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How Chatbots Can Simplify the Recruitment Process

By | Srushti Shah | Digital Marketer & Content Writer | Acquire

Smart technologies like chatbots and AI have become commonplace across organizations for various reasons. According to an Amdocs survey, almost 85% of customer interactions will take place through chatbots this year, while 87% of CEOs will use these technologies to expand their workforce.

Of all the myriad departments that a chatbot can be deployed at to expedite operations, HR is one seemingly unlikely place that seems set to derive the most benefit from it. Did you know that almost 75% of applicants never hear back from recruiters while 67% of applicants think positively of organizations who keep them updated on their application throughout the hiring process?

AI can take your HR experience to new heights, according to Donald Southern from Resumes Planet. He says, “AI can assist you in handling recruiting, productivity, and retention more effectively than regular HR techniques. Besides, it enables you to do the recruitment process faster than ever before.”

For large-scale organizations that receive a host of applications, providing periodic updates to each aspirant can be a herculean task. AI-powered bots can help HR personalize and streamline HR processes and facilitate the recruitment process in a host of ways.

How Chatbots Can Enable the Recruitment Process

Chatbots are increasingly finding applications across business processes in today’s digital world. Enterprises are also making a shift to adopting this AI-powered technology, especially in the recruitment phase, to manage repetitive administrative tasks easily, among other functions such as:

  • Resume screening.
  • Inquiring applicants for the screening process.
  • Providing updates about application status.
  • Answering FAQs to facilitate the hiring process.

Chatbots can also come in handy for data aggregation of candidates through previous chat records instead of asking them to fill out lengthy forms for the same. According to SmashFly, 74% of candidates who start filling job applications drop off before even finishing it and that implementing a chatbot can help organizations save 74% of their recruitment marketing efforts and budget. Here, we will look at the four major ways of how chatbots can facilitate the recruitment process.

  1. Answering Candidate Queries

According to Juniper Research, chatbots will grow to be so fluent that they will be able to answer 75-90% of queries and save 4 minutes of interaction time and $0.50-$0.70 per interaction on average. Recruitment chatbots can be used to convey official processes and other requisite information to aspirants through FAQs. This has grown to be such a prevalent practice that Allegis found 58% of candidates appearing for interviews to be comfortable interacting with AI bots for the application process.

Take the multinational hospitality company, Marriott International Inc., for example. They were finding it difficult to regularly answer recruitment-related queries. This pushed them to introduce their recruitment chatbot in 2017, which was set up on their Facebook page.

https://www.facebook.com/marriottjobsandcareers/

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The chatbot was a huge hit among applicants as it reduced query resolution time by readily providing answers to the following questions:

  • Do you have restaurant manager job openings in Chicago?
  • Do you have event manager job openings in New York?
  • How many brands does Marriott own?
  • How to contact the recruiter?

These chatbots also grouped candidates on the basis of specific job positions, the potential of a candidate, alignment to corporate values, and current location to seamlessly navigate through the applications and select the right ones effortlessly.

  1. Collecting Candidate Feedback

Talent, while abundant, can come in short supply in today’s tight labor market. Did you know that 75% of job seekers consider an employer’s brand before even applying for a job? In such cases, keeping tabs on the interview experience of candidates and what they say about your organization later can turn out to be a major differentiator.

Through recruitment chatbots, you can capture applicant feedback by asking questions about the screening and interview process and request for suggestions on how to enhance it. Chatbots can also instantly conduct an inquiry into candidates that drop off before completing the application process and ask for the reasons why they chose to do so.

This helps organizations to not only differentiate themselves and further their brand name but also enjoy reduced costs as a result. According to LinkedIn, organizations that are able to differentiate themselves on the basis of a strong employer brand see 50% lower costs-per-hire and experience 1-2x faster time to hire.

Using the insights uncovered by chatbots, organizations can provide candidates with a satisfying and fulfilling interview experience while also fortifying their brand by ensuring consistency throughout the recruitment process.

  1. Screening Applications to Find the Right Fit

The biggest hurdle that HRs have to clear in the interview process is to conduct screenings of potential applicants fit for the job role at hand. Recruiters can receive close to scores of applications in just one day for a single job position, making it hard for them to conduct the screening process as meticulously for the later applications as much as they would have for the first few.

Merrill Lynch, an American investing and wealth management firm, was facing the same problem and decided to deploy a recruitment chatbot that could carry out all tasks of the screening process during application processing.

Merril Careers
https://www.bofaml.com/en-us/content/careers.html

Image Source

Merrill’s chatbot conducts a pre-interview process with interested applicants besides answering questions about company values and corporate policies. It also helps aspirants find positions that fit their profile by asking them a series of simple questions about their education, experience, location, and known languages.

Such chatbots ultimately improve candidate experience immensely as a factor of the reduced turnaround times. It also makes life easy for the HR team by tackling a huge pile of work for them simultaneously.

  1. Helping Recruiters Save Time and Resources

According to an SHRM Survey, the cost-per-hire for companies can go up to $4,129 while taking them an average time of 42 days to fill a position. Recruitment chatbots can lower both the cost-per-hire and time-to-hire by screening unqualified applications and discarding them outright, automating the process of scheduling interviews, and keeping hundreds of applicants engaged simultaneously.

With the increased shift towards AI and automation in the recruitment process, chatbots have the capability to reduce the workloads of the HR team. This helps both the organization and applicant save time to ensure a satisfactory and engaging candidate experience. Moreover, recruiters can also leave the repetitive tasks to chatbots and focus their time and effort on building relationships and creating connections with interested and qualified candidates.

To Bot or Not to Bot?

HR chatbots have immense potential to save business capital with Juniper research predicting that enterprises with recruiting chatbots will be able to reduce costs by more than $8 billion by 2022. With less overhead HR managers and increased productivity for the organization, the benefits of chatbots are endless.

With the number of growing use cases of chatbots, the market is ripe for innovation. If you wish to leverage a chatbot for your company, weigh in on the benefits mentioned above and see which parts you would want to automate. This will give you a headstart on what you want your chatbot’s underlying infrastructure to be so that you can engage applicants better than ever before and consolidate your brand name.

Author’s Bio:

Shrushti ShahSrushti Shah is an ambitious, passionate and out of the box thinking woman having vast exposure in Digital Marketing. She is working as a Digital Marketer and Content writer at Acquire. Her key focus is to serve her clients with the latest innovation in her field leading to fast and effective results. Working beyond expectations and delivering the best possible results is her professional motto. Other than work, she loves traveling, exploring new things and spending quality time with family. Reach out to Srushti Shah on Twitter or LinkedIn

 

 

 

 

 

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