The application of artificial intelligence in recruitment helps us improve productivity when it comes to sourcing new candidates for new vacancies. By having access to a good database and relying on intelligent talent recommendations tools, recruiters can spend less time identifying fit candidates, and more time building relationships with them.

What exactly is AI for recruiting?

AI for recruitment is the integration of Artificial Intelligence into the talent acquisition process. Through Big Data and iterative machine learning, advanced systems are able to understand your hiring patterns and recommend candidates with higher success rates.

By building a strong foundation in Data Science and Analytics, AI recruitment systems can automate your workflow from pipelining suitable candidates to connecting and engaging them.

How to Apply Artificial Intelligence in Human Resources?

While AI systems have the capability to process vast amounts of data at scales humanly impossible, it must be noted that AI is by no means a replacement for recruiters. AI systems can predict if a candidate has what it takes to perform in a job vacancy. However, in order to access the potential of an individual, it requires a recruiters intuition, tempered with years of experience. The purpose of adopting AI systems in any business should be to augment recruiters’ capabilities.

Applied well, AI is a powerful tool to reduce repetitive tasks and build an unbiased layer of analytics to access recruitment qualities.

Artificial Intelligence in Human Resources: Data Analytics

One of the primary purposes of the application of artificial intelligence in Human Resources is the analysis and management of the data that each company has. The AI sorts all this data and provides insights in multiple areas, such as talent screening and successful sourcing channels.

Analytics systems also have the ability to visualize insights for us. This will help us to process information better and make data-based judgements to improve our recruitment KPIs. 

As the system starts to understand profiles of successful hires, this will be taken in as feedback to improving recommendations for future hires. Furthermore consistency in maintaining this feedback loop is critical in ensuring that the system continuously evolves along current hiring trends in the market. 

Artificial intelligence in Human Resources: Eliminates Cognitive Biases

As humans, we tend to simplify information and boil it down to rules of thumb in order to make decisions fast. While this is a powerful mechanism to keep us productive in most cases, problems arise when we distort the information we receive.

Unfortunately, recruiters are not immune to these limitations. It is not uncommon for us to associate a candidate’s qualifications based on where they have worked or which schools they attended. Then place less emphasis on exactly what they did in previous roles or awards they have accumulated across the years. All done in order to quickly process resumes at an average speed of 7.4 seconds each (according to a study by Ladders Inc.).

Artificial intelligence on the other hand is able to process a very high amount of data and rank candidates based on a predetermined set of criteria. In this way, recruiters can allocate more time to top recommended applicants and minimize bias. In the long run, deployment of AI systems in hiring will lead to improved quality of hire.

Artificial Intelligence in Human Resources: Task Automation

Research by CareerBuilder claims that most HR professionals spend 14 hours a week manually doing tasks that could be automated. With the prospect of freeing up a third of a recruiter's time to focus on meaningful actions, it is no wonder 62% of firms are thinking about investing in AI technologies (based on a Forbes survey).

Of the repetitive tasks faced by recruiters, the most time consuming one is pipelining candidates for interviews. In order to guide AI systems to help you source candidates well, it is necessary that you first establish the parameters you are looking for. Advanced systems will then recommend a list of fit candidates to select from and then help in forming connections with them through reach out automations and systemized follow-ups.

Is Artificial Intelligence a Threat?

According to the co-author of The Future Workplace Experience, Jeanne Meister, “AI will augment HR and give HR time to work on more strategic business issues. The opportunity is to use AI to streamline HR manual processes and provide a more consumer grade service to employees”. 

Jeanne’s take on AI is exactly the stance Shortlyst took when developing their AI-based sourcing product. Shortlyst is one of the best AI-based technologies that can automate the recruitment process. Not only does it have a large-scale database with 600 million profiles, but Shortlyst also provides various other automation features to allow each recruiter to reach more candidates.