Recruiting Process like an Exciting Quest and Other HR Tech Trends for the Next Five Years

NNTC
NNTC
Sep 7, 2018 · 7 min read

Predictability has never been on trend, especially in a rapidly developing business environment. Traditional interviews will soon give way to artificial intelligence — a new highly adaptive recruitment system that drastically optimizes HR staff workload. Here is a digest of the most promising technology solutions that can transform a recruiting process into an exciting quest.

Predictive analytics

Imagine predicting your employee leaving long before seeing a letter of resignation on your table and started looking for a new specialist in advance, thus minimizing possible damage to your company and its projects. Once Hewlett-Packard realized the benefits of such approach, it decided to adopt a predictive analytics system.

Predictive analytics is about analyzing information on each employee collected from in-house sources, including emails, office calls, and corporate portal activities. The system evaluates both employee’s incentives and willingness to participate in corporate training programs, thus shaping an employee’s behavior pattern to predict their further steps, including the decision to leave. For example, if a sociable employee suddenly starts to talk less to colleagues, using corporate resources and spending time consuming outside content, the system detects this behavior pattern.

Using predictive analytics, Hewlett-Packard management revealed the causes of high employee turnover. One of which, or for example… Employees who had been with the company for about five years got a promotion with no significant pay bump and decided to leave. Thus, the technology found out secret motives of leaving employees.

Another interesting way to leverage predictive analytics is forecasting the demand for employees. Once the system collects information about company employees and potential job applicants using their comments, posts, likes, and reposts in relevant social media groups, it can create an ideal applicant profile.

Testing: Artificial intelligence (AI) and User experience (UX) design

During interviews, many companies ask applicants to take a test. However, as the most common test in the IT sector, the GMAT, is easy to learn by heart, a recruiter of an IT company can never tell if the results show applicant’s qualification or ability to memorize. Another approach is to evaluate applicant’s creativity. For example, Convertro recruiters can ask applicants to explain the meaning of the word brimborion. In reality, it is a made-up word aimed to either bewilder applicants, or unlock their creativity. Both testing approaches reveal certain qualities of an applicant, but never give a full picture.

AI and UX design can create a detailed profile of an applicant without pushing them out of their comfort zones. The technology evaluates applicant’s gestures, facial expressions, test reading speed, typing vigor, eye movement, and other tiny details.

Unilever’s HR team employs new technologies to find rank-and-file employees. They send applicants a link to a game based on artificial intelligence and then arrange a video interview, during which the system captures applicant’s tone of voice, body language, and keywords spoken. Successful applicants can be invited to the office to try their hand at the job.

Interestingly, Coca-Cola uses Stafory’s Vera recruitment robot. A recruiter sets search parameters and deadlines, and Vera calls applicants and conducts video interviews, being able to handle several vacant positions at once. Moreover, Vera deletes all rejected CVs from the database, so that the same candidate does not receive an application response twice. As a result, Vera needs two or three hours to complete a task that usually takes an HR specialist three to four weeks.

Onboarding: HR Tech and Digital Workplace

Another important process is onboarding. Big Data and predictive analytics help companies determine the best-fit team and onboarding tools for every new employee, while all experiments with these tools can go as part of HR Tech that includes HR consulting, employee training, corporate culture outsourcing, automation of HR processes, and much more.

Special attention should be paid to Digital Workplace, a single platform that features a database, employee collaboration, feedback and communication engines, gamification elements, and corporate currency.

For example, Talmudo found a very effective way of leveraging Digital Workplace. The Bacardi company specialists developed a mobile application for new employees that combined a 90-day orientation, mentoring system, and training courses.

Optimize your time or ‘Delegate it to a bot’

Nothing slows down business processes more than spending time on extra routines, such as helpdesk visits, resolving accounting issues or business travel formalities. That is why chatbots and RPA robots are becoming more and more popular with large companies. Key routine tasks can be defined and then delegated to a chatbot, thus saving a lot of specialist time and frustration.

Helpdesk chatbots

A chatbot can take on some routine user requests that technical support specialists have to resolve every day, including locked accounts or lost Wi-Fi passwords. Thus, with initial request analysis and support task distribution, AI saves a specialist three to four hours a day.

Business trips

A chatbot can make the life of a business trip team much easier by preparing necessary documents and booking tickets. All an employee needs to do is fill in place, dates, and other necessary details in the request window, thus avoiding long e-mail communication and talks on the phone.

Another option for a chatbot is corporate shuttle scheduling. Upon request, a bot can track shuttle routes and provide employees with up-to-date information.

Events and corporate training

Another task that can be delegated to a chatbot is signing up for in-house and outside seminars. HR specialists and employees of a marketing department usually spend at least three days to make a list of all those who want to take the course, arrange coffee breaks, and book meeting rooms, while an RPA robot can do this in just several minutes. All you need is to submit necessary information (date, time, and venue) to the bot.

In the event of a corporate English language course at a large company, the number of employees who want to take it can exceed 250–300 people, which means that an HR specialist has to spend two weeks e-mailing to make a list of all enrollees, test their language skills, and gather class dates and time preferences. Why waste all this time? Instead, configure a chatbot or an RPA bot that will do all the above in just two to three hours.

To enroll, an employee fills in an application in the messenger, thus providing the robot with all necessary information, such as:

· Preferred attendance option

· Training format (group/individual classes)

· Current level of English proficiency

· Preferred class schedule and time

All these data are then summarized in a table for an HR specialist to quickly form training groups.

Financial statements

Unfortunately, most companies spend a lot of time approving and paying invoices. This is due to an enormous flow of emails addressed to an accountant, with each request taking 30 minutes to process, as well as time-consuming request classification and manual logging. Some of incoming emails may remain unnoticed, as no business is protected from human errors.

When it comes to accounting tasks, an RPA robot can log requests, save documents to shared folders, create new folders if necessary, get system notifications, and automatically track and update a request status. This way, an accountant in charge can monitor the progress via a user-friendly interface and promptly address any debts. Ultimately, one request will only take 5 minutes to process, with a very small chance of losing a single email.

Optimized HR processes

A chatbot can advise job applicants on standard matters. Applicants usually reach a call center or employees they know, and thus fail to find specialists who are competent enough to answer their questions. Instead, a bot can become a single point of contact for applicants, while also accepting and classifying incoming CVs.

Onboarding is another important and time-consuming task that can be assigned to a bot, including mailing information about the first work day, orientation by a mentor, corporate events, and much more. This approach facilitates onboarding efforts for both new employees and HR team that can avoid many organizational routines and long-lasting Q&A sessions.

By the way, a chatbot can also streamline employment termination process. An employee can use a messenger to request a notice form and a termination checklist containing only those items that require the employee’s personal presence.

How much does it cost?

Robots can address many different challenges in line with specific business needs, from reducing call center’s workload to monitoring project progress. The bot price depends on the range of tasks. A simple consulting chatbot can cost one thousand US dollars, while a complicated system consisting of a bot and RPA can reach one million US dollars. For more information about various bots, please visit our website http://bots.nntc.ae/ where you can communicate with them yourself.

NNTC

Written by

NNTC

NNTC is an IT consulting and training company established in 2015 in Dubai (UAE)

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