Hiring talented and skilled employees is becoming a difficult task for HR Teams. And with numerous automated tools and AI-assisted solutions entering organizational processes today, balancing between hiring new employees and training existing manpower is not easy.
However, with emerging trends and tools for AI in Recruitment, HR and recruitment teams are getting some respite in hiring tasks.
Understanding the Recruitment Process in 2024
From posting a job advertisement to shortlisting CVs of applicants, and calling the potential candidates for interviews, the traditional recruitment process is changing its form noticeably in 2024.
It has become more complex and nuanced, affected by the changing dynamics of the job market and the technological advancements, like the various recruitment software in the market.
New employees are hired based on multiple factors, not only for their knowledge, skills, and aptitude (KSA).
The following image depicts the general recruitment & selection process of most companies —
And the major elements influencing the latest recruitment processes include:
| Hybrid Work Models | Hybrid and remote work models that increased during the pandemic have expanded an organization’s talent pool beyond borders. Thus, HR teams now need to mold their recruitment strategies accordingly. And new hires should be able to adapt to cross-national work cultures and systems. |
| Candidate-Centric Recruiting | Organizations put a stronger focus on the recruitment experience of the candidates. Thus, recruiters design recruitment processes that are engaging, responsive, transparent, diversified, and fulfilling. This approach helps organizations to create a positive image of themselves in front of a rejected candidate and mitigates hard feelings toward the recruiting team. Gamified recruitment processes are a great example. |
| Competency-Based Hiring | Companies are adapting more skills and competency assessments in their recruiting efforts. In fact, some firms have started to use AI to identify potential applicants beyond their resumes. |
| Use of Data Analytics | Data analytics is a key driver of modern recruitment decisions. This not only optimizes job postings but also predicts possible hiring outcomes. Using predictive analytics for job profiling and competency mapping is changing talent acquisition from its core. |
| Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) | HR professionals are continuously and cohesively using technologies like AI to promote DEI in recruitment. The aim is to minimize biases and create more inclusive workplaces for better workplace environments. |
The Current Best Practices of Recruitment
Today’s recruitment best practices are designed to make the best use of technology for hiring more efficiently, equitably, and engagingly. In fact, as per the World Economic Forum, AI recruitment is expected to grow at a CAGR of 6.17% between 2023 to 2030.
Key recruiting strategies that companies adopt now are:
Automated Candidate Sourcing & Screening:
Organizations are fast moving to AI-based processes to help scan countless databases and identify candidates who match a particular job’s requirements (as per job description, job specification and job factors).
This also expedites resumes and application analysis in bulk, ensuring a more accurate competency mapping as per needs.
AI-Powered Interviewing Tools:
More than just looking at the resume or CV, new AI-powered tools scan and assess a candidate’s responses, tone, look, and facial expressions during virtual interviews or social profiles.
Predictive Analytics:
AI and predictive analytics together create a more agile, responsive and progressive workforce in alignment with organizational goals. Predictive analytics helps examine historical data, market trends, dynamic business conditions, demographic data, and other major trends. These enable organizations to predict a candidate’s potential in a job.
Social Media Recruiting:
Recruiters target LinkedIn, Facebook, and X (formerly Twitter) as valuable platforms for sourcing candidates. These platforms let recruiters reach a large candidate pool (the social media users basically) and target specific candidates based on their skills and experience.
Social media can be used to showcase a company’s culture, values, and benefits to attract candidates.
How is AI Used in the Recruitment Process?
Using AI for recruitment refers to leveraging artificial intelligence technology throughout the hiring steps to automate, expedite, and streamline various aspects of the process.
At a minimum, AI in recruitment will automate routine tasks, enabling more informed decision-making, and enhancing candidate engagement.
The current best practices, though not fully AI-based, are shifting toward it. From initial candidate sourcing to the final hiring decision, AI automates ample steps in the recruitment and staffing process.
Let us look at three real-life cases of AI integration at renowned corporations:
📖 Case 1 – Brother International Corporation
A well-known provider of home and office business products — Brother International Corporation — wanted to improve their employer branding and attract qualified talent. Going with the trends, they adopted AI to promote their brand and attract quality candidates.
The tools they used to enhance their website with automation and AI were
- a new CRM to help screen and shortlist qualified leads,
- artificially intelligent talent analytics
- Real-time data insights to optimize the application process
In a matter of three weeks of the AI-powered recruitment process and website launch, the company reaped these benefits:
✔️140% increase in completed applications
✔️45% increase in total page views
✔️40% increase in job seekers
✔️15% increase in returning job seekers
✔️25% decrease in time to fill
Read more about this success story to know in detail what transpired for such a positive impact.
📖 Case 2 – Hilton
Hilton, a multinational hospitality company owning multiple hotel brands, utilized AI that improves candidate experience and enhances the recruitment process. With its AI-powered chatbot, the applicants receive timely and accurate answers to queries through personalization. They also get feedback from the chatbot, if necessary. The chatbot is capable of scheduling interviews, too.
Moreover, Hilton uses this technology to analyze candidates’ data and suggest job fits through predictive analytics.
This AI integration has helped Hilton reduce its Time To Hire to 5 days from its earlier 43 Days!
📖 Case 3 – Procter & Gamble (P&G)
The globally renowned FMCG brand, Procter & Gamble (P&G) is a trusted and respected entity across the world.
Procter & Gamble makes the best use of AI in its mass recruiting and talent acquisition efforts. As the brand is a coveted one globally, countless applications come in when a job vacancy is posted. In such cases, the company utilizes AI-powered tools to:
- Scan candidate data, through resumes and online assessments;
- Identify competent matches for specific roles (competency mapping)
- Recognize candidates with the right skills, qualifications, and cultural fit.
- Eliminate the applications that don’t fit against majority parameters.
Eventually, when the right candidates are selected for the final round, a major chunk of the recruitment & selection process is taken care of.
Additionally, AI-enabled chatbots are developed for employer branding and engage with candidates to answer their various queries.
Learn about how Harvard Business Review views P&G’s AI recruitment initiatives.
What are the Key Benefits of Using AI in Recruitment?
So what are the key benefits organizations can avail from AI in Recruitment? Let’s see.
Efficient Outcomes:
AI significantly reduces the time spent on administrative tasks, allowing HR teams to focus on strategic aspects of recruitment. AI efficiently manages the following:
✅Screening candidates,
✅Scanning qualifications and skills,
✅Answering candidate questions (at least the frequently asked one),
✅Analyzing data, and
✅Scheduling interviews for applicants
Improved Quality of Hires
By leveraging data analytics, AI helps in making more informed hiring decisions, leading to a better quality of hires. Automated pre-screening and scheduling alone can dramatically impact the amount of time spent per applicant. Recruiters can spend more time interacting directly with top applicants as AI eliminates or puts on hold the less qualified ones.
This automatically increases ROI through quality hires as AI answers frequently asked questions and handles hiring documentation.
Diversity and Inclusion
Many organizations use AI to help in reducing human bias. AI assists in focusing on skills and competencies, promoting diversity in the workplace.
With more online hiring and video interviews today, a massive step toward diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) has already been made. Chatbots and AI technology help push DEI even further with no human bias involved when communicating.
Enhanced Candidate Experience
The use of AI helps improve the candidate experience throughout the recruitment process. Candidates enjoy consistent, instant response times and increased one-on-one attention through automated tools often implemented in social media or messaging platforms such as WhatsApp, Facebook, and LinkedIn. This personalized experience helps candidates be at their best disposition, too.
Also, automated tools and chatbots can help prevent extremely long application processes, a turn-off for many qualified applicants.
On the flipside, if an applicant is not the right fit for the role but may be employable at another position, he/she can be recommended to another position within your company with their skillset. Or, at least the HR team can ensure a polite and personalized rejection message that does not ‘burn the bridges’ for a future possibility.
Scope for Better Employer Branding & Communication
The HR teams get more chances to interact with qualified candidates and promote their company. For instance, a recruiter can talk about the company’s culture and offer a cultural fitness assessment test in a gamified hiring process. This would not only let the potential candidate know about the company and its culture, but also take the assessment with a player’s mindset, fighting for rewards, points, and progress.
All these gamified recruitment processes can be leveraged smoothly with AI in recruitment.
The benefits list of AI in recruitment is more than you can think of. The above five benefits are just scratching the surface. As we move into the future, more positives will show up.
What are the Potential Drawbacks of AI in Recruitment?
While AI offers a plethora of advantages, there are limitations that you need to take note of:
⚠️ Possibility of Bias:
Without proper human intervention, AI algorithms can amplify biases and offer responses that are controversial. As AI presents data they are trained on, this issue is a highly likely one..
⚠️ Non-Humanized Feel:
Despite AI’s capabilities to personalize communication, it has limits. Too much automated communication may lead to “robotic” interactions, potentially affecting the candidate’s perception of the organization.
⚠️ Complexity and Cost:
Implementing AI is not easy, for sure. And it’s harder to maintain it for longer periods without skilled or expert AI hands. With the frequent changes in developments and regulations upgrading and modifying AI may be costly, too.
⚠️ Accuracy Issues:
To date, AI tools are great assistants. But, these do not possess the required human emotional intelligence (EI). In fact, many free-to-use AI tools lack high IQ as well or have backdated information. Thus, when such AI tools are used for recruitment purposes, especially by small medium enterprises with lesser budget, the results may not be satisfactory.
Human Recruiter vs AI Recruiter: What Does the Future Hold?
This debate on human vs AI, and who will take over whom, is an ongoing one, and will go on till both entities exist.
Yes, there are areas where AI is ahead and may not be taken over by humans. These areas are— fatigue, speed, bulk data handling, instant generation of content, etc. However, human recruiters bring empathy, intuition, and the ability to make nuanced decisions – things AI may not be able to do, for a long time to come.
So the optimum recruitment strategy should be to leverage the strengths of both HR teams and AI and create a holistic, candidate-centric process. This approach will create a win-win situation for all concerned.
However, let’s compare some factors of Human Recruiters vs AI Recruiters
Factors to Consider – Human vs AI Recruiting
| Factors | Human Recruiter | AI Recruiter |
|---|---|---|
| Personalization | Can engage personally with candidates more | May lack the personal engagement that human recruiters provide but can be trained on it. |
| Efficiency | Depends on the recruitment team’s workload and capabilities. | Can process and analyze vast amounts of data quickly. |
| Bias | Can be biased. | Can minimize bias, but can also be highly biased if not trained |
| Flexibility | Can respond to unexpected situations or queries with human IQ | Has limited response flexibility; responds with predefined training and data. |
| Scalability | Limited by human capacity. | High: Easily scales to handle large volumes of applications. |
| Cost | Depends on the salaries or consulting fees charged. Experience and proven skills matter. | Advanced systems charge more than the basic or less sophisticated solutions. |
| Data Analysis | Depends on the HR personnel’s skill in data interpretation but usually limited | Excels in analyzing vast datasets to identify trends and insights. |
8 AI Tools for Recruitment Optimization
Now, let’s take a look at 8 top AI tools that global companies use to optimize and enhance their recruitment initiatives.
| Tool Name | Brief Description | G2 Review |
| Paradox | A conversational AI assistant that helps recruitment and HR teams to streamline scheduling, communication, and candidate engagement. | https://www.g2.com/products/paradox/reviews |
| Zoho Recruit | an advanced AI recruitment solution that helps to swiftly access different candidate profiles and dispatch pre-screening assessments with just a few clicks. | https://www.g2.com/products/zoho-recruit/reviews |
| Workday US | Workday HCM is a single, cloud-based solution with workforce planning, talent management, and payroll processes to help customers via its AI-integrated process. | https://www.g2.com/products/workday-hcm/reviews |
| Manatal.com | An advanced recruitment software built with the latest technologies to help HR teams, recruitment agencies, and headhunters streamline and simplify recruitment processes from sourcing to onboarding and beyond. | https://www.g2.com/products/manatal/reviews |
| Pymetrics | A pre-employment assessment platform that uses neuroscience games and bias-free AI for interactive, gamified candidate evaluations. The focus is on evaluating soft skills. | https://www.g2.com/products/pymetrics/reviews |
| Fetcher AI | AI tool that automates candidate sourcing and outreach, maximizing the reach and efficiency of recruitment campaigns | https://www.g2.com/products/fetcher-fetcher/reviews |
| TurboHire | A recruitment automation platform that optimizes your recruitment process from Job requisition to offer letter release while giving the user ample flexibility to customize HR workflows. Uses NLP to enrich candidate profiles and improve match accuracy. | https://www.g2.com/products/turbohire/reviews |
| HireVue | Uses AI to analyze video interviews, assessing candidates’ verbal and non-verbal cues for better hiring decisions. | https://www.g2.com/products/hirevue/reviews |
Final Words
With effective AI assistants available in the market, HR teams can utilize them to their best potential, and streamline their recruiting processes. AI in recruitment is the future of this all-important HR function. And, if HR recruiters don’t start using these tools now, then they will fall behind.
Want to know more about recruitment and talent acquisition tech? Then take a look at our articles on the YoSuite Blog and delve into prominent staffing and hiring topics and knowledge.
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