Hiring has become increasingly complex, even as new technologies promise to simplify it. AI is now a central part of the process for both job seekers and employers to mixed results. Job seekers are using AI to create tailored resumes and cover letters, sometimes for positions they aren’t fully qualified for. In response, recruiters have supercharged their applicant tracking systems (ATS) with AI to go through the influx of applications—many of which were likely generated by AI themselves.
In a series of articles, we’ll explore how AI has changed the hiring landscape and ways job seekers, employers, recruiters, and staffing agencies can adjust to it. Our first article will examine how this AI-to-AI pipeline has made the hiring process feel more impersonal than ever. Can hiring teams take advantage of AI’s incredible power without losing the human touch so sorely needed in the candidate experience?
The Benefits of Automating Your Hiring Process
Nearly 90% of companies use AI in some capacity for initial candidate screenings. AI is used in ATS to sift through resumes to find rock star candidates. Another common application for AI is chatbots that answer common questions, schedule interviews, and handle some communications. Some companies will even use AI as an intelligence tool to score candidates based on predetermined parameters. Automating the hiring process can provide a number of benefits on the recruitment side:
Faster Screening and Hiring
The average job opening now receives hundreds or even thousands of applications. With this overwhelming volume, internal hiring teams don’t have the time or resources to go through every application. AI tools can help fill the gap. But that’s just the start. We recently listed a few ways to utilize AI and automation at every stage of the hiring process if you are struggling with increased demand or a long time-to-hire rate.
Better Candidate Matching
With so many applications coming in at different skill and experience levels, it’s easy for strong candidates to get lost in the shuffle. AI tools can integrate with existing hiring systems to quickly identify patterns and highlight applicants whose profiles compare well with past successful hires. By focusing on objective data rather than subjective first impressions, AI tools can also help reduce unconscious biases, creating a fairer and more consistent screening process.
Stronger Candidate Engagement
One of the biggest complaints candidates have with the hiring process is poor communication. AI-powered chatbots and automated messaging systems can provide acknowledgments of receipt, updates on application status, and 24/7 answers to common questions. These messages can help candidates stay engaged and ensure that their application is still being considered. Even a rejection message can be more satisfying than being ghosted altogether.
The Limits of AI and Automation
While AI-powered hiring brings speed and efficiency, it can’t replace the personal touch that builds trust and strengthens relationships. AI is a powerful tool, but it lacks the empathy, intuition, and nuanced judgment that experienced recruiters bring to the table. When companies rely too heavily on automation, the hiring process can feel cold and transactional, leaving candidates feeling undervalued or overlooked. This could cause a number of negative impacts:
Missing Soft Skills
AI is great at assessing hard skills and qualifications that are self-reported on a resume or cover letter. However, it can struggle with recognizing those intangible qualities that are needed for successful placement, including emotional intelligence, adaptability, and cultural fit. Humans are needed to assess these soft skills to determine whether a candidate would be successful in the role and not just a good match on paper.
Overlooked Candidates
While AI is great at pattern recognition to eliminate bias, it’s only as good as the data it’s trained on. If the historical hiring data reflects existing or past human biases, the AI could teach itself those biases, too. This could cause the AI to reject great candidates with different backgrounds that don’t match the patterns or criteria set by those systems. Companies should ensure that their AI tools are frequently audited for any potential biases.
Disconnected Experiences
Automated updates and chatbot responses are convenient for updating candidates, but overrelying on AI tools for communications will lead to greater dissatisfaction and application withdrawals. Candidates prefer interacting with other humans who can answer questions and provide feedback. Talking to a machine will likely feel cold and distant after a while and could make the candidate wonder if that’s what the work environment will be like, too.
How to Keep Humans Part of the Loop
Striking a balance between automation and human involvement does take time and effort, but it’s not impossible. Here are a few strategies that may be helpful to implement in your process:
- Become a Co-Pilot, Not a Passenger: Consider AI recommendations as a starting point to dig deeper into selected candidates. AI can make mistakes or overlook great candidates, so it’s important to have human oversight across the process.
- Be Upfront about Your AI Usage: Candidates will not trust your process if they feel that the company is being disingenuous about how AI is being used to assess their application. Explain which stages involve AI and how it contributes to fair hiring decisions backed by human judgement.
- Have Human Touchpoints Throughout: While AI can be used for some communications, be sure to have human interactions with the team at critical stages of the process. Personalized feedback can improve the candidate experience and make the process less transactional.
Modern recruiting should not be about replacing recruiters and staffing professionals with robots. It’s about empowering them with the tools they need to be more efficient, strategic, and accurate. By striking the right balance, the hiring process can benefit from a collaboration where robots and humans focus on what each does best. This will lead to better results and a positive experience for every candidate.
Contact us today to learn how J & J Staffing can help you leverage the power of AI without losing the human touch.