Written by Simon Benford-Blows

AI or Robotic Process Automation (RPA) for recruiting is the application of artificial intelligence to the recruitment function that is designed to streamline or automate some part of the recruiting workflow, especially repetitive high-volume tasks.

The main benefits of using AI include saving Talent Acquisition teams and recruiters’ time by automating high-volume tasks and improving the quality of hire. The innovations in AI for recruiting are intelligent screening software that automates resume screening, recruiter chatbots that engage candidates in real-time, and digitised video interviews that help assess a candidate’s fit.

AI is changing the role of inhouse talent teams and recruiter’s role through augmented intelligence which will allow better engagement with candidates whilst allowing recruiters to become more proactive in their hiring, help determine a candidate’s culture fit, and improve their relationships with hiring managers by using data to measure KPIs such as quality of hire.

One of the most promising applications of recruitment automation is for resume screening due to the following reasons.

• Manually screening resumes is still the most time-consuming part of recruiting.
• Up to 88% of resumes received for a role are considered unqualified.
• A recruiter spends on average 23 hours screening resumes for a single hire.

Although screening resumes are still the biggest bottleneck in recruiting, technology to address this problem has only recently become available.

Some of these systems are designed to integrate with applicant tracking systems and CRM systems where the software learns what the job requirements are and then learns what qualified candidates look like based on previous hiring decisions.

Organisations who are leveraging machine learning for data insights are seeing this as a gamechanger for evaluating talent automatically.

Recruitment automation applied to resume screening automates a low-value, repetitive task that most recruiters hate to do anyway and enables talent teams and recruiters to re-focus their time on higher-value priorities such as talking to qualified candidates to assess their personalities and culture fit for a role. 

How Automation is improving the candidate journey

In the current candidate-driven market, candidate experience can make or break whether a top candidate accepts your job offer. Recruitment automation in the form of chatbots holds the promise of improving the candidate experience.

Studies have found that 67% of job seekers have a positive impression of a company if they receive consistent updates throughout the application process.

Chatbots provide these consistent updates in real-time by asking pre-qualifying questions related to the job requirements and providing feedback, updates, and next-step suggestions.

By automating repetitive tasks such as answering the same questions about a job, chatbots enhance the pre-qualification capabilities of a human recruiter without additional strain on their time.

How automation is applied to interviews

Recruitment automation for interviewing augments recruiters’ capabilities by allowing recruiters to conduct interviews anywhere any time.

There is a wide selection of digitised or Video interview technology platforms out there that in essence records candidate interviews and assesses factors such as their word choices, speech patterns, and facial expressions to predict how well a candidate fits the role.

Recruitment automation applied to interviewing promises to improve the quality of hire by providing additional data points on how well the candidate fits the job requirements or company culture.

The takeaways for recruitment automation

• Industry experts believe recruitment automation will augment and enhance human recruiters’ abilities, rather than completely replace them. 
• Recruitment automation is changing recruiting in three major ways:
  1. Automated resume screening reduces time to hire by saving recruiters the hours spent manually reading resumes.
  2. Automated pre-qualification through chatbots that enhances the candidate experience by providing continuous, real-time feedback.
  3. Automated interviews that improve job fit by analyzing candidates’ words, speech patterns, and facial expressions.

As the adoption of recruitment automation continues to increase, the recruiter role will change. Our final words are to note that Talent acquisition is a marketing role, not a sales one.