From One Recruiter to Another - How AI Can Help You

If you are in the recruiting industry and keep a tight pulse on technological advancements, you’ve probably seen a lot of information circulating on artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, bots, and even the infamous death of recruitment posts that are out there.

To be quite frank, AI scares a lot of recruiters.

However, the recruiters who choose to adapt to and embrace AI, and all its wonderful capabilities, will realize that it isn’t taking over the recruiting world.

AI isn’t going to eliminate the need for recruiters, and you won’t lose your job to a bot.

It’s there to compliment the job you do. It’s there to save you time – making recruiting top talent into your organization easier and more efficient. AI is there to enable you to be a better talent partner to your internal and external hiring managers.

So, from one recruiter to another (and trust me – I’m not an AI expert) – here are five ways AI can help you be a better and more productive recruiter in 2017.

It helps prevent unconscious bias.

According to this recent Business Insider article featuring Tracy Isacke, Silicon Valley Bank’s corporate relationship management team managing director, the company will be utilizing artificial intelligence to initially screen candidates in order to help prevent unconscious bias.

“AI could look at a candidate through LinkedIn, social, and other data to help decide who is best-qualified for the job,” says Isacke.

With the help of AI, the best-qualified candidates can be captured without a recruiter, hiring manager, or other company individual making assumptions centered on gender, ethnicity, age, or any other generalizations – making it more of an even playing field for the candidate.

It minimizes the resume black hole.

With AI, the resume black hole that a lot of candidates experience and complain about will be minimized significantly.

Traditionally, candidates have submitted their applications and resumes through an Applicant Tracking System – never to be seen again. On the receiving end, recruiters tend to utilize certain keywords to limit the number of applicants they actually have to sift through without looking through each and every one.

AI is deeper than that. Instead of relying on keywords, imagine limiting the number of applicants by who is best-qualified from multiple perspectives – skill set, background, social profiles, and intangible qualities impacting cultural fit within the company.

It supports your recruiting efforts. It won’t replace you.

AI is meant to support and compliment your recruiting efforts, not replace them. Think of it as more of a partnership between AI and the recruiter – providing data that will allow you to make wiser use of your time.

Take Waze for example. Based off of data points from end users, Waze provides you the travel route that it feels is the best choice taking into consideration traffic volume, construction, and accidents. It doesn't drive the vehicle for you or force you to take a certain route. Waze just eases the driving process by giving you clear options.

The same goes with AI and the recruitment process.

It will also help you to create and nurture relationships with the top talent for a given position, and make better hiring decisions.

Some of the areas AI can support your recruiting efforts include:

candidate screening
candidate engagement and re-engagement
administrative and time-consuming tasks associated with recruiting

It provides the data you need to analyze, interpret, and make decisions.

No, there are no robots or machines making the hiring decisions for you.

Think of it this way – what if you were able to receive, analyze and interpret very accurate data about candidates through the help of AI and machine learning? Perhaps even ranking them by the best-qualified based on skillset, background, and even cultural fit?

Remember, it’s not removing the human element of recruiting. It’s limiting the amount of information you need to go through in order to make a sound hiring decision for you and for the company.

You can stop creating those complex Boolean search strings.

Boolean search strings will be a thing of the past here pretty soon.

Coming from recruiting, crafting the perfect search string takes a lot of time – including a lot of trial and error until you magically hit the jackpot of candidates finally coming up in your search.

With AI, the candidates matching your open positions can automatically be pulled to the top of the list so you are dedicating your focus on them first and foremost – eliminating the need for complex search strings.

Plus, what about those candidates that are a perfect fit, but they don’t have a specific keyword or skill listed on their resume? AI will help capture those candidates by using data to create job clusters that easily identify alternate skills and job titles.

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What are your thoughts on the future of recruiting and the impact AI will have on it?