According to Career Builder’s latest report, 63% of businesses within the U.S. planned to hire full-time employees within the last year. However, many of these companies have also noted that it is a struggle to fill these positions due to low unemployment rates.
Your approach to hiring needs to be top-notch in order to capture the attention of truly qualified talent. If your recruiting strategies are not first rate, your hiring strategy is doomed from the start. Any kinks in the application and interview experience could send your best candidates running, leaving your hiring managers with only a handful of less-than-stellar options.
Thankfully, technology is providing the answer here for many companies. AI is already revolutionizing business through digital marketing and data analysis, but it is also making it easier for organizations to bring on great talent.
There are plenty of ways that modern hiring programs can support recruiters by saving them time and effort in connecting with great applicants. But it is not just hiring managers that stand to benefit from recruiting technology – these programs are also helping to create a better candidate experience. In turn, this leads to better hiring processes on both sides of the table.
Curious as to how this all works? Read on!
Connecting Candidates to the Right Recruiters
There are plenty of talented job candidates who may not be applying to your company simply because they are not seeking it out. Further, there may be some great talent who aren’t actually looking at the moment, but would be interested if a great opportunity came their way. In fact, 70% of the workforce is not actively searching for jobs, but would be willing to accept an offer if the job was a good fit.
Recruiters need to be able to find these candidates and connect with them to discuss the position further. Fetcher.ai is designed to source these hidden talents by using AI and NLP (natural language processing) to scan online resumes and profiles to send valuable leads to recruiters:
This tool also creates rich candidate profiles with lots of important information gathered from multiple resources (such as their LinkedIn profile and Indeed resume), so hiring managers can get a feel for the candidate’s skill set before reaching out:
And on the candidate side, job seekers are wise to optimize their resumes for various positions. Candidates will need to create various resumes that highlight specific skills depending on the criteria that recruiters would be looking for.
Tools like Resumonk can be used to create multiple versions of a resume, which can be altered so that they’re optimized for different job opportunities:
For example, say that you have worked in the customer service industry as well as social media advertising. You may want to create two resumes highlighting these separate skill sets so that your resumes are optimized for the appropriate positions.
Dive Deeper:
Machine Learning Technology for Better Career Matchmaking
Job searching is a lot like online dating – the more impressive your profile looks, the more matches you will probably acquire and the higher chances you have of meeting “the one.” In terms of finding a new job, when a candidate’s profile or resume is impressive and detailed, it will be much likelier to receive more offers and appear more qualified.
Machine learning and AI systems can help job seekers optimize their profiles to make themselves more “searchable” by recruiters and headhunters. For example, Eightfold.ai creates personalized career sites for each candidate based on their experiences and skills and then uses AI technology to scan through thousands of available job listings and match candidates to positions that would mesh with their goals and ambitions:
Additionally, this site can help your recruiting efforts be more diverse; the biggest excuse for not being more diverse is ‘we looked and could not find enough diverse candidates’.” Not only does Eightfold help eliminate bias, but it increases the pool of candidates to draw from.
This program can also be used by recruiters to find candidates using this site, matching them up with more qualified applicants.
Dive Deeper:
Recruiters Are Using AI for Soft Interviews
Artificial Intelligence can do more than just help recruiters find great candidates. It can also help streamline the initial interview process and narrow down the applicant pool even further. Tools like Mya can be used for initial short interviews via chatbot texts:
With these exchanges, the system can infer what skills a candidate possesses and how likely they are to be a good fit in order to move on to a second interview. This is done through an AI-powered chatbot that asks various questions and analyzes the candidate’s answers through NLP:
The great thing about using this system is that it provides flexibility for the candidate to answer the questions on their own time. This is super helpful for job candidates who are still currently employed and may not be able to take a phone call or schedule an interview during normal business hours. It can also save recruiters precious time in the qualification process and narrow down the number of candidates who are invited for an in-person interview.
A Truly Tech-Forward Interview
When it comes to the actual face-to-face interview, much of the decision making relies solely on first impressions and gut feelings. If a candidate interviews well because they have a good personality and strong people skills, they will be more likely to get a job offer than someone who is extremely shy. Unfortunately, this usually means that part of the hiring decision is based on a recruiter’s unconscious bias.
AI lacks human emotions like empathy and is generally unbiased, which means that it can help recruiters make a decision that is based in facts and data. Some businesses are bringing AI into the interview room by using technology to assess the candidate’s facial expressions, body language, sentiment and knowledge for a smarter hiring decision.
Big-name businesses like Hilton and Unilever have recently partnered with HireVue to analyze candidates during an interview:
The goal is to detect honesty and confidence, as well as eliminate bias. Once the interview is finished, HireVue analyzes the data points and creates a report to help recruiters make a more data-driven final decision.
Dive Deeper:
Conclusion
When it comes to Artificial Intelligence, many people harp on the fact that it will steal jobs with automation. However, what many fail to realize is that it can actually be used to help people find great career opportunities and assist businesses in the hiring process.
AI can make the job search and talent acquisition process easier and more enjoyable for both parties for multiple reasons. If you want your business to grow and succeed or you are on the hunt for better opportunities, you should be embracing AI and making the most of all that it has to offer.