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You need to hire someone. Maybe a current employee is leaving, or better yet, business is so good you’re expanding your workforce. So, you post the opening on your website and…

…you receive 573 résumés. Yikes! That’s a lot of résumés to sort through to try and find the best candidates.

On a recent episode of ATR’s podcast Parent. Boss. Leader., Laura Munson and Brad Garner, a senior talent acquisition manager in the defense industry, discussed this exact situation. Brad thinks that “businesses are sort of behind job boards and candidates in deploying AI and other tools that make it possible for candidates to find and apply to jobs in seconds, with very little effort.” These sites are already using AI to “match” jobs to résumés, leaving companies to sift through the inundation of applicants. Right now, that means most companies are choosing the best candidate from the first 50 or maybe 100 résumés that come in.

I think Brad is right. While AI can be a disruptor, it can also improve things on both sides of the hiring equation. Reviewing résumés quickly to identify good matches from large applicant pools is just one example of how using AI-powered tools can improve recruiting and lead to better hires.

Candidate sourcing and screening

AI can help identify potential candidates who might not have applied or used the right keywords in their résumé. AI can analyze submitted résumés, social media, and other data sources to help identify the best candidates for a role—a much more robust analysis than simply matching keywords from the job description or culling applicants based on somewhat arbitrary data like a college degree.

Interviewing

AI can help streamline the interview scheduling process, while AI-powered chatbots and virtual assistants can provide candidates with immediate help and 24/7 support. Time to hire is always an important metric that AI can help improve. Further, delays in the process at any stage contribute to good candidates dropping out or accepting another offer. Using AI can improve candidate experience and engagement from their first contact with your company.

Predictive analytics

AI can use predictive analytics to analyze candidate data to predict which candidates are most likely to be successful. It can help improve your process at all stages, including anticipating when you’ll need to hire, influencing recruitment timelines and strategies, reducing bias and exclusionary language in job descriptions and interviews, and developing fair and reliable candidate assessment tools.

Communication

AI can help improve communication with both your permanent and contingent workforce by identifying the best methods of communication and the time of day to contact people, for example. This starts during the hiring process and continues through employment. More effective communication is a bedrock of a great candidate and employee experience, which in turn contributes to higher acceptance rates, and better long-term employee satisfaction, performance, and retention.

In one sense, AI is simply another tool, another technology in a long line of technologies promising to revolutionize the hiring process specifically and workforce management overall. Since my parents founded ATR, we’ve been adopters of cutting-edge technologies that drive efficiencies and improve results. We’ve also weathered numerous predictions that such technologies would eliminate the need for human involvement. I can safely report those predictions were inaccurate, and I predict the same when it comes to AI.

Recruiters aren’t going to be replaced by a software program. HR is not going to be a robot. Smart businesses are going to enhance what their people can accomplish by using this new technology, not replace them with it. AI is a tremendously powerful tool, but it is only useful if it has the right information and is guided by knowledgeable humans. It will produce results and recommendations that will help a human manager make a better decision, but it can’t make the decision for you.

My colleague Christy McCarthy recently commented that calling AI a trend is woefully underwhelming and doesn’t do its power justice, and I wholeheartedly agree. AI is already rapidly transforming business operations, including workforce management. At ATR, we’re looking at the best ways to incorporate its power into our real-world-tested, certified recruiting processes. I’m sure I’m not alone.

How are you incorporating AI into your hiring process?

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