as a valuable resource in streamlining and enhancing our path toward achieving these objectives. 

So it is, as we already see in the hiring process. AI in hiring process or artificial intelligence in the hiring process is already saving HR teams time and money while attracting the best candidates in these key ways.

Solving the Sourcing Process

A recent study found that 46 percent of companies struggle with finding and attracting the right candidates for their open positions. AI programs can search online resumes and social profiles to find the best candidates for each job based on specific traits. They can also relay personalized messages to promising candidates and do it in scale — something human recruiters could not do alone. 

AI is being taught to overcome human biases during sourcing and screening. The key is teaching the program on data that presents as gender-neutral and training it to ignore other identifying information that might trigger biased decisions. An organization may end up with a pool of applicants far more diverse than if the HR team itself had sourced them.

Enhancing Employee Experience

Once your AI program sources and contacts candidates, AI in hiring process can lead them through the recruiting funnel quickly and efficiently, ensuring the candidate experience goes smoothly.  Recruiter chatbots can provide real-time answers to candidate questions, offer quick feedback and suggest next steps. They can provide links to promising job descriptions, clarify company hours and location, and schedule interviews. 

Having a good experience during this phrase is a big deal, as is borne out in a study by CareerBuilder: 58% of candidates are likely to have a negative opinion of a company if they never get a response to their job application. 67% percent are likely to have a favourable view of the company if they get frequent updates after they applied. But this isn’t the only way to enhance employee experience. There are plenty of AI tools that improve the visuals on your site and social media, making your recruitment-based marketing more effective. Instead of dead air, a chatbot fills the space — and furthers the hiring process.

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Ensuring Unbiased Hiring

Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools are designed to facilitate the resume layout and type selection, providing leverage over essential parameters such as skills, education, qualifications, and experience. Even more enhanced tools that can be trained on large language models can be extra useful. You can fine-tune LLM model to provide accurate and unique results. When configured appropriately, an individual’s knowledge and abilities will have a greater influence on the hiring decision than other personal attributes which ensures unbiased hiring. It is important to choose the fields of your parser properly and eliminate any data that may introduce prejudice when using these tools.

In the end, with AI in recruitment (ATS) helps filter out resumes swiftly and effectively. Take the parser for instance - the more pertinent details you include, the more likely it is that you’ll snag yourself a job with less bias involved. Score!

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Screening Boosts

AI-powered conversational tools can also give the candidate screening process a boost. Since these tools are always learning, they’re ideal for when going back for a second look at candidates who applied in the past. AI tools can store essential data on all applicants, saving time and effort when you’re ready to reach out to them again. Companies that use AI tools have reduced their cost per screening by 75 percent.

Using technology to screen talent also saves time and effort for candidates. When CVS Health began using the Virtual Job Tryout candidate assessment, it was looking for an automated screening tool to shortlist candidates quickly. The company processes over one million applicants per year: saving time on the hiring process is critical to the recruiting team, this can be achieved with the help of artificial intelligence in the hiring process. 

By offering job simulation inside hiring platforms, CVS enabled  candidates to virtually try out some of the tasks in a potential position. Depending on their performance, they might be invited  go proceed to the next step in the recruiting process. Or they might decide the position wasn’t a good fit, saving themselves and the company time. CVS Health found this tool screened out half a million applicants right away, saving 40 years of hiring manager time.  The tool also brought a measurable improvement in performance, training, new hire retention, and operational outcomes.

Assistance with Interviewing

AI in HR provides a simple way not only to reach out to possible candidates, but also screen, rank, and shortlist their resumes based on the traits most relevant to your company. Then, once you have a list of people you’d like to interview, the chatbot can act as the scheduler.

Certain AI tools can also help you conduct a later-stage automated interview before inviting a candidate to come in person. Conducting a video interview with preset questions, you can run an AI program to analyze candidates’ facial expressions, tone of voice, mannerisms, and word choice. If you have an interview script then you can use a free text to speech tool to convert your script into audio for a more interactive pre-interview process.

This technology will make it more likely you’ll end up with new employees who fit your company culture, which is why major brands like Google, Facebook, and Apple have been using this technology for years in their hiring process. And now even more companies use it, including Capital One, Allstate, ThredUp, Hilton, and AT&T. 

Onboarding

AI is also improving onboarding procedures — by, for instance, automating repetitive or tedious tasks like conducting background checks, putting together documents about benefits, and creating offer letter templates. AI in hiring process can also help organize, print, and deliver all onboarding paperwork. 

The same can be said of training documents — another time-consuming step when the HR team has to do it manually. Instead, AI-powered tools can ensure all new employees receive copies of the paperwork that spells out company policies and log-in information.They can track when documents have been read, prompt an electronic signature, and schedule meetings to go over the information further when necessary. 

And all can happen 24/7 from anywhere, which means employees can start training or getting answers to their questions any time and from any device. It also allows the HR department to focus on tasks that cannot be automated or done outside of business hours. 

Why use AI in Hiring Process?

AI is undeniably revolutionizing HR from candidate sourcing and screening to interviews and virtual onboarding. In 2017, a Deloitte report indicated that 38 percent of survey respondents foresaw widespread AI adoption within three to five years, and this number increased to 42 percent in 2018, with a continuing upward trend.

An impressive 72 percent of executives anticipate significant business advantages with the rise of AI in the coming years. According to a LinkedIn study, 76 percent of hiring managers believe AI will play an important role in the future. Eric Sydell, EVP of Innovation at Modern Hire, aptly summarizes AI's impact, stating, "AI is an excellent tool for identifying top talent that aligns with your company, leveraging extensive data to predict outcomes more effectively than any individual. AI not only saves time for HR departments and maintains strong candidate relationships but also provides candidates with valuable insights to determine their job fit."

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About the author

Cynthia Trivella is the Managing Partner at TalentCulture . She has over 20 years' experience within the field of HR Communications, Talent Sourcing Strategies and Employment Branding using industry's best practices for attracting and retaining A-Level Talent candidates. She seeks to leverage her technical and marketing expertise to successfully develop and implement short- and long-term employee communication plans and processes that increase engagement and employee performance, all tied into the employer/employment brand within organizations of all sizes.