How Recruitment Leaders Can Leverage AI to Supercharge the Candidate Experience

Imagine, for a moment, you’re a job candidate. It’s the end of a long day spent working in a position you’re unhappy with. You sink into the couch with your laptop (or maybe just your mobile) to search for something new.

You’re tired. Your eyes are bleary. You know you need to dedicate time to the job search, but navigating countless screens and forms? So. Draining.

Until — Hello! You stumble upon a career site that seems to do all the hard work for you! A personal job assistant chatbot greets you, asks a few questions that actually seem relevant to your career goals, whisks you through a no-stress application process…and in minutes you’ve applied for a job that matches your skills and interests (at a company that clearly values innovation).

Suddenly, you’re not so exhausted. In fact, you’re hopeful for what your future holds.

AI’s Role in Transforming the Candidate Experience

This is what AI can do for job candidates, explained Heidi Chapeau, former Recruitment Marketing Director for Magellan Health, a 10,000-employee managed healthcare company, during our virtual event AI & the Evolved Recruiter.

“When you’re ready to look for jobs, you want to find a job immediately that’s going to meet your skills and qualifications — and you want to apply quickly and easily. AI really allows you to do that,” she expressed.

Watch It’s Personal: How AI Powers Candidate Experience From First Visit To Completed Apply — and unlock access to all on-demand event content!

Chapeau, who specializes in joining marketing strategy with recruitment activities, recently led the launch of an AI program that has significantly improved candidate engagement and conversion in measurable ways.

“Why do we care about AI?,” she asked. “Because it delivers candidates an exceptional experience. A poor experience can really damage your brand if a candidate hits your site and they don’t know how to move forward.” AI-directed tools help create an exceptional experience for candidates by eliminating the characteristics that discourage apply rates and conversion, such as inflated, time-consuming processes and confusing site navigation that inadvertently makes it difficult to find jobs.

Chiefly, AI streamlines the job application process and helps candidates quickly learn how their skills and experience might fit within an organization, leading to the kind of personalized experience that resonates with today’s candidates. More specifically, AI:

empowers candidates to move quickly and easily through a career site, targeting jobs that meet their qualifications, skills, and interests
helps recruiters find best-fit quality applicants faster
allows recruiters to leverage personalized channels of communication to increase engagement and conversion, regardless of where a candidate is in the talent journey

How AI Is Enhancing the CX for Magellan Health

Magellan Health launched its AI recruitment program in April 2020; prior to that, it had not integrated any AI technology into talent acquisition efforts. One thing Chapeau learned at the outset? To avoid becoming overwhelmed, limit your focus to a few areas.

Chapeau and her team initially focused on leveraging AI through personalized job recommendations and a job assistant chatbot. Here’s an overview of how these AI-directed technologies work.

Personalized Job Recommendations

When candidates visit the Magellan career site, they encounter a search bar inviting them to get tailored job recommendations by either uploading a resume or answering a series of questions (e.g., What are you interested in? What are you good at? What is your most recent job title?).

Behind the scenes, the company’s CRM is capturing this data, which recruiters can use to better connect with candidates. While candidates are prompted to create a profile – the ideal outcome – they can opt not to, and will still see personalized recommendations.

AI-Powered Chatbot

Candidates can choose to work with the chatbot at any point in the process. Functioning as a personal job assistant, the chatbot follows a similar script to personalized job search questions. The chatbot serves up tailored jobs, and candidates can conveniently apply right from that screen.

One of the main benefits of the chatbot is that it helps candidates navigate the search and apply process more quickly than moving through the site on their own.

“We’ve found that as soon as candidates are hit with the chatbot, they start talking with it right away. It empowers them to move quicker through the process than if they were just clicking through the site,” noted Chapeau.

Increased Conversions, Applies, and Candidate Satisfaction

The results so far? “Since March 31st, we’ve had 14,500 click-to-applies just from the chatbot. That’s amazing data that shows us these interactions and AI are really helping candidates find the right job,” said Chapeau. In addition, "81% of candidates give our site 4 or 5 stars,” Chapeau shared. “They’re enjoying the AI, the chatbot interaction…they may not even know they’re using AI, but they’re loving that the site is serving them good content and the right jobs that match their skills and qualifications."

"We’ve really seen AI help Magellan a lot by bringing in people, having them finish the apply, and stay longer to actually learn about us,” she said.

Magellan’s career site data echos Chapeau’s sentiment, revealing: