5 Innovative Applications of AI in Recruitment

The growing gig economy has added a new challenge to the organizations’ recruitment settings. While 62% of millennials believe gig work is a viable alternative to mainstream jobs (Deloitte Global Millennial Survey 2019), only 8% of HR Organizations believe they’re ready to manage gig or contract workers; thus opening new avenues for the use of technology in recruitment processes. Let’s see how AI in recruitment can benefit organizations in upscaling candidate experience, diversity and inclusion, and onboarding irrespective of geographical location.

How Organizations Can Leverage AI in Recruitment?

According to Grand View Research, the global HR management market is projected to reach $30.01 billion by 2025, of which Talent Management software will cover $13.8 billion worth of the market share. Advanced analytics, apps, and team-focused management practices will fuel the growth of recruitment technologies. The following are 5 areas where AI can out rule existing technologies and HR software.

#1 Screening

Identifying the right candidate from a large applicant pool terrifies recruiters. Surprisingly, only 9% of organizations possess a strong screening technology, says Josh Bersin in HR Technology Market 2019. According to Ideal’s recruiting software ebook, almost 65% of resumes received for a high-volume role are ignored. Now that the inclination towards an alternative workforce is growing, HRs face additional pressure in shortlisting candidates for the organizations. 

In the age where candidates have equal rights to question employers, automated responses aren’t just enough. AI-powered chatbots can not only automate the resume screening processes but also understand the candidates’ queries better and respond in real-time. 

For example, Olivia developed by Paradox is a recruitment assistant chatbot. It helps companies in collecting resumes, screening them, and interacting with the candidates. Olivia bot can schedule interviews and delivers one-to-one candidate experience. 

#2 Identifying Passive Candidates and Rediscovery

According to Deloitte Global Human Capital Trends Survey 2019, 61% of organizations consider finding qualified experienced hires as the most difficult recruitment challenge. Also, 26% of leading recruiters believe- inefficient technology is the reason for hiring setbacks.

Organizations rely on the capabilities of their existing workforce more than a new-hire. However, uncovering the talent that’s a great fit for a new role and their willingness to take up a new responsibility is quite a challenge. AI can help in rediscovering hidden talent among the existing employees thus reducing candidate acquisition costs. 

Another aspect of recruitment, especially for sophisticated roles is passive candidate sourcing. However, identifying and engaging with people who are not currently looking for a job change can be daunting. AI can simplify this aspect as well. Instead of focusing only on a candidate’s resume, sourcing more information from his public profiles and making predictions about the success in acquisition can save a lot of human efforts. 

#3 Sentiment Analysis

AI can judge a candidate’s sentiments better than a human because there won’t be any conflict of emotions during an interview. AI can identify, extract, quantify, and study the candidate’s states using procedures like NLP (natural language processing), computational linguistics, facial recognition, and biometrics. 

Through AI, companies like Unilever, IBM, Dunkin Donuts, and many others are analyzing a candidate’s facial expressions during video job interviews. For instance, using the HireVue AI-driven recruitment platform, Unilever was able to hire for entry-level jobs from 1200 more colleges.

#4 Defining Jobs APIs

Deloitte Global Human Capital Trends Survey 2019 reports – 25% of organizations feel constructing an appealing job offer as challenging. Moreover, according to HRDrive 2016 survey, 72% of HR managers claim to provide clear job descriptions. But, only 36% of candidates say they understood it.

AI can bridge this gap by mapping industry jargon and search queries. AI can also present descriptive job descriptions or skills requirements in concise language that can save the candidate’s time and hence improve conversions.

On 15th November 2016, Google launched Cloud Jobs API- a machine learning service to improve the hiring process by providing a lingua franca between the job seeker and employer job postings. It comprises of two ontologies- occupation and skills and establishment of relational models between them. 

#5 Reducing Unconscious Bias

Organizations believe that a diverse workforce improves employee productivity, and retention and yields innovation and creativity. However, diversity hiring suffers a setback because of unintentional bias and recruitment preferences. 

AI can help in reducing unconscious biases during recruitment because it is completely programmable. The model can be trained to clear patterns of potential prejudices based on gender, ethnicity, geography, or even academic institutions. According to Modern Hire research, 49% of candidates believe AI can improve their chances of getting hired.

Will AI Replace Recruiters?

PayScale suggests that 66% of organizations agree that employee retention is a growing concern, making hiring an even more sophisticated process. Benefits of AI in recruitment encircles around sourcing, screening, assessment, and identifying hidden talents. Technocrats believe AI will not replace recruiters, it will simply augment the existing hiring processes. 

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