Most recruiters acknowledge that artificial intelligence (AI) will have at least a somewhat significant impact on a company’s recruitment outcomes in the next five years. But few are sure specifically to what areas AI can be effectively applied.

So where can AI contribute to better recruitment outcomes?

Let’s look at four areas where I believe recruiters can start using AI tools immediately to cut down time in the hiring process and make the recruitment experience more candidate-friendly.

1.Recruitment Chatbots

You may have interacted with chatbots when visiting a website to purchase insurance, software or air travel tickets. Chatbots are robot-driven text boxes that pop-up on a website and ask you pre-programmed questions to understand your needs, provide you some basic answers and guide you to the next step in the purchase process. Recruitment chatbots work similarly to pre-screen candidates who apply to a job online. In the process, it saves several hours of work of a recruiter who would otherwise conduct this activity manually.

2. Automation of Candidate Sourcing

For advertised job roles where a large volume of candidates apply through different online sources (social media, website, job portals), AI tools will screen these candidates based on initially input feedback from a recruiter and subsequent feedback from the recruiter. It uses this feedback loop from a human being to learn successful candidate screening strategies over time. The recruiter is only involved in interviewing pre-screened candidates and making a hire.

3. Scouting Older, Unreviewed Candidates from the Past

AI recruiting company Ideal.com states that 65% of all applicants for high volume roles are ignored by recruiters due to a lack of time. 52% of talent acquisition leaders say the hardest part of recruitment is identifying the right candidates from a large applicant pool. AI can help alleviate this burden by constantly screening through applicants who have previously applied to similar roles but were not considered by recruiters due to the sheer volume of applicants.

4. Candidate Matching 

Several companies proactively engage with passive candidates who are not looking for new opportunities or for whom companies cannot offer an immediate role. Nonetheless it builds employer brand and goodwill. It also allows companies to be top-of-mind when some of these A-grade candidates become available in the job market. AI can help identify these passive candidates through a process called ‘Candidate Matching’ which involves robotic scouting of high potential candidates across social media platforms to gauge the viability of their candidature and get intimations in real-time when they are looking for jobs.

There are several other potential applications of AI including removing human bias to enhance diversity hiring mandates or to evaluate candidates based on facial recognition technology in digital interviews. I have not discussed these as their use cases have not been fully proven.

Where do Artifical Intelligence Tools Fall Short Today?

The biggest challenge with AI today is that it requires large amounts of data to learn patterns and acquire intelligence. This could mean scanning hundreds or even thousands of resumes for one job. It could work for roles which can attract many hundreds of applicants. But most roles do not tend to do so making machine learning capability redundant.

Further, AI can sometimes learn human biases in the recruitment process despite our sincere efforts to avoid this. There have been examples of AI tools inadvertently screening out women candidates based on misread recruiter inputs at the beginning of the information-feeding process.

Finally, AI being a new technology always invites scepticism from adopters. This is true for any technological innovation but especially for AI which tends to make bold claims and is perceived to eventually replace human beings in the recruitment process.

Some Conclusions

Contrary to many peoples’ perception, artificial intelligence is unlikely to replace human beings in the recruitment process. What is more like is that it will make human recruiters more efficient in identifying and engaging with the right candidates. This means less time spent in sourcing and screening, a better candidate experience and possibly less bias in the recruitment proceess.

This is referred to as Intelligence Amplification or Machine Augmented Intelligence by Wikipedia. Augmented Intelligence is essentially machines or technology helping human beings improve their cognitive processing power. It will not replace humans but merely support them to make them more effective. With AI, recruiters will be able to proactively identify candidates rather than spend their time reacting to vacancies that keep opening up. They can focus more on interviewing the right candidates and making hires. They are also likely to have more AI-driven data available to them to influence hiring managers’ decisions.

So what do you think? Is AI likely to have the impact described above or could it go beyond that? I would love to hear your thoughts on this emerging technology that has the potential to be a major disrputer in the recruiting space.