One crucial task of human resource management is the recruitment which requires proper planning, preparation, and effective execution. The recruitment process is often time-consuming and involves an extensive series of talent acquisition steps to find a candidate with the right skill, experience, and personality to fit the position opening. With recent technological advances, artificial intelligence (AI) software has replaced much of the once highly laborious heavy lifting inherent with recruiting once practiced exclusively by humans to source critical enterprise positions. Implementing AI to automate talent acquisition throughout the hiring process has recently become a strategic organizational planning and development component.
Why AI?
In prior decades, the human resource recruitment process offered fewer options and tools to HR managers. With changing times, recruiting requirements and techniques have evolved, skillset demands have changed, and candidate preferences have shifted, elevating the HR manager’s workload. Adding to these elevated demands are increased globalization, remote work, greater attention to diversity and inclusion, and global pandemic risks significantly challenging the modern HR manager. Enter AI to the rescue to modernize, automate, and streamline the overall process increasing efficiency and recruitment effectiveness.
Historically, the recruitment process included largely manual efforts with recruiters managing newspaper advertisements, attending conferences, and processing internal and external referrals. However, modern-day methods include more automated approaches like AI-powered resume processing and smart robots that crawl the internet, hunting for and sourcing talent, especially on media platforms like Linkedin, Monster, Facebook, FlexJobs, Indeed, ZipRecruiter, and Glassdoor. AI algorithms analyze piles of potential resumes in a matter of seconds, and bots can schedule an interview for the shortlisted profiles, thus eliminating much of the labor-intensive burden of initial screening from vast pools of resumes and initial candidate interactions.
The recruitment process usually starts by sourcing candidates and assessing them, followed by interviews, selection, background checks, and finally onboarding. AI-powered recruitment technology, methods, and techniques significantly reduce this recruitment cycle. Further, the technology can ensure that candidate screening precisely matches job specifications and requirements with its real-time analytics.
AI’s many faces in hiring talent
Artificial intelligence is the computer simulation of human intelligence within processes. It encompasses a number of areas, including machine learning, optical character recognition (OCR), speech recognition, natural language processing (NLP), sentiment analysis, machine vision, and others. However, we will be focusing on only a few that create a material impact on the employee hiring process. Automating the more repetitive and mundane tasks of the recruiting process with AI frees recruiters up for more value-add and rewarding HR tasks of building deeper connections and relationships and working on recruitment strategies and policies.
1. Machine learning
Machine learning algorithms and statistical methods are widely used in predicting patterns and making recommendations. Recruiters can apply machine learning to automatically send the right jobs to suitable candidates based on the candidates’ career site activities, professional experience, and personal interests. This automation saves recruiters a tremendous amount of time sourcing candidates allowing them to focus on and interact with the most suitable, qualified, and talented candidates. Machine learning can also help and support these conversations by sending automated and personalized messages at the right time and through the right channel to obtain higher candidate engagement rates.
2. OCR
Optical character recognition (OCR) is a technology that converts scanned images to editable text documents and other formats. It can convert any typed, handwritten, or printed text into a machine-readable format. With OCR, candidates scan their documents and resumes from their smartphones, accelerating the application process creating a streamlined positive experience. Combining OCR with other AI technologies like computer vision and deep learning, recruiters can classify a stack of suitable applications based on the candidates’ experience, educational qualifications, and domain expertise for future references.
3. NLP
In simple terms, NLP helps the machine understand, interpret and analyze human language. Screening, interviewing, and onboarding tasks are performed across channels like emails, social media, and text. Candidates express themselves in a more casual tone across these channels by placing emojis, memes, etc. NLP-powered chatbots help the recruiters decipher these conversations accurately and swiftly, accelerating the application and screening process. NLP also facilitates the scanning and anonymization of content that might contribute to bias during the candidate screening process.
4. Sentiment analysis
Sentiment analysis (a subset of NLP) scans and interprets text classifying emotions into positive, negative, and neutral. With text analytics and NLP-powered chatbots, recruiters can pre-screen the candidates by classifying the responses to a list of questions as positive, negative, or neutral. The HR recruitment team is then equipped with critical information to make the best decisions.
AI in recruitment – Use cases
Artificial intelligence is primarily used in three functional areas of the hiring and talent acquisition process. These areas include the sourcing, screening, and interviewing of candidates.
Sourcing
Changing job scenarios and requirements can pose some profound challenges for recruiters. Sourcing suitable candidates from a large pool of candidates can present a daunting task. AI is used to quickly and effectively find these candidates through
– Targeted searches for candidates by relevant job criteria such as job title, educational qualifications, location, and many more
– Compiling suitable candidate lists for the job to be filled
– Identifying potential candidates that best fit the job criteria
– Monitoring social media to alert the recruitment team of the candidates’ social media activities
– Automatically engaging potential candidates via chatbots, messaging, email, etc.
Screening
A talent acquisition team constructs a series of assessments to determine the candidates’ skills, proficiency, disposition, motivations, etc. Screening and assessments are typically weighted and may be challenging to interpret. AI can synthesize data from multiple sources allowing team members to quickly and efficiently
– Prioritize resumes
– Assess and analyze the match between the applicant and the job profile
– Assess and analyze the match between the applicant and the organization’s culture
– Through predictive analytics, assess the potential quality of hire
– Assess bias
– Reroute candidates to the roles that better suit them
– Evaluate candidates based on their performance in video calls or chats
Interviewing
An interview is the most critical step in selecting the right candidate, and AI plays an integral part. AI can be leveraged to
– Automate initial rounds of interviewing the candidates
– Evaluate and prioritize interviews
– Evaluate candidates based on recorded video, including candidate expressions
Employees are a corporation’s most valued resource and are increasingly difficult to source and retain. Implementing AI in human resource recruitment has become an operational imperative given all of the challenges facing recruitment professionals in this day and age. AI can be HR’s most significant ally to create streamlined, efficient, high-impact, result-driven, and cost-effective recruiting programs across the enterprise.
If you are interested in learning more about automating and streamlining your HR recruitment processes recruitment AI, send us an email to intellect2@intellect2.ai. Intellect Data, Inc. is a software solutions company incorporating data science and artificial intelligence into modern digital products with Intellect2TM. IntellectDataTM develops and implements software, software components, and software as a service (SaaS) for enterprise, desktop, web, mobile, cloud, IoT, wearables, and AR/VR environments. Locate us on the web atwww.intellect2.ai.