Artificial intelligence is at the core of the changes that the recruitment industry is seeing today

Recruiters fit to the iconic phrase 'trying to find a needle in a haystack.' The process of recruiting is increasingly becoming critical as more people come in with more diverse talents. The job market is also updating to be more demanding with spiking job qualifications. When it is high-time for recruiters to keep up the pace, they rely on technological shifts. Artificial intelligence is at the core of the changes that the recruitment industry is seeing today.

Frankly put, the recruitment process is tiring for the HR department. Going through hundreds of thousands of applications and filtering the candidates who might fit in is a time and labour consuming job. Around 52% of talent acquisition leaders say the hardest part of recruitment is screening candidates from a large applicant pool. This means that recruiters should leverage a tool to do more with less. Artificial intelligence came as the 'magic wand' to solve emerging recruitment issues. Recruiters have leveraged AI technology to make their jobs easier, faster, and better.

The footprint of AI is seen in the HR department since the early 1930s. Even though artificial intelligence has been on the recruitment radar for quite some time, it gained momentum in 2017 when people became more aware of its advantages. With so many individuals competing for a countable number of jobs, AI became a handy solution. As much as it saves time working on multiple Herculean processes simultaneously, it requires considerable time investment by humans to evolve themselves at par with technology. Around 76% of recruiters believe that AI's impact on recruiting will be at least somewhat significant.

General applications of AI in recruitment

One of the basic tasks that the recruiters have been undertaking in a manual way for a long time was sorting the applications and filtering the potential candidates who fit the job profile. Today, this labour-effective task is automated with the help of machine learning algorithm. Machine learning goes through all the applications and performs predictive analysis on them. It helps the mechanism come up with a handsome amount of candidates who stands out from others.

Before talking about automating the recruitment process, the initial thing recruiters should concentrate on is to find the right place to convey the message of recruiting. AI has the ability to post improved targeted ads that will be seen by the right people at the right moment by using the history of their online activity. AI-based software goes through an individual's search history and delivers the recruitment ad if they suit them. Besides, chatbots are replacing human recruiters in directly connecting with the candidates. Advanced chatbots not only talk to candidates but also analyze their responses using natural language process, which allows them to see a person demonstrates certain skills.

The recruitment process becomes more hectic when they are repetitive. Every time a recruiter posts a job profile, he/she undergoes the lengthy routine of selecting candidates after multiple interviews. This can be cut short with the help of virtual assistants that is capable of contacting applicants, storing and analyzing interactions with each applicant.

Positive impacts of using AI in recruitment

Saves recruiters time by automating mundane works: Recruiters are busy people who are bound to balance their jobs between candidates and the job profile. Unfortunately, most of the recruitment works are repetitive and mundane. AI-chatbots come to the rescue of recruiters. They can remove heaps of these routine tasks by answering candidate's questions, scheduling interviews and screening applications in an instance.

Puts an end to bias: Even though the fact is hidden under the carpet, humans are evidently clouded by bias. This doesn't vanish during the recruitment process. The world has seen much bad recruitment because of judgments and bias in the past. However, the table has turned today. Since AI is taking over the recruitment process, it can help reduce discrimination. Some AI-tools help recruiters write a bias-free job advert.

Improves quality hire: Human recruiters going through all thousand applications that heaped for a single profile to find that one right candidate is extremely time-consuming. However, quality hire involves analyzing everybody's application and finding the perfect suit for the profile. Fortunately, AI uses data to standardize the matching candidate based on their experience, knowledge and skills.

The emerging trends in AI recruitment

For a long time, AI has been familiar with performing tasks like filtering the applications, answering candidate's questions and analyzing their value. Today, artificial intelligence's place in the recruitment industry has evolved. It has upgraded to perform more intense tasks like judging the candidate based on their performance in basic tests. Recently, Andrea Murad, a journalist, shared her personal recruitment experience in BBC news. Murad noted that she went through simple tests like counting the number of dots in two boxes, inflating a balloon before it burst to win money, and matching emotions of facial expressions. These AI-powered tasks assess people's personality and detect if they will suit the job.

Recruiters are increasingly using AI software like Pymetrics, HireVue, etc. to conduct these basic tests. Even big conglomerates like McDonald's, bank JP Morgan, Accountancy firm PWC, and food group Kraft Heinz are using Pymetrics for the initial recruitment process. HireVue goes a step ahead and records videos of job applicants answering interview questions via their microphone. Later, the audio is converted to text format and an AI algorithm analyses it for keywords.