Talent acquisition can be one of the most time consuming and frustrating aspects of business. Harsh deadlines and specific requirements, not to mention the piles of applications and resumes, is tough for any recruiter. Tack on retention accountability, candidate experience and employer branding and the job becomes even harder. The emerging HR technology throughout the last decade has strived to take away these many frustrations while improving candidate experience and quality of hire.
The buzz around artificial intelligence this year is being shrugged off by many as just a new word HR got ahold of, but what would happen if AI was actually embraced by the recruiting and hiring world? What could it do to further practices and solve problems? This is exactly what Karen.ai are trying to do. How is AI enabled software aiming to better recruitment and the candidate experience?
Candidate Matching
Matching the right candidates to the right positions, that’s the name of the game, but it’s not as easy as it may sound. 52% of recruiters say the hardest part of their job is identifying the right candidates from a large applicant pool. Resume parsing and keyword search advances within an ATS has made the sifting and shifting of this task a bit easier as it picks up on keywords in resumes and cover letters to pull ones that match the most. But as we’ve traversed from keyword matching, to semantic search and contextual search, it’s clear we have not perfected Artificial Intelligence in candidate matching just yet. Today’s products are using Natural Language Processing for even more efficient and learning tools.
75% of job seekers’ chances of landing an interview are killed by errors in the ATS or by restrictive keyword search parameters. Limiting the search to a set amount of keywords does not always guarantee the most qualified candidate or best fit for the job requirements. However, Karen, an Artificial Intelligence software we built specifically for recruiting and hiring, builds off the basic keyword search, broadening the results with a more advanced version that includes semantic search, contextual search and integrates candidate chat conversations, eliminating fuzzy matches.
The ability to find concepts hidden in text, in addition to traditional keyword search will give recruiters a more complete look at the candidate’s qualifications and help improve the candidate matching process. In addition, this new software will take the information learned from the resume and cover letters to potentially help match candidates to jobs they may be better fit for within the company during and after the application process.
Candidate Rank and Score
In addition to pulling out the most qualified candidates for the position based on keywords and concepts, recruiters and hiring managers are expected to then select the best ones to move on in the process. Many use the rank and score method based on what was found within the resume and cover letter. Artificial intelligence is now helping recruiters do this faster by leveraging big data and predictive analytics. Some companies that already do this include Hiredscore and Ideal.com.
While this helps professionals get to the next step in the hiring process quicker, what seems to be missing is the interaction with the candidates and those who did not make it to the next step in the process.
A study conducted by CareerBuilder found an astonishing 75% of people saidthey didn’t hear back from the company to which they applied. This is where the ATS black hole comes into play and how Artificial Intelligence can help fight it. Karen steps into the process from the beginning, conversing with candidates, learning from their interactions and assimilating the data into a decision: continue down the pipeline or exit in a brand-minded way. In either scenario, Karen ensures the candidate knows where they stand.
Conversation Service for Candidate Engagement and Brand Experience
The ATS black hole is something of which many recruiters and candidates are all too familiar. 74% of job seekers say a clear timeline of the hiring process is what could improve their candidate experience the most, according to a report by applicant tracking systems consulting website Software Advice. Candidates want to be kept in the loop but for many recruiters, staying in contact with all of the applicants and notifying them of each step in the hiring process is next to impossible.
Automated emails have helped this frustration as it’s easy to send an email to a couple dozen candidates letting them know they weren’t the right fit for the position or they are moving on in the process. The problem with this automation, though, is a lack of brand experience and personality. Automated emails are also not as good keeping the candidates fully engaged in the process.
Enter Karen. Chatbots have been affecting our world by advancing customer support to helping users book a flight and now they’re here to advance the world of recruiting. By using an active chatbot to communicate and engage with candidates, AI could solve the problems of the ATS black hole.
A chatbot guides candidates through the application process, take insights learned from resumes and ask candidates questions to assess their level of engagement and keep them informed about where they are in the process. Although platforms like Wade & Wendy and Mya have these abilities as well, Karen is the first to take the information learned from the chat and combine it with the scoring and ranking capabilities to present the recruiter with the best possible candidate for the position. This chat capability will also increase the brand experience for the candidate as 78% of candidates will tell their friends and family about their bad experience and 34% will post about it on social media.
Tie all these functions together and you have a winning combination of matching, scoring and ranking, and chat capabilities that will help ease the recruiter frustrations and build a bridge between the disconnect of employers and job seekers. Prior to the cognitive computing era, enterprise companies would manually review resumes or at best use keyword matching to prioritize internal and external candidate submissions. Using AI, like Karen, to improve these tactics can lower time-to-hire for recruiters and engage candidates.
This article has been written by Noel Webb, Co-Founder of Karen and originally published in The HR Tech Weekly® blog.
