4 Transformative Benefits Of AI In Hiring

Shaun Ricci

September 28, 2017

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Industry heavyweight Andrew Ng calls AI the new electricity that will transform every industry.

In recruiting, companies like Indigo and Hot Topic are already using AI for their high-volume hiring.

Looking to learn more about AI? Watch our video below:

So what are the transformative benefits of AI in hiring? I list the top 4 benefits below.

1. Reducing time to hire

A recent survey of talent acquisition professionals by Talent Tech Labs found 62% consider time to hire as the top recruiting success metric.

Talent Tech Labs recruiting sucess indicators

Source: Talent Tech Labs

If speeding up your hiring process is important, AI in hiring makes a lot of sense.

An AI algorithm can take a large quantity of data, for example, hundreds of resumes, and quickly screen and find the best 10% of applicants based on your own historical hiring decisions.

Human recruiters screening 200 resumes to 20 resumes would take several days of productivity. AI can do it quickly, freeing up recruiters for more value-add tasks like interviews, relationship-building, or building business cases for HR initiatives.

This is also where AI in hiring has an advantage over just using an applicant tracking system (ATS).

A typical ATS is good at organizing a large volume of applications, but it still generally requires humans to sift through that information. AI does the same work within your ATS in a fraction of the time.

2. Increasing the quality of your candidates

AI is sometimes used synonymously with machine learning, which hints how it can increase candidate quality.

Once AI learns which factors make someone a successful or unsuccessful employee in a role, it can continuously tweak what it searches for and shortlist the highest quality candidates for you.

While AI may never be able to say, “This is the exact person you should hire” (this is where humans come in), it can be extremely effective at weeding out unqualified resumes and putting only quality candidates in front of you.

3. Mining your ATS to rediscover candidates

The ability to mine your ATS is an often overlooked cost-saving benefit of AI in hiring.

To illustrate, we’ll use some simple math. Let’s say you have a job open and receive 100 applications. If we assume 80% are unqualified, that means 20 of those applicants are a good fit.

One person gets the job, and 19 receive the “We’ll keep your resume on file” email. Those resumes are kept on file but essentially disappear into the candidate black hole.

Three months later, you have another similar role open up. Rather than launching into a new time-consuming search process, why not rediscover those 19 prior applicants within your ATS who met the qualifications?

AI can mine your ATS to find those resumes again for you. This helps you source quality hires while reducing hiring time and improving your candidate experience.

4. Sourcing passive candidates

Lever’s data shows sourced candidates are the second biggest group of hires after direct applies.

Lever hiring metrics
Source: Lever

Sourcing passive candidates is an important strategy for meeting headcount because according to LinkedIn, only 36% of candidates actively search for a new job.

AI can find passive candidates for you by learning what the job requirements are and then searching through job boards and candidate databases such as CareerBuilder that meet the qualifications.