How to Choose the Right AI Recruitment Tool

AI recruitment tools are game-changers for talent acquisition (TA) teams. They bring efficiency to the hiring process by automating repetitive tasks like screening and scheduling, ultimately freeing up valuable time for recruiters to focus on more strategic aspects of hiring — and building relationships with candidates.

AI tools for recruiting can also help identify patterns and skills that might be overlooked by human eyes, promoting diversity, reducing bias, and hiring best-fit talent. This makes their usage an important step toward fairer and more effective recruitment.

According to a survey conducted by LinkedIn, 65% of recruiters are using AI recruitment tools in some way during the process, while over 73% of companies are planning to invest in recruitment automation by the end of 2023.

So, what makes a good AI recruiting tool? Check out these five features to look for when deciding on the right technology for your company.

1. Resume Parsing

Resume parsing is the automated analysis of resume data. This software extracts information from a candidate’s resume so that it can be sorted for the TA team, allowing them to quickly and efficiently discover best-fit talent. With the support of AI, candidates can be evaluated and discovered based on criteria such as job titles, location, years of experience, and more — eliminating the overwhelming task of finding the right talent in a cast pool of resumes — saving recruiters tons of manual work.

To stay ahead and capture the best candidates quicker than your competitors, you need AI recruiting tools that can accurately parse resumes and automatically sort your candidates from best-fit to non-fit. It’s important that your Candidate Relationship Management (CRM) also keeps the applicants you passed on in your pool to potentially tap into in the future.

For candidates, resume parsing can provide best fit job recommendations. Uploading a resume or connecting a LinkedIn profile replaces the tedious application process that requires candidates to create log-ins or re-input their work experience (which often contributes to application drop off). For recruiters, resume parsing helps sift through applicant information quickly using AI, allowing them to respond in a more timely manner to applicants.

Related reading: ATS and CRM: Powering the Candidate Experience

2. Chatbots

An AI-powered, intelligent chatbot can perform a wide range of tasks such as answering candidate questions, providing personalized job recommendations, scheduling or rescheduling interviews, and more. Especially for companies that have high-volume hiring needs, this technology can completely revolutionize recruiting efforts, as it can even screen and extend preliminary offers to frontline or hourly candidates based on the information they’ve provided.

Despite all this, only 15% of Fortune 500 company career sites use a conversational chatbot! When choosing the best AI recruiting tool for your company, make sure it includes a career site chatbot that can:

Field initial candidate interactions to enhance engagement and provide a more personalized application experience
Match candidate information — like skills, experience, location, and more — with open roles
Answer candidate questions intelligently and provide 24/7 support
Screen and automatically schedule (or reschedule) preliminary interviews
Remember candidates and welcome them back to the career site by name
Create a candidate profile and capture lead data without a completed application
Provide candidates with personalized content including job descriptions, employer branded videos, career pathing opportunities, and application workflows

Using AI, a chatbot like this helps candidates find the right job and recruiters begin the interviewing process quicker than competitors.

3. AI Scheduling

A good AI recruiting tool should automate routine tasks such as sending follow-up emails, scheduling interviews, and even rescheduling interviews, if the need arises. Look for a scheduler that can sync recruiter, candidate, and hiring manager calendars automatically. Once a candidate is invited to interview with the team, the AI scheduling tool should be able to offer up times that work for all parties. All the candidate needs to do is click their preferred time and an invite is then automatically sent to everyone’s calendar.

Automated scheduling technology should also be able to send confirmation emails, reminder emails, and follow-up emails, all without the need for human input. These features free recruiters from time-consuming tasks, allowing the team to hire A+ players faster. As part of a holistic approach to talent acquisition, automating interview scheduling permits recruiters to become more strategic and efficient.

Related reading: AI Scheduling: A Must-Have For Your TA Teams

4. One-Way Interviews

In Indeed’s Hiring Trends Report, they found that 82% of employers use video in their recruiting processes, with 93% planning to continue using them for the foreseeable future.

One-way video interviews specifically are becoming a universal tool. Through this technology, candidates can record themselves answering questions ahead of time and multiple members of the recruiting team can review when convenient for them. With the option for candidates to record their answers via video, audio, or through text responses, one-way interviews allow recruiting teams to look beyond a resume or cover letter and get a genuine feel for who a candidate is. Not to mention, candidates can create a great first impression, taking the opportunity to highlight their personality and feel comfortable doing so.

When choosing an AI recruiting tool, make sure it has one-way interview capabilities. They are extremely effective for TA teams, since they can:

Increase flexibility for both recruiters and candidates while boosting the candidate’s view of the organization
Gather all information in one place, so recruiters and hiring managers can make more informed decisions
Help mitigate bias through standardized questions and review criteria
Offer candidate support 24/7, like FAQs, interview tips, and troubleshooting options
Provide multiple interview screening options for candidates, such as video, audio, or SMS, allowing the candidate to choose the path that makes them most comfortable

With one-way interviews, TA teams can qualify candidates with speed and confidence, streamline the screening process for recruiters, save time for hiring managers, and deliver great first impressions for candidates.

5. Data Analytics & Fit Score

Choosing AI recruitment tools with robust analytics is imperative for providing insights into the effectiveness of your recruitment strategies and helping you make data-driven decisions.

With this kind of intelligence at your fingertips, your teams can gain better insights into candidate information and qualifications, identify whether interviewers need more training, suggest next steps to take with specific candidates, use data from multiple interviews to determine whether bias exists and how to combat it, analyze campaign performance and applicant conversion rate, and more.

Your AI recruitment tools should also include fit scoring technology, which takes all candidate information from your system and ranks applicants based on criteria like job type, experience, skills and requirements for the position, and location to determine if they’re the best fit for the role. This is a quick and easy way for recruiters to identify the most qualified candidates for an open role before beginning their outreach in the hiring process.

All of this leads to your TA teams making the best decision for the organization. Remember: data is key.

Related reading: Four Ways to Improve the Interview Experience

In addition to these five must-have features, make sure the AI recruitment tools you choose have an intuitive, user-friendly interface. This ensures that your team can easily adopt and make the most of these tools without extensive training.

You can dive into our Definitive Guide to AI for Recruiting to learn more.

Maggie Blehar

Maggie is a writer at Phenom, bringing you information on all things talent experience. In addition to writing, she enjoys traveling, painting, cooking, and spending time with her family and friends.