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Meet the Latest Bots Automating the Recruiting Industry

6040233Everything is measured today - from physical to online activities, from choices to reactions. And it's no different when it comes to recruitment.

It's not easy for recruiters and human resources professionals to juggle time, quality, and cost-efficiency. It takes time to find top quality talent and it takes a lot of time for the applicants to find a job of their dreams.


More time, as always, equals more money. And that comes at a time when applying for a job was made incredibly available due to online job boards. There are hundreds of applicants for each position, and recruiters and human resources professionals usually can't give most of their applications more than a cursory look.

 

Chatbots: The Future of Recruitment

There's no real agreement in the human resources and recruitment industry about which key performance indicators are the ones people should pay the most attention to. The top contenders are source of hire, time to hire, quality of hire, offer acceptance rate, cost per hire, and candidate experience. There's plenty more to pick from, but they all mostly revolve around how quickly a position can be filled with quality talent, and how much it will cost.

The winning formula driving recruitment automation


Time + Quality + Cost = Need for Automation



Talent acquisition professionals have some options to make their life easier. They can 
outsource some HR functions, and focus on managing the resources they already have. HR professionals can use modern technologies to free some time by make onboarding easier. But both recruiters and HR professionals can and routinely do use automation technologies like applicant tracking systems to manage scanning, storage, and scoring of applications.

The only problem with current technologies, such as ATSs, is that they're far from perfect. ATSs come with some drawbacks, and they leave a lot of room for improvement and development of new technologies that will make the recruitment process easier for both recruiters and applicants.

 

Meet the Latest Recruitment Bots 

Meet Mya, the recruitment chatbot that has, since its private beta launch in 2016, quickly become the darling of the recruitment automation camp. Mya was developed by the startup FirstJob, currently going under the name Mya Systems, in an effort to increase the efficiency of recruitment. According to the company's tests, Mya was able to decrease the time it takes to hire candidates by 70%, engage with 80% of candidates, and save up to 75% of a recruitment team's time.

Mya is not the only chatbot that promises to make talent acquisition easier to automating a large chunk of the work. Olivia is a recruitment chatbot developed by Recruiting.Ai that aims to make the job application process more interactive and engaging. There's also XOR, and Arya, and other chatbots that offer different integration options and services. But the one thing they all have in common is the promise of saved time and money.

 

How Chatbots Help Recruiters

In an ideal situation, a recruiter would be able to take a look at each and every application that arrives for a job opening. Because that's not an option, recruiters delegate the pre-assessment to applicant tracking systems. And one of the biggest drawbacks of ATSs, and the one that's hardest to fix is their inability to communicate with applicants. But chatbots can do that.

Chatbots use machine learning and advanced language processing to communicate with applicants. They integrate with ATSs, and most of them support various channels of communication, including SMS, Skype, and Slack.

Some chatbots start a conversation as soon as a person expresses interest in an open position - before they actually apply. Others wait until the application has been received, and start asking - and answering - follow up questions. Chatbots might also ask applicants to clarify or confirm parts of their application.

By helping applicants apply for a job position and allowing them to ask questions, chatbots can also contribute to the overall quality of the pre-assessment process. They can help applicants make decisions about their applications early on in the process, allowing those who are not sure to opt out in time. Chatbots can also keep applicants engaged during the application process and measure how willing the applicants were to communicate, giving recruiters an additional metric on which to assess applicants.

 

How They Help Applicants

The benefits of recruitment chatbots go both ways - applicants appreciate when their questions are answered. They might get a chance to clarify or explain parts of their applications - even though resumes should always be written in a way that makes everything clear. And they'll also get another way to prove themselves to their potential employer, by answer the questions and staying engaged in the process.

But the biggest advantage of recruitment chatbots for applicants is that they remove the most annoying thing about the job application process. If there's one thing that anyone who has ever applied for a job hates, it's when they don't hear back from the company.

With chatbots, that's a thing of the past - applicants can be notified about every step of the process, which greatly improves their application experience. That's a benefit for recruiters, too, because disgruntled applicants are not that likely to join a company down the road, or use the company's products or services. And word-of-mouth spreads like lightning in the digital era.

For all the good they can do, chatbots are causing a stir within the recruitment community. As is often the case when new technologies are introduced in an industry, people start to worry about their jobs. And while there's certainly a reason for it, for now, we can only enjoy in the great promise they bring to the recruitment industry. And wait to see the metrics that show how good they really are.

Recruitment

About the Author: Donna Moores is a professional recruiter and a writer who aims to help people find a job of their dream. She has spent more than 5 years to gain an outstanding HR experience within biggest industries and businesses. Follow her on FB and check out her Professional Blog. 

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