Artificial Intelligence: How IT Can Help HR Professionals

As an HR professional, you know that a good part of your job consists of saying “No.” You reject far more people than you hire, maybe even at a 100:1 ratio in some fields. All that rejecting eats up a lot of your time — but it’s worth it to find the right person for the job you’re trying to fill.

Wouldn’t it be terrific if you could spend less time on “No” and more time with the short list of candidates who might truly be the right person? Artificial intelligence (AI) is starting to make that possible.

How Can AI Help in Recruiting?

One of the top ways that AI helps in the recruiting process is by screening resumes. Given that 75 to 88 percent of the resumes received for a given job are from people who aren’t qualified, all that manual screening amounts to a giant waste of time. Do you really want to spend 23 hours per hire screening resumes and creating a short list?

AI can take over here, speeding through resumes and pulling the most qualified candidates for your personal attention. The automation provided by AI also helps drastically in scheduling interviews and handling rejection letters. Because your time to hire is cut down, you stand a better chance of snagging the best talent before your competitors do.

Are you a bit skeptical about the using a computer to make judgments about humans? Don’t be. AI is able to sort and process that data with a thoroughness that people can’t manage. For example, it can standardize the process of matching job requirements to all the candidates’ skills and experience.

Even better, because AI uses past data to learn and improve its own processes, it can take the past information gathered on various jobs, measuring how various candidates do after they’re hired. Now you know which qualifications actually pair successfully with the job performance your company wants to see. You can hire candidates who are more likely to be productive, to fit in with the company’s culture, and to be happier on the job, reducing turnover down the road.

The result of incorporating AI software into your recruiting and hiring processes? You’ll have the time to be strategic and proactive, rather than coping with documents all the time. You can put more time into building relationships with candidates and determine their cultural fit with your company because you’re not distracted by tasks involving the people you already know you’re not going to hire.

Finally, because AI lets you track job performance after a candidate is hired, you can determine over time where you’re finding your most successful hires. That way you can determine whether to put more emphasis on seeking personal referrals, posting positions on job boards, or promoting from within. The end result? More time to focus on what matters and less frustration from dealing with paperwork.

AI Features That Augment and Speed Your Hiring Process

AI shows up in several types of recruiting software. One of the most useful is smart screening software. The AI in this software is able to look at the qualifications that previous successful candidates have, applying its everevolving knowledge to the next batch of applicants.

Smart software can also scrape social media and public data, so you learn a little more about candidates than they revealed on their resumes. With all this data, the AI is able to rank and group candidates, providing you with a short list that lets you bring your skills and experience to play where it’s most needed.

Another valuable type of AI for HR is the recruiter chatbot. Your chatbot can handle the day-to-day interactions with each candidate, confirming the receipt of an application, setting up job interviews, sending rejection letters, and keeping short-listed candidates up to date on the status of their application.

While all this chatbot activity certainly frees up your time, it has an added bonus from the applicant’s point of view. Job seekers tend to think negatively about companies that don’t respond to them in a timely manner — which means you could create a negative impression just because your desk is piled high. With an AI chatbot at work, you maintain a positive impression without any impact on your to-do list.

Take a look at some of the specific AI software available to help you with everything from simple tasks to helping you make your assessments:

  • Textio: Helps you create stronger job descriptions that aren’t gender-biased
  • HiredScore and ClearFit: Scans resumes and grades them based on
  • qualifications to avoid keyword searches
  • LinkedIn Recruiter: Matches candidates to potential jobs while weeding out
  • unqualified applicants
  • Fetch: Presents former silver- or bronze-medalist candidates for consideration
  • for new positions
  • Workday: Reviews candidate profiles, imports social media data, schedules
  • interviews, and tracks hiring metrics, all available on mobile devices
  • Engage Talent: Searches for passive seekers and initiates contact as needed
  • Pymetrics: Analyzes the way candidates play games to assess character traits (risk-taking, fairness, etc.), then matches those traits to business roles

Using AI for Future Hires

HR departments are swimming in data, but until now, it’s been difficult and timeconsuming to try to use or even access that data. Maybe you interviewed the perfect candidate for a position you’re trying to fill — but the interview actually took place a year ago, when the candidate was short-listed for a different position that they didn’t get.

With AI, you can now complete a quick search to find that candidate and ascertain that yes, they are indeed a good fit for the current position. You already know they impressed you. Now you can access the transactional data you need to reconnect with them, leapfrogging your hiring process forward, thanks to AI tools. In addition, you have the reassurance that you’re assessing and hiring candidates fairly since AI doesn’t pay attention to keywords like “fraternity” or “Harvard” that might have skewed shortlists in the past.

The Bottom Line

Those HR departments and recruiting firms that have adopted AI software to aid in recruitment have experienced significantly reduced costs per hire, as well as decreases in turnover. At Marquee Staffing, we’re committed to employing stateof- the-art tools to help identify great hires fast in a tight employment market, and we’re ready to help you fill the positions you have open.

At Marquee Staffing, our experienced recruiters specialize in helping our clients find the qualified staff they need at a lower cost.  Contact us today to learn more about our recruitment services in Irvine and beyond.

Chris Kappes, Executive Vice President

With over 20 years of experience in the industry, specializing in Engineering and IT staffing. Chris’s strong understanding of the new product development, NPI, IT infrastructure and cybersecurity process and correlating technological needs of clients has supported the growth of many Southern California technology leaders. Chris Kappes can be contacted at ckappes@marqueewfs.com

 

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