Candidate matching: will AI transform how we hire?

Shortlisting qualified applicants for roles is always time consuming. AI promises match candidates to roles with greater speed and efficacy than humans do

Unless you have the luxury of recruiting for a niche role that has attracted just a few, highly qualified candidates, coming up with a shortlist can be a time-consuming task. Recruiters in organisations undertaking high-volume hiring campaigns – for example, cohorts of graduates or staffing a new contact centre facility – face a mountain of potentially thousands of applicants, and unsurprisingly have turned to technology to help them sort the good candidates from the unsuitable ones.

Candidate matching has become increasingly sophisticated in recent years and is one of the most common applications of AI in HR and recruitment. Dozens of software companies have emerged to sell tools for every step in the hiring process – from tech that matches job postings with likely candidates to tools that scan applications. There are also tools that can pick up keywords in CVs or applications, and those that ‘score’ candidates against a set of criteria for the role or deselect those who don’t have the required qualifications. All claim to do so in a matter of minutes compared to days working through applications manually.

Providers of such systems claim they can significantly reduce recruiter workload, improve time to hire and save organisations money because technology can automate much of the sifting process. “While…