AI Recruiting in 2024: The Definitive Guide

Artificial intelligence (AI) is proving its worth to recruitment teams by providing benefits like efficiency, personalization, and data-informed decision making. Eighty-eight percent of companies globally already use AI in some way for HR, according to SHRM.

Not only has AI transformed the relationship between people and technology, it’s also changing the role of HR when attracting, engaging, and retaining talent. 

The modern workforce is starting to grasp the power of AI, but conversations about using AI-driven technology in recruitment effectively can vary, even for seasoned HR professionals. 

Phenom developed The Definitive Guide to Artificial Intelligence for Recruiting to remove the complexity from the equation, add clarity to the role AI plays in recruiting activities, and provide straightforward information on AI's positive impact on HR and TA teams (and in turn, the entire organization). 

This guide will help you:

• Better understand AI and its effects on talent acquisition
  

• Leverage AI benefits and overcome key recruiting challenges
  

• Discover essential AI-powered technology that will make life easier for recruiters — and candidates
  

• Preview the future of what AI holds for recruiters

  In This Article

What is AI for Recruiting?

AI recruiting is the process of using artificial intelligence to automate time-consuming, repetitive tasks while offering personalization and data insights throughout the hiring process. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the science of training machines to perform human-like tasks so that certain functions can be automated. 

For instance, many industries have applied AI to quickly process large amounts of data to improve efficiency, accuracy, and productivity. In its simplest terms, AI is really just automation that allows us to solve big, complex, repeatable problems with quality results. AI is there to better illuminate the path to get there.

Similar automation capabilities and benefits can be applied to recruiting, especially for repetitive, high-volume functions, like screening, sourcing, and scheduling. AI-powered technology is meant to speed up time-consuming manual processes so recruiters can focus on more valuable initiatives; AI is not meant to replace human recruiters — despite what some resistors might believe.

Recruiting AI enables talent acquisition teams to discover passive candidates and unlock data-driven insights that guide decision-making and better outcomes, such as quality of hire. AI recruitment tools can help deliver the right jobs to the right talent, the right talent to the right recruiters…and ultimately, build the right teams for the company.

Resource: How Recruitment Leaders can Leverage AI to Supercharge the Candidate Experience

The Difference Between Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning

The terms artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) are often used interchangeably, but there's a key difference between the two concepts: machine learning is actually a subset of artificial intelligence. Recruiters will find familiarity with the basic differences to be helpful in their jobs. 

While artificial intelligence allows machines to make decisions and solve complex problems, ML is the process of making machines “intelligent” by feeding them data sets and specific examples. From that information, the machines can learn to detect nuances and patterns on which to base informed decisions.

Essentially, ML is the training process, and AI is the science and engineering of applications and innovations made possible by ML.

Artificial intelligence examines ways to build and educate intelligent machines that can solve problems. ML helps recruiters be more effective by computing, recognizing patterns, and detecting deviations.

Why is AI Important for Recruiting?

From a broad-brush perspective, AI-driven HR technology improves efficiency through automation of tedious tasks — freeing recruitment teams up to focus more on strategic, big-picture goals. If you get AI right, it will blend into the background and be there for support. It’s also important to note that AI should be considered as an assistant or advisor to recruiters — it does not replace the need for human interaction during the recruitment process.

As recruiting AI goes more mainstream and the market becomes increasingly competitive — with demand for top talent predicted to rise in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic — TA leaders will need to consider integrating AI-powered recruiting software to thrive in an environment where working faster and smarter is a requisite.

AI tools can also help drive better TA outcomes by enabling high-level personalization and data insights. 

AI + Automation

Recruiters are constantly pressed to do more with less. AI-powered tools can streamline many of the administrative tasks that consume big slices of time.

• Sourcing: Identify best-fit candidates through job-matching and scoring capabilities.
   

• Screening: Score and rank candidates based on defined criteria.
   

• Scheduling: Use chatbots and calendar integrations to automatically coordinate interviews and other meetings.

According to Dice's Recruitment Automation Report, many recruiters spend up to 30 hours per week sourcing resumes. TA leaders say one of the most considerable challenges they face is narrowing a large pool of applicants down to the most qualified candidates.

AI + Personalization 

What is the best way to develop exceptional talent experiences and help them accomplish their goals faster? With AI, you can provide tailored content throughout the entire talent lifecycle. Here’s what that looks like across the board:

• For candidates: AI powers personalized experiences with job recommendations and dynamic content based on their profile, search history, similar job openings, similar personas, and relevant locations.
  

• For employees: AI delivers the same personalization features as external candidates, along with career pathing, learning and development opportunities, mentoring, and referrals through an internal talent marketplace.

• For recruiters & hiring managers: AI nurtures a personalized pipeline with matching skills and compatibility so that new qualified talent is easily discovered, and previous quality candidates are rediscovered.

AI + Data Insights 

Talent leaders have long struggled with data quality and reliability. Insights that are driven by artificial intelligence empower recruiters and talent acquisition professionals with the right information they need to hire best-fit talent faster:

• Discover new job seekers and rediscover existing candidates
  

• Tap into cloud-sourced suggestions
  

• Understand candidate intent
  

• Obtain trends in the pipeline and view dynamic talent pools

Data insights also allow recruiters to spend more time with the top candidates, reducing an organization's time to hire and cost-per-hire metrics.

AI + Bias Control

AI can help reduce bias in the recruitment process, which is critical to an organization’s commitment to diversity and inclusion. Candidate fit scoring ensures that they're screened based on skill set and experience rather than a bias-based demographic. The use of video assessments with pre-set questions ensures all candidates are given a fair interview. 

Take this offline by downloading The Definitive Guide to Artificial Intelligence for Recruiting

What are the Challenges of Applying AI in Recruiting?

When implementing AI recruiting software, HR teams should be aware of the following challenges — and plan for ways to overcome them.

Getting data to feed the system

Data is the foundation of effective AI. Because the effectiveness of an AI-powered talent experience platform depends on the quality of data flowing into it, selection of the right platform is crucial. 

Organizations should choose a technology partner whose platform is fed by a robust network of recruiters, candidates, employees, and job roles that supplies the amount of data necessary for impactful AI. 

Encouraging user collaboration on a platform driven by centralized AI will increase its benefits.

Securing buy-in

Asking people to make changes, even if technology is sure to make their lives easier, comes with inevitable challenges. Recruiters, fearful of their jobs becoming automated, may be hesitant to embrace AI, so it’s important to emphasize that their roles will require human interaction and human-based decision-making. 

Prior to launch, leaders should provide demos, live training, and opportunities for feedback, and identify change champions who can help build excitement about the technology’s benefits. Change champions will be key for getting all employees on board and ready for change. 

Customer Spotlight: How Regions Bank is Solving Critical Business Challenges with Recruitment Automation

What AI Recruiting Tools Are Available?

AI and machine learning help candidates, recruiters, employees, and management throughout their journey, enabling them to achieve their end goals faster. AI powers the following core functionalities:

Personalization delivers tailored content throughout the entire talent lifecycle. AI powers personalized experiences on company career sites by providing job recommendations and dynamic content based on a candidate’s profile, search history, similar job openings, and locations. 

For employees, AI powers the same personalization features as external candidates within the talent marketplace, along with career pathing, learning and development opportunities, mentoring, and referrals. 

For recruiters and management, AI powers a personalized pipeline with matching skills and compatibility so recruiters automatically discover new talent and rediscover past quality candidates. 

Intelligent Search on a career site delivers accurate, relevant job results to help candidates find the right job. Search that provides irrelevant and inconclusive results leads to low talent conversion rates for organizations. Instead, search must be intelligent enough to understand the intent and context of a candidate’s inquiry, as well as the relationship between words. Also known as semantic search, this type of search functionality seeks to understand language the same way a human would. 

The ability to match the right job to the right candidate is critical to converting top talent. AI powers spell correction, prediction, synonyms, and natural language processing in order to provide the most relevant search results.

Conversational HR chatbots that are powered by artificial intelligence help people find the best-fit job faster with personalized conversations, engagement, job searching, screening, and scheduling. The Phenom chatbot, for example, captured 20 million candidate interactions over the course of 12 months — and it relies on AI and machine learning to provide talent with accurate and relevant job recommendations. 

Leveraging a master database of information, the chatbot uses both natural language processing and natural language understanding to ensure it comprehends the intent behind a candidate’s question and serves accurate answers. In HR, this is a complicated matter. Recruiters empower the bot further by analyzing the job seekers’ conversations and supplying it with additional responses that satisfy their inquiries.

A talent CRM can build, engage, and track talent pipelines, as well as enhance productivity using dynamic lists, actionable insights, fit scoring, and more. It helps recruiters easily identify new talent and stay connected to top talent through the use of AI insights. 

Interview scheduling automates the scheduling process for candidates, recruiters, hiring managers, and anyone else involved in the recruitment process by accessing hiring team members’ calendars and syncing their schedules so that candidates can easily choose a time for their interview that works best for all parties.

Powered by the CRM, the process is seamless for both candidates and recruiters. All the candidate has to do is choose a time listed that works for them, and the interview is automatically scheduled. The interview then shows up on the recruiter’s calendar, omitting the typical back-and-forth communication that comes with manual interview scheduling.  

One-way video assessments are a tool also powered by the CRM that helps candidates deliver a great first impression, streamlines the screening process for recruiters, and saves time on the hiring manager’s end.

With this technology ingrained seamlessly into Phenom CRM, recruiters, and hiring managers are able to access candidate information in the same place, screen best-fit talent first, showcase their employer brand through personalization, and gain valuable insights into conversion rates and candidate data using assessment analytics.

Actionable Insights provide fit and engagement scoring, which allows teams to discover new job seekers, rediscover existing candidates, tap into cloud-sourced solutions, understand candidate intent, obtain pipeline trends, and view dynamic talent pools — relieving the longtime struggle that talent leaders have with data quality and reliability. 

In addition, AI-powered insights allow recruiters to spend more time with the most qualified candidates, reducing time-to-hire and cost-per-hire. 

How Can AI Support Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Initiatives?

Implementing Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DE&I) strategies is a top priority for many organizations, especially since 48% of employees say a diverse and inclusive workplace is a requirement before they even consider working for a company.

Emerging tech has the power to cultivate a workforce of all cultures, norms and perspectives, and build a community where everyone feels like an equal part of the team. AI-powered fit scoring can help you connect with a diverse set of high-performing candidates, while AI insights reveal diverse hiring trends. 

Hiring for diversity is not an AI problem. AI will never solve diversity and inclusion issues — diversity and inclusion stem from awareness and transparency disputes.

AI will help provide the awareness and transparency that supports executive teams, recruiters, talent managers, and employees, ensuring that we’re illuminating opportunities to improve where the human brain might be colored by bias.