Utilizing AI in Recruitment
Table of contents
- How is utilizing AI recruiting software during the hiring process beneficial?
- How exactly can AI tools help recruiters and hiring managers?
- What are the steps for integrating AI-powered tools into my current HR tech stack?
- What are the potential downsides to using AI during the recruiting process?
- What are the prospective trends for AI in the recruitment process?
- Conclusion
"AI" is one of the hottest buzzwords in every industry right now, especially when discussing HR challenges and solutions. It seems only logical that questions regarding the usage of AI in recruitment would surface, especially since 60% of recruiting professionalsOpens in a new tab are already using these tools, including companies like Amazon, IBM, and Unilever.
With many recruiters wading through hundreds or even thousands of resumes for each open role and trying to select the best candidates and meet DEI goals, their responsibilities are becoming increasingly difficult.
Read on to learn how AI can help your recruitment team meet hiring goals, identify the best potential candidates, and support your organization's DEI efforts.
How is utilizing AI recruiting software during the hiring process beneficial?
While innovations in human resources are virtually omnipresent, AI seems to really be taking center stage in present conversations. Utilizing artificial intelligence can make recruiters' lives easier in a myriad of ways through the hiring process, including:
Saving recruiters' time by automating high-volume tasks
For most people, busy, repetitive tasks are the most dreaded part of their role. Menial tasks can feel increasingly redundant over time. By automating human resources processes through AI, such as handling high-volume, chore-like tasks, recruiters can preserve their mental energy for more complex tasks, such as interviewing candidates.
Screening candidates quickly and efficiently
Sifting through hundreds or even thousands of resumes for every open role can be extremely tedious and time-consuming. By utilizing recruitment software that can auto-screen resumes and highlight the most relevant candidates for recruiters, these tools can save them an enormous amount of time.
They may even catch details that recruiters may miss, as while humans become fatigued after hours of repetitive work, AI does not.
Supporting diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives
Today's most successful companies include DEIB initiatives within their human resources strategy. Using AI to screen job applicants can help ensure that candidates of various genders, sexual orientations, ethnic and racial backgrounds, and even varying education levels are all getting equal chances.
Having a team built from people of diverse backgrounds is crucial for creating the most forward-thinking, innovative team possible. This is because diverse teams are more likely to see issues from different angles and devise creative solutions to problems.
"Diversity, inclusion, and belonging align organizational culture with the need to hire and retain the best talent. They make companies attractive to more people."
Reducing the time to hire
AI's assistance can greatly reduce the time it takes to get a candidate hired. Not only does this help eliminate headaches, redundant workflows, and employee fatigue for the recruiting team, but it can also greatly help the team at large.
By filling open roles faster, new employees can begin to ramp up to their new roles more quickly, leaving roles vacant for less time and helping teams be more productive. It also helps the candidate experience seem much more polished, professional, and seamless.
Deeper data insights
AI has the capabilities to deeply analyze a number of different data points, and can do so more quickly and in a more in-depth way than most humans. This in-depth data, such as which hiring managers see the most turnover with their new hires, can help identify opportunities for additional training and find other gaps that need to be closed.
This can improve your team's overall function, help you hire the right people, and ultimately, increase retention.
How exactly can AI tools help recruiters and hiring managers?
Writing job descriptions and automating tedious tasks
Generative AI, such as ChatGPT, can be a great tool for creating job descriptions. Not only can this technology help create job postings with uniform style, brand voice, and level of description, but it can also help complete things more quickly if a high volume of postings needs to be created.
The Natural Language Processing (NLP) capabilities of these tools allow them to create postings that sound just like humans wrote them.
Sourcing the most qualified candidates
AI-powered sourcing tools have the capability to search job sites, databases, and even social media sites to help recruiters identify relevant candidates from the talent pool. This can be extremely helpful to the hiring and recruiting teams, as these tools may identify the right talent in ways the human recruiters may never have been able to identify otherwise.
Screening resumes
This is likely the most well-known and common way to use AI in recruiting. These tools and programs can easily scan high volumes of resumes, quickly extracting important candidate data and identifying the strongest contenders for each open role. Resume parsing and behavioural evaluations are two of the main ways AI selects candidates.
Conducting digital interviews
Most people are aware that AI recruiting software is capable of scheduling interviews for the recruiting team. Surprisingly, AI-powered recruiting software can also conduct pre-screening interviews through video calls and even text chats.
Many tools contain algorithms that can analyze recorded conversations and evaluate a candidate's tone, demeanor, and emotional state, which can help recruiters determine whether they'd be fit for the role or the company culture at large. Using these tools at the early stages of the recruiting process can be immensely helpful for your overwhelmed hiring team.
Assessing candidates
These AI systems have the capability to analyze candidate data on a variety of factors, both qualitatively and quantitatively. They can provide specific, data-driven feedback regarding candidates' competency, personality traits, and unique professional skillsets, helping your team identify top talent.
Making hiring decisions
Because of how deeply they can analyze data and candidate potential, these tools can also provide hiring suggestions at the final stages of the process. This can assist recruiters and hiring managers make their final decision, especially when they are weighing a number of qualified candidates and want to avoid leaning into any human bias.
What are the steps for integrating AI-powered tools into my current HR tech stack?
While you may be excited to introduce this new technology to your team, it can be confusing to determine where to begin. Following these simple steps will help you seamlessly integrate an AI tool into your team's current system:
Identify your team's needs
Choosing the right tools leveraging AI and machine learning in HR begins with identifying your team's current recruitment goals and challenges. Other factors to consider are your team's current recruitment process and how it may change, their comfort with machine learning, your budget, the size of your team, and any specific pain points you want to address.
Research AI recruiting tools to choose the best fit
There are a wide variety of AI recruitment tools currently available. You may want to integrate candidate-sourcing software, a resume screening program, a chatbot, video interview tools, programs that integrate with your applicant tracking system, or a combination of options.
Pilot the AI recruiting tool
Choose a pilot group within your recruitment team to be trained, test the tool, and provide feedback on the usability. Once you've collected this data, you can evaluate the effectiveness of the tool and see if you'd like to move forward with a rollout or restart the selection process.
Roll out the AI recruiting tool to your entire team
First, ensure that your team is adequately trained to use this new technology. It's also crucial to educate them on why this tool or system is so important, so they're more open to learning about and embracing the tool.
Your talent acquisition professionals need to feel that any new technological additions are there to help them, not to replace them as workers. Not only will this help your recruitment teams embrace AI, it may also help deepen their sense of psychological safety.
What are the potential downsides to using AI during the recruiting process?
Over-reliance on technology
Some recruiters may feel less psychologically safe in a workplace that relies heavily on AI, as they may feel that they're being "replaced with computers." Dependence on these tools can also cause issues if they ever crash, are updated in ways that recruiters may need time to understand and readjust to, or the system crashes in any way.
Bias in AI algorithms
Although most of these AI tools were designed to override the issue of unconscious bias in humans, many of them unfortunately come with their own algorithmic biasesOpens in a new tab. Because humans are programming these tools, they often create predictive bias, as they are simply following the guidelines set when they were created. This highlights the AI ethical challenges of ensuring fairness and transparency in machine learning algorithms.
This can mean that unfair discrimination toward people of various races, genders, experiences, or even personalities can still occur with these tools.
Lack of human discernment
While a candidate may look great on paper, there are many elements of a human that an AI tool is simply incapable of evaluating. Elements like a candidate's attitude, tone, demeanor, ability to connect with others, and general enthusiasm for the role are all factors only a human being could truly screen for.
The downside of this is that determining whether or not a candidate is going to be a culture fit is often one of the most important elements for choosing the right candidate.
What are the prospective trends for AI in the recruitment process?
When it comes to future HR trends for simplifying the recruitment process, there are a lot of exciting new developments on the horizon. Since the creators of Artificial Intelligence tools are constantly innovating, new technologies, tools, and platforms are readily available.
Create a workplace humans will want to join — and a workplace they’ll want to stay.
Find out how with the solutions of the Workhuman Platform.
FAQs
Conclusion
While integrating any new technology can feel daunting and a little anxiety-inducing, it's important to remember that these tools were created to make our lives easier. Although there may be some ramp-up time or a learning curve when adding these to your tech stack, we're confident that you'll soon find that utilizing AI in recruitment can be extremely beneficial.
Utilizing AI for this purpose can make your hiring teams' workloads more manageable, help you identify the most suitable candidates, and support your company's DEI efforts.
About the author
Anna Picagli
As a CYT500 yoga instructor and a certified reiki practitioner, Anna is an advocate for holistic wellness, especially within the workplace.
She’s extremely passionate about the brain-body connection and exploring how mental and physical wellness intersect.
Anna has experienced firsthand how chronic stress, overworking, poor management, and other organizational issues can lead to extreme burnout. Knowing the impact that a toxic work environment can have on a person’s body, psyche, and general sense of well-being, she now works to direct others away from facing the same fate.
As Workhuman’s Content Marketing Senior Specialist, Anna is a regular contributor to Workhuman iQ reports and aims to create resources that company leaders can reference to help improve their culture and empower their employees, creating healthier workplaces for everyone.
In her free time, she’s a voracious reader and a seasoned home chef. You can learn more about Anna’s work on LinkedIn or through the Yoga Alliance.