The COVID-19 pandemic may be in our rearview mirrors, but the lasting impacts it has had on a number of industries continues to cause speed bumps along our road to full recovery. Companies were forced to shift their business models, downsize, or reinvent themselves altogether. The effect this had on the workforce tasked to manage these changes cannot be adequately measured. Human resource professionals, including recruiters, are still depended on to administer these new changes.
These turbulent times have led to widespread industry burnout, with nearly a third of recruiters reporting they experience extreme stress on a weekly basis due to their job. Over 77% of recruiters expressed being open to changing jobs with work-related fatigue being a major factor. Recruiting is one industry that greatly stands to benefit from artificial intelligence (AI) technology. Leveraging AI can help a business preserve their human capital for tasks that cannot substitute a human touch.
The recruitment process is often an applicant’s first experience with your business, therefore, that human element is in high demand. As Boomers continue to retire, the worker shortage means that applicants hold the power to thoroughly weigh their options. Their experience in the application process can make or break their decision to join your company, as well as impact what impression applicants have of your business on the job market.
Talent acquisition teams are spread thin between attracting, vetting, contacting, and onboarding new talent. It is no surprise that applicants who are not selected—or not selected yet—to join businesses tend to fall by the wayside. About 58% of job seekers report having a negative impression of a business when they do not hear back from the company after submitting an application. This is one area where AI can be utilized, to avoid this costly mistake.
Impress Your Candidates With Automation
In fact, recruiters can set up automated messages for each stage an applicant reaches to make sure that at the very minimum, applicants feel assured they are being seen by their potential employer. Automated messages can be set up when parts of applications are received and when an applicant has been moved forward into the next stages of consideration.
In the same vein, AI can help recruiters with the uncomfortable task of notifying candidates that they have not been selected to move forward. About 67% of job seekers report having a positive impression of a company that shares regular updates with them through the application process. What could be an afterthought to recruiters who are busy tracking multiple applicants at once makes a genuine difference to applicants who may not be a good fit today, but could grow into becoming the perfect hire down the road. Impressions matter and AI can help your talent teams make a good one no matter the news they are delivering.
Of course, a candidate’s first interaction with your business might start on the job listing page and AI can help there too. Not only can AI be used to assist with the time consuming task of generating job descriptions, but it can be programmed to design a description that meets your business’s hiring goals and quotas. With nearly 80% of workers sharing that they want to work for businesses that value diversity and inclusion, it may be important to your business model to craft job descriptions that are not biased towards a specific gender, class, or community of people.
Research has shown that the inclusion of certain words in job descriptions can turn off some applicants from applying to roles as some words have more masculine or feminine undertones to them, such as the word “aggressive” in a job listing. Try utilizing AI to draft a bias-free description of the available position.
Automating portions of the recruitment process is a great way to free up your talent team to focus on the tasks that shouldn’t be automated, such as meeting with candidates to see if they are an individual who would work well in your office’s environment or negotiating salary offers with potential hires.
AI technology can help with the small obstacles, such as scheduling meetings, to the larger challenges, like vetting resumes. It’s designed to fill in where its services are needed. Not only will your recruitment team benefit from a decreased workload, but your business’s perception on the job market will be more positive when applicants begin to discuss what positive experience they had applying to your business.
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