Recruitment has always been people’s business and will always be associated with networking and engagement. But it’s hardly inaccurate to say that both candidates and recruiters struggle to communicate effectively.
65% of candidates complain that they either received no response from a recruiter about their application status, or it took an eternity before any response.
Recruiters, too, struggle with managing their time and resources well, especially during high-volume recruiting. They already have so many tasks piled up; it doesn’t sound right to put all the blame on them.
So, what’s the solution? Artificial Intelligence. Technology has made communication viable even in the absence of one of the parties. Tools like conversational chatbots are designed for recruiters to rule out any issue related to candidate experience and engagement.
Apart from replying to candidates’ questions, AI chatbots can easily handle tasks like scheduling interviews, browsing relevant information, sending Emails, etc., which is the reason for their immense popularity in the recruitment industry.
Here are some statistics to consider:
- Chatbots cut down the cost of hiring by 50%
- 1 in 5 companies rely on chatbots to boost their candidate experience
- 50% of unconscious bias can be kept in check by using AI
- 58% of candidates prefer interacting with a bot to no engagement at all.
- 95% more applicants become leads when chatbots are involved in recruiting on career sites
What Are AI Chatbots?
Chatbots are software that relies on artificial intelligence to manage recruitment tasks and interact with clients or candidates through a messaging interface 24/7. Chatbots can automate 70-80% of the recruitment process, taking the most burden off the recruiter’s shoulder.
Here are some primary tasks performed by Chatbots:
- Skim through applicants’ CVs to gather and arrange relevant information such as contact details in a structured form.
- Evaluate candidates’ knowledge, skill, and experience based on screening questions.
- Rank applicants based on their performance and overall engagement to weed out passive candidates.
- Answer simple or complex FAQs about the job role and application status.
- Schedule an interview with recruiters and facilitate their takeover during the chats as required.
- Provide information about the company, its culture, and values to the clients or candidates.
- Facilitate 24/7 engagement service even in the absence of recruiters and maintain all the records in the management database.
Different Types of Chatbots
There are six types of AI chatbots based on their workflow or the specific tasks they specialize in. These are:
- Menu-Based Chatbots: These are the most used and basic types of chatbots in the market. Menu-based chatbots offer users several selections in the form of buttons that users select according to their queries.
They are best at answering FAQs but fall short when a complicated prediction is required to answer the questions. - Linguistic-Based Chatbots: This type of chatbot operates on the if/then logic where recruiters have already fed the algorithm with possible questions and answers that users may ask.
They work on the pre-conditions laid by recruiters to assess the words, their order, and synonyms to answer the incoming queries.
They fall short if the user’s question lies out of the set of permutations and combinations of questions pre-set into its system. - Keyword Recognition-Based Chatbots: These chatbots allow users to type in their queries and respond by utilizing certain keywords and AI to find the best possible answer for the raised query.
They fall short during the keyword redundancies in several related questions. They also provide menus to the users if they require guidance to put the question more appropriately for keyword recognition. - Machine Learning Chatbots: These are advanced software that utilizes AI and machine learning to memorize conversations with users and grow over time.
For instance, a chatbot that allows users to order something will remember their preferences, delivery address, and payment options, so users don’t have to answer the same questions every time they make orders. - The Hybrid Model: These types of chatbots offer both the simplicity of Rules-based chatbots and the complexities of AI-bots for businesses that don’t have the necessary talents or data to invest in.
- Voice Bots: Voice bots have been gaining immense popularity over the last couple of years because of the contextual awareness and convenience they bring. It is much easier for the users to speak their queries instead of typing them.
3 Benefits of Using AI Chatbots
Benefit #1: Candidates Prefer Interacting With Chatbots Over No Communication At All
The #1 request from job candidates is “Genuine communication.”
As Alexa, Siri, and Google Assistant become more common in our personal lives, interacting with a chatbot all through the recruiting process is being embraced by applicants.
In the latest survey by Allegis, 58% of applicants had been cozy interacting with AI and recruitment chatbots during the early tiers of the process. An even more significant percent – 66% – had been at ease with AI and chatbots taking care of interview scheduling and coaching.
Today’s candidates are conscious that every recruiting stage might not be human-to-human but value the efforts for touchpoints to obtain information.
Randstad discovered that 82% of job seekers trust that appropriate recruiter interaction is a mix of modern technology and private human interplay.
Benefit #2: A Chatbot can Help Recruiters with Administrative Tasks
A recruitment chatbot can:
- Gather information from candidates, inclusive of their resumes and even personal records
- Ask screening questions on candidates’ experience, knowledge, and capabilities.
- Rank candidates based on a scorecard of pre-screening assessment performance
- Answer FAQs about the job and the application procedure
- Allows candidates to self-schedule an interview with a recruiter
All of these records may be accrued simultaneously from thousands of applicants. This data can then be fed into your ATS or sent immediately to recruiters for analysis.
Benefit #3: A Chatbot Help Recruiters Save a Lot of Time
Various studies highlight how a chatbot can automate up to 80% of top-of-funnel recruiting activities.
According to SHRM, the standard hiring cost is $4,129, and the average time to hire is forty-two days. A recruitment chatbot can dramatically lower the value of rent and time to hire by simultaneously automating major qualifying and scheduling stages and concurrently maintaining candidate engagement.
It’s important to remember that a recruitment chatbot is not designed to take over humans.
An anticipated 65% of resumes obtained for a position are disregarded. By interacting with this untapped phase of candidates, a chatbot is doing the duties that recruiters don’t have the time or potential to do in the first place.
While a recruitment chatbot paired up with recruitment software can quickly screen out unqualified applicants, recruiters can dedicate their time to more crucial tasks like developing connections and constructing relationships with interested and qualified candidates.
3 Challenges of Using AI Chatbots
While the marketplace is ripe for mainstream adoption, the challenges of using recruitment chatbots can not be ignored.
Challenge #1: A Lack of Personalization in Texts
People have extraordinary texting methods, including slang, emojis, and abbreviations, making it difficult to program a chatbot to apprehend every variation of human speech.
A chatbot can make a quality attempt based on its programming and the expertise it received from previous interactions or turn the conversation over to a human while it is stumped.
Challenge #2: A Robotic Expressionism
It is still unclear how “human” a chatbot needs to – and could – be to improve the quality of interaction.
Most folks believe that a chatbot shouldn’t be too robotic and cold as it creates a bad candidate experience. Conversely, a few argue that we don’t need to aspire to create chatbots that could pass as humans.
The satisfied medium most people can agree on is a chatbot that shows a few elements of a personality consisting of humor and the use of slang.
Remember, a recruitment chatbot is never handled as a human substitute. It’s, in reality, a touchpoint to gather extra qualifying information about the applicants.
Challenge #3: Unknown Reaction of Candidates to a Chatbot
Customer service has successfully mainstreamed using chatbots, which shows chatbots have a promising role to play in recruiting and other roles.
Although surveys recommend applicants prefer interacting with a chatbot, nobody can certainly predict what a candidate’s response might be once they indeed speak with one.
Candidates’ reactions will majorly depend upon how nicely the chatbot can answer their questions and provide additional records about their application procedure.
4 Ways in Which Chatbots Streamline Recruitment Process
1. For Enhancing Candidate Experience
Applying for jobs is a commitment to the applicant aspect of the process. It takes dedication and precision. However, if the job application isn’t straightforward or if the candidate doesn’t acquire a reply, they’ll move directly to something else.
Just as recruiters get the records they need from the chatbots, so do candidates. They can ask questions about the position’s details, necessities, benefits, and earnings.
Moreover, this communication occurs in actual time because the ML and NLP algorithms process the dialogue and reply accordingly. Since AI is continuously evolving, these chatbots will learn from the achievement and errors of their responses.
In another study, 69% of respondents view on-the-spot answers as the priority during the job application. Thus, chatbots combine an innovative form of engagement with instant conversation — imparting two selling points to draw candidates in.
After a hire, a chatbot can additionally support the onboarding technique. If the newly hired talent has questions or concerns, they can first ask the bot. This step will save time, and the guidance can retain without interruption.
2. For Interpretation and Data Analysis
The recruitment chatbots can gather facts primarily based on their interaction with candidates and recruiters. This record is then manipulated to draw significant conclusions. These conclusions, in turn, are applied to enhance the candidate experience further.
For example, recruitment chatbots accumulate information such factors that enhance the engagement of the candidates. Other information accrued includes the attrition rate of a candidate, recruitment practices that are frowned upon, etc.
The recruitment cycles are then redesigned primarily based on the records analytics gathered with the aid of recruitment chatbots. In this manner, the complete panorama of candidates’ experiences may be redefined by incorporating AI-powered recruitment chatbots.
3. For Better Engagement With Screened Candidates
Instead of candidates analyzing if they are appropriate for a particular job role or not, AI matches them with suitable open positions. How is it exceptional? Applicants tend to apply at every slightest opportunity of relevance to the job posts.
On the other hand, AI helps agencies to find the best talent without going through piles of irrelevant resumes. AI-powered job matching tools and recruitment chatbots communicate with applicants to analyze if they are suitable for the position or not.
In this manner, candidates have a head-start and an idea of their standing against a particular posting. They do not have to apply for non-potential jobs only to wait to face immediate rejections.
Hence, recruitment chatbots, along with AI task matching capabilities, enhance the candidate and recruiter’s efficiency.
4. For Boosting Productivity
Hiring approaches powered through artificial intelligence and recruitment chatbots cut down the time spent on repetitive tasks. For example, automation of resolving candidate queries concerning the company’s information, guidelines, values, etc., is feasible with conversational chatbots.
Similarly, time spent on screening the CVs is also reduced with AI chatbots. How? Recruitment chatbots are designed to screen the incoming applications based on required keywords to exclude the unqualified ones.
These bots can support resume parsing based on multiple key phrases in a single screening cycle. Hence, the recruiters only have to interact with suitable candidates.
Consequently, it reduces the time between submission and screening of an application. HR can use this time to improve the effectiveness of many other hiring tactics.
For example, streamlining the onboarding of hired candidates, focusing on the performance of applicants, etc.
Conclusion
As we wrap the article, we need to ensure you are clear with all basics for maximum impact:
- Ensure that your avatar fits your company’s persona and values (it will help you discover the right people).
- Abide by using the basic policies of conversational design (in any other case, you may only be left with a glorified online form).
- Personalize the application as the candidate progresses at each recruiting stage.
- Finalize the steps and timeline of your application procedure to reduce future chaos.
- Notify unqualified applicants about their rejection as soon as possible, either by bot or email.
- Thank your applicant, notify them about the following step and say goodbye (as you would at the end of any conversation).
In the end, using recruitment chatbots in your hiring techniques can address a couple of limitations to recruitment.
From optimization of candidate experience, improving the company’s branding, and improving recruiter’s efficiency, AI-powered recruitment chatbots do all of it.
