HR is responsible for a myriad of processes within the company, and amongst them is hiring – a challenging task that requires organization and planning. One of the most recents developments in this process is the increased attention given towards candidate experience.
In a tight job market, companies must stand out in order for candidates to actually want to work there and apply for positions. While employee experience and employer branding are important parts of the equation, the hiring process itself can greatly affect the opinion of candidates.
One of the common complaints from candidates is that the hiring processes tend take too long, and that companies often fail to provide proper feedback to those who aren’t hired.
To help with these issues, HR professionals can implement artificial intelligence to optimize the hiring process. In this article, we will go over what is artificial intelligence and how it can help improve candidate experience.
What is Artificial Intelligence?
Before we dive into how artificial intelligence can improve candidate experience, we need to explain what A.I. is. This is a term used to refer to various technologies, such as artificial neural networks, algorithms, learning systems, and others, that hold one common thread: they are created with the intent of replicating different processes that require human intelligence, such as pattern recognition and decision-making.
Thus, A.I. is a form of creating technological solutions that can support tasks in a intelligent and optimized way. This is specially useful when dealing with repetitive tasks, or when there is a large amount of data that is relevant to the decision-making process.
Below are some of the technologies that contributed to the evolution of Artificial Intelligence:
Machine Learning
Machine Learning is a data evaluation technique that automizes the development of analytical patterns. In other words, without further programming by people, the accuracy of predictions, data processing and so on becomes better as algorithms use historical data to predict future outcomes.
Deep Learning
Deep Learning is a specialized machine learning, with a neural network with three or more layers. These additional layers allow better data processing, which contribute to more sophisticated uses such as image identification and speech recognition.
Natural Language Processing
This subfield of Artificial Intelligence aims to study and produce machines able to recognize and process large amounts of natural language data, a technology capable of understanding the meaning of what is written or said.
Knowing these technologies, some of the benefits they can provide are the following:
- Better decision-making;
- Scalability;
- Automation (employees are required to do less repetitive tasks);
- Cost reduction.
Why should you care about Candidate Experience?
As mentioned before, it’s important for the company to actually be a place where people want to work, and the hiring process is part of that.
While the pressure of wanting to hire the right candidate can lead to HR professionals and leaders creating a long hiring process, with several steps and interviews, this can create a negative experience for candidates who are likely participating in several hiring processes simultaneously. This can also contribute to perfectly good candidates dropping out of the hiring process.
Providing a positive candidate experience attracts more people to your company, and increases the likelihood of good hires. This should be viewed as an opportunity to communicate what the company is like – and remember, while word-of-mouth can be excellent marketing, if the experience is bad, that can also have a huge impact on the organization’s image.
Thus, HR professionals and leaders alike must invest in technologies like AI to optimizes processes within the company.
5 Ways to Improve Candidate Experience with AI
1. Communication
The candidates will be more engaged if you are able to communicate quickly and efficiently throughout the hiring process.
Hiring platforms and AI allow you to automate messages that are still personalized, and send them according to each step of the process. This way, recruiters don’t need to worry about candidates going without an answer or feedback, specially in early stages of the process, such as candidate screening.
2. Organization
Organization is the key to success, and in hiring processes it is paramount to have an organized view of the entire process to know whether it is running smoothly. AI can help recruiters identify the best candidates for a role quickly, and organize the next steps. This data organization can also help to identify possible issues within the process or points of improvement.
3. Feedback
Feedback is truly valuable to candidates, as they want to know which areas they should improve for future hiring processes.
With the automation of more repetitive tasks, such as candidate screening, AI helps recruiters free up time that can be used to give more specific feedback to the candidates, particularly those who made it to the final steps of the process but where ultimately not chosen for the role.
4. Speed
One of the main benefits of using artificial intelligence in hiring processes is being able to fill roles much faster. With the data processing capacity of AI, it is possible to evaluate thousands of CVs within seconds, with allows for real time candidate screening. This also ensures that every candidate is properly screened, something that rarely happens without the use of this technology.
5. Fairness
Diversity and inclusion is necessary in every company, and candidates prefer organizations that foster equality and fairness as part of their values and culture.
And this care towards fairness extents to the hiring process. Artificial intelligence can be used to mitigate bias, ensuring that candidates are not discriminated due to their gender, race, age and so on.