Recruitment Chatbots and AI to Improve Candidate Experience

At some point in life, we have all found ourselves looking for the best opportunities on the web. Many different platforms such as LinkedIn, Indeed, and Glassdoor post job listings from all around the globe. This process of recruitment is tiresome for both the candidates as well as recruiters. And the solution to this tedious process is Recruitment Chatbots.

There are a number of phases of the recruitment funnel from posting the job to onboarding. With digitalization and globalization, the size of the talented pool in the market has expanded. This has led to a humongous number of candidates applying for a job posting. Consequently, it becomes an almost impossible task for the recruiters to entertain every candidate thoroughly and answer their queries effectively. This pressure on the recruitment teams comes at the cost of poor candidate experience. And once candidates have a bad experience with the recruiters, it sends out a deteriorating message about the organization.

If you want to learn more about how to optimize the candidate experience, we have posted a dedicated article for that. Candidate experience embodies the complete talent acquisition lifecycle since the effect of poor or wonderful candidate experience is not limited to that particular candidate.

Why Recruitment Chatbots are Essential for Organizations?

When it comes to candidate experience from the applicant’s point of view, it is no less than a horrible adventure to sift through all those recruitment portals to find the right job. And this is not just about it. Even after applying for certain jobs, the wait time can be really frustrating. People spend hours and days anxiously to hear back from the HR and recruitment teams for an update on their applications. Many applicants have concerns that they hope to have answered before applying. All of this hassle can sometimes end up in a poor candidate experience. The latest solution to all these tedious processes is Conversational or Recruitment Chatbots.

Now, when it comes to candidate experience from recruiters’ point of view, the horrors are not much different. The recruiters have to go through hundreds of thousands of CVs in the quest of finding the top talent. The screening of such a massive number of applicants affects the process of scrutinization of applications. And again, the solution to these recruiters’ problems is the same, Recruitment Chatbots!

How Conversational Chatbots Are Changing the Landscape of Recruitment?

Recruitment chatbots are still making their way around the world even though the technology hasn’t fully matured yet. Simply put, recruitment chatbots are taking the repetitive and time-consuming tasks from the recruiters into their own hands. This allows the recruiters to focus on the most crucial phases of the recruitment process. Therefore, not only the candidate experience is optimized but the recruiter’s efficiency is also improved big time. In another way, making the candidate’s experience better renders the recruitment milestones achievable faster. Let us now discuss how recruitment chatbots have and are changing the demographics of hiring or recruitment cycles.

Better Engagement of Qualified Applications

Instead of applicants analyzing if they are suitable for a certain role or not, AI job-matching tools perform it for them. How is it different? Applicants tend to apply at every slightest possibility of relevance to the job postings. The companies, when in fact, are looking for the exact match. This leads to a huge pile of applications for a position for which many do not even qualify. AI-powered job matching and recruitment chatbots communicate with applicants to analyze if they fit the role or not. In this way, applicants have a head-start and a better idea of their standing against a certain job posting. This is beneficial for both the job seekers as well as recruiters.

Job seekers do not have to spend time applying for non-potential roles and then wait for a response. And recruiters do not have to screen a bulk of non-considerable applications. Hence, recruitment chatbots in combination with AI job matching functions improve the candidate as well as recruiter’s experience significantly.

Reduced Application-to-Screening Time

Hiring processes powered by artificial intelligence and recruitment chatbots remove the time expended on repetitive tasks. For instance, automation of candidate queries regarding workplace culture, company policies, etc. is possible with conversational chatbots. Similarly, extra time spent on screening the applications is also reduced with AI-powered smart recruitment chatbots. How? Recruitment chatbots are designed to automatically screen the incoming applications based on required factors to exclude the irrelevant applications. These bots can function data parsing of resumes based on multiple keywords in a single screening cycle. Hence, the recruiters only have to focus on just the right-fit applicants.

Consequently, it reduces significantly the time between submission and screening of an application. HR can use this time bought to improve the effectiveness of many other hiring processes. For instance, streamlining the onboarding of new employees, focusing on the applications of top qualified candidates, etc.

Improved Candidate Journey Mapping

A candidate applying for a certain job posting is occupied with a number of questions. Finding answers to them on the website elongates the candidate’s journey map. Whereas, having to wait for HR to respond to emails is not only time-consuming but also frustrating. So how can we improve candidate journey mapping?

Intelligent recruitment chatbots are not just about screening the application at the back end. There are also capable of providing human-like communication to incoming queries from the applicants. They are powered by NLP integrations to provide a natural communication experience across different channels. Hence, the candidate queries’ are resolved in real-time without any delays or frustrations. One way of doing this is to feed your recruitment chatbots with your FAQs data. Whenever a query arises, the recruitment bots can snip data from FAQs and provide a suitable response to that query. Hence, these recruitment chatbots are multipurpose tools that can incorporate intent and emotions in their responses to queries.

 Interpretation and Data Analytics

The benefits of AI-powered recruitment chatbots are manifold. The benefits and effectiveness in terms of time, resources, and applicants’ scrutiny are discussed above. But that’s not everything organizations can do with them. Since we are talking about smart and intelligent systems, we cannot ignore their ability to learn on their own.

The recruitment chatbots are capable of collecting data based on their interaction with candidates and recruiters. This data is then manipulated to draw meaningful conclusions. These conclusions, in turn, are utilized to further improve candidate experience. For instance, recruitment chatbots collect data such factors that increase the engagement of the candidates. Many other sorts of data are also collected such as the point at which the candidate is lost, what practices of recruiters are frowned upon by the applicants, etc. The recruitment cycles are then redesigned based on the data analytics provided by recruitment chatbots. In this way, the entire landscape of candidate experience can be redefined with the incorporation of AI-powered recruitment chatbots.

In conclusion, the integration of recruitment chatbots into your hiring processes can address multiple limitations when it comes to recruitment. From optimization of candidate experience, enhancing the company’s branding, and improving recruiter’s efficiency, AI-powered recruitment chatbots do it all. Applicant Tracking Systems such as RecruitBPM provide staffing automation solutions for recruitment optimizations.

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