Artificial Intelligence (AI) appears in various forms, is integrated with various industries, provides assistance, optimizes our lives, streamlines business, and on and on. Thus, people interact with the solution constantly. Google’s Assistant, Siri, Bixby, and other virtual assistants, Netflix, and Spotify recommendations are the most obvious examples of AI technology usage.
Today AI dramatically reshapes recruitment, offering services to increase the productivity of the human resources (HR) department. In this article, we’ll elaborate on the benefits and challenges to meet when using the AI solution in your hiring process.
What Is Artificial Intelligence For Hiring?
Before we start to overlook all the advantages and downsides of technology, let’s define what AI in the recruitment industry is. AI is the solution, software, and/or application designed to streamline or automate a part of the recruitment workflow, high-volume, routine and repetitive tasks. So, AI technology has the power to help your HR managers to find a perfect candidate from any part of the world more effectively and efficiently.
The pros and benefits of the use of Artificial intelligence in the recruitment and hiring process:
Let’s start with the benefits you can get when implementing AI solutions in the hiring process. Here we are with 6 issues that can be improved by AI-based app/software integrated.
Tedious Manual Tasks Automation
Let’s look at some statistics. Averagely, a corporate job post receives about 250 resumes. That’s a workload for your HR department because each application is to be reviewed by an employee. So, can you imagine how much working hours are needed for finding a perfect hire? And that’s saying nothing about the time required for writing and publishing a job post on social media and job boards.
Sourcing and screening are tedious and time-consuming processes in recruiting that can be automated by integrating AI. The solution can scan the resources, locate, and recruit great potential candidates quickly and efficiently. After that, the technology can screen and analyze hundreds of applications received in minutes and shortlist candidates that suit the requirements like relevant experience, actual skills, knowledge, and other qualities. That greatly reduces time and allows hiring managers to focus on other tasks.
Improved Quality of Hire
When an HR manager searches for a candidate to fill the position, the quality of hire is a crucial factor. It measures the value the hire will bring to your company and how fast you succeed, reach the stated business objectives, etc. AI-powered tools can help you to improve the quality of hire. The technology can better analyze the candidates’ skills, experience, and results of assignments compare on-the-job performance, attribution, and give your employees deeper insights to make the best choice for your company.
Reduced Time to Hire
It’s a fact that a lot of time is wasted on the wrong candidates and reviewing unfit applications. AI has the ability to extremely reduce the time needed for hiring. Thanks to the AI-tools you can automate searching, screening, and assessing the gathered data. Thus, the predictive analytics provided by AI is extremely helpful for identifying perfect candidates for the position to interview.
Enhanced Communication
Another strong feature of the technology is availability 24/7. So that AI can improve your communication with candidates and in such a way enhance their experience and engagement. Implementing the AI-based chat-bots, for example, you can provide the candidates with needed information, answer questions day and night, maintain good response time, keep them engaged and posted throughout the process, and so on.
Besides that, AI-powered solutions like Personality AI can reach out to the candidates for gathering more data, set up an interview, and suggest time/way based on their personality, etc. All that will help your company to stand out from the rest companies.
Reduced Human Biases
No matter how professional your HR managers are, they remain to be humans. That’s why they still can be biased in some ways and make decisions based on their age, gender, personal appearance, ethnicity, and so on. You can program AI tools to focus only on the important issues, factors, and requirements like experience, skills, knowledge, qualifications, personality, and other aspects to eliminate human biases.
Allow Hrs to Focus On Other Tasks
Directly coming from all the previous points, AI can automate a lot of tasks and free up your HR managers from monotonous and time-consuming tasks like manual data entry, searching, screening, shortlisting the candidates, etc. Herewith, the employees can focus on other important aspects and metrics like quality of hire, company culture, work environment, and others. Besides, all that will allow you to reduce the costs of the recruiting process.
The Cons of Using Artificial Intelligence in the Hiring Process
Though the number of benefits you can get with AI integrated into the hiring process, there is a range of challenges you can face when adopting the solution. Forewarned is forearmed. So, just specify all the cons of using AI solutions in recruitment.
Issues with Accuracy and Reliability
AI has great potential, however, there is a lot of work to do yet to make the technology perfect. One of the biggest challenges to face is the lack of accuracy and reliability of the Applicant Tracking System (ATS). The matter is that it’s easy enough to confuse the system by:
- Formatting options used in the application;
- PDF format of the resumes;
- Poorly set keywords, and so on.
Misconception Based On Data
Another drawback of AI in recruitment is too much dependency on certain keywords. Thus, the candidates can trick the ATS by adding the keywords into the application or their social media profiles for being identified as a good fit for your company position. And vice versa. The system can neglect the candidate with all the needed qualities because of the lack/poor set/absence of keywords used in the applications, profiles, and automatically downgrade him/her.
Lack of Human Judgment
Though the AI-powered tools make the recruitment process more simple, efficient, and fast, there is still a space for emotional intelligence that can be replaced by the latest technology. Besides that, not only knowledge and experience matter, soft skills play a key role in success as well. The AI can choose the candidate with excellent work experience and skills, but with absolutely different values and goals that don’t align with your company’s. And vice versa. It can dismiss the candidate who might not have an exact match in terms of work experience, but it can still be a perfect hire for your organization.
Overlooking Candidates
In addition to the previous point, AI has the potential to deprioritize, overlook, or even reject great applicants. The matter is the technology tends to look for the people who match the strict requirements like experience. However, it also makes it possible that the solution won’t follow-up candidates who could be perfect for the position, despite he/she doesn’t have as much relevant experience. It’s where humans can do that.
No One-Size-Fits-All Solution
It’s a pity but the solution doesn’t fit everyone. The sheer volume of data is required to make the AI-based software reliable and accurate. It can be a costly process with a number of specialists, specific knowledge, the time needed. That’s why AI is much more suited to large enterprises with high volume recruitment than medium and small businesses.
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Bottom Line: Is AI The Future Of Recruitment And Hiring?
Artificial intelligence has great potential in the recruitment industry. The technology already transforms the hiring process. Though the fact there are a few open questions like reliability, accuracy, and others, the AI can improve the process over time:
- Automate repetitive and high-volume tasks for reducing the workload;
- Allow HR managers to conduct proactive strategic hiring;
- Free the staff of the HR department to focus on other important tasks;
- Improve both candidate and employee experience and engagement;
- Faster close the positions, etc.
That makes us believe that there are so many benefits of artificial intelligence (AI) in the recruitment industry. AI will become mainstream shortly in the whole recruitment process. However, mind that everything requires time, effort, and strategy to be successful. So does AI adoption. You’re to have a strict plan to get most out of the implementation of the technology.