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How Artificial Intelligence can Change Hiring for the Better

Advancements in Machine Learning (ML) are creating a paradigm shift in virtually every sector of the tech industry. The adoption of ML and Artificial Intelligence (AI) by businesses has increased by 270% in four years, with human resources contributing greatly to this growth.  HR has been identified as one of the ten industries most affected by AI. It is increasingly common for organizations to use artificial intelligence to automate their hiring processes. The HR industry has been fundamentally based on making predictions. Recruiters often need to predict which marketing strategies to apply to attract the right candidates, which candidates would be a good fit for a job, what kind of compensation would get a candidate to accept the offer, what is needed to retain employees, etc. Artificial intelligence is particularly good at predicting these things, as it can analyze large amounts of data and provide insights many humans would miss when making decisions. This offers significant value to a company and makes it beneficial to use AI recruiting to automate and augment many recruitment tasks.

In this article, we will take a look at the impact of ML on recruitment, including its uses, benefits, and outlook.

AI And Hiring

With the future of work trending more towards remote and digital, recruitment divisions are overloaded with applications. More than 52% of hiring managers say the hardest part of the recruitment process is trying to identify the right candidate from a large candidate pool. Even though AI does not make decisions for recruiters, it analyses data and provides insights that make recruiters' decisions more efficient.

The computing power of AI can help companies and their recruiting teams in several ways – from reducing the time spent on repetitive, time-consuming tasks and removing bias from the hiring to identifying top talent and improving the candidate experience.

AI in Recruiting: Advantages

Improved quality of hire

Many organizations find it extremely difficult to find the right employees, with the majority of applicants being unqualified to do the job. An SHRM report suggests that 59% of recruiters believe the basic skill set is missing among applicants. And 84% of them believe there is a shortage of applied skills among applicants. Artificial intelligence in recruitment can spot the candidates that best match the job requirements and screen out unqualified applicants. AI helps HR specialists focus on the top talent, choose the best candidate and, ultimately, reduce employee turnover.

Automate tedious manual tasks

One very common problem in hiring is that the recruitment process lasts too long. The top candidates disappear when they get a job offer from another company that moves faster. Research shows that nearly 25% of candidates lose interest in the position if they get no response within a week after the interview. Recruiters, on average, lose 14 hours a week because they need to complete tasks that can potentially be automated. AI can save time in different parts of the recruitment process, especially in analyzing and communicating with candidates.

Reduce bias

In recent years diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) have emerged as a critically important factor to ensure the success of an organization. A recent Gallup study found that diverse business units in the retail sector have 14% higher average comparable revenue than less-diverse businesses. However, companies’ efforts to attract diverse candidates are often destroyed by neglectful bias while recruiting. It is intuitive for humans to make decisions based on incomplete information coupled with cues known as precognitive bias. Implementing AI recruitment software can help build more diverse teams as it will analyze candidates based on qualification and leave demographic factors out of the decision of whom to hire.

Better candidate experience

Creating a good candidate experience is essential in the recruitment process as it helps to make a great impression on great talent and win over the best candidates before competitors do. Employers should know that job seekers prefer a timely hiring process, even if that means notifying them of a rejection in a more timely manner. Communication with candidates can significantly improve candidate experience and enhance the employer brand. With AI, recruiters can communicate with applicants using AI tools such as chatbots and Natural Language Processing technology (NLP) to automatically answer candidates’ questions and provide personalized feedback.

Cost-effective hiring

Hiring is a cost activity – there is an associated cost per hire which includes advertising the opening, the time cost of an internal recruiter and their assistant in reviewing resumes and performing other recruitment tasks, the time cost of the person conducting the interviews, background checks, and pre-employment tests. A recent survey by the SHRM found that the average cost per hire is more than $4,000, and that does not take into account the costs associated with hiring the wrong candidate. Recruiting AI automates tasks by doing time-consuming manual work, and lets recruiters focus on fewer tasks reducing the costs.

Learning Hiring with AI

Artificial intelligence recruitment has several potential applications for automating manual high-volume tasks such as resume screening and pre-qualifying candidates. Below are some examples of current use cases:

  • Talent sourcing
  • Candidate engagement
  • Digitized interviews

AI-driven recruitment software breaks the talent pool into various dimensions and analyzes it based on the qualifications of the candidates, their prior experiences, how they stand against current employees of the company, how often candidates who have similar qualifications have been selected for an interview in the past, etc. Talent sourcing is powered by predictive analytics designed to eliminate bias and improve the quality of hires.

"[It identifies] where the talent is that we are looking for. That technology is really good at scraping professional social sites, academic information, and a variety of different sources to help pinpoint the talent segment that you are looking for."

Lauren Smith, vice president in Gartner's HR practice

AI-powered tools such as chatbots improve the candidate experience by optimizing communication with candidates at all stages of the hiring process. It provides real-time integration by asking questions based on the job requirements, providing feedback and next-step suggestions. Online interview software helps analyze candidates' word choices, speech patterns, body language, and facial expressions to assess his or her fit for the job and the company.

AI Redefines Hiring

It is obvious that artificial intelligence adds significant value to recruiting operations. However, what most people get wrong is that they think that AI is designed to replace recruiters completely by automizing the entire hiring process. It is important to understand that despite the usefulness and prevalence of AI in the hiring process, the technology will not replace hiring professionals.

Recruitment AI is designed to enhance recruiting operations but not replace them. The key point of AI for recruiting is to make the hiring process more efficient and to make the world of work more accessible for all. AI is meant to minimize manual processes that take hiring managers a lot of time, such as sifting through every single application. The technology is meant to give recruiters more time to focus on more valuable work.

"There have to be human connections in there. Even if some of the processes are getting help from software, that's not going to replace anybody, that's just going to spend time to hire and maybe find a better candidate at a lower price over time."

Brandau, principal analyst on Forrester's CIO team

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