How AI Navigates the Candidate-Driven Market

Artificial Intelligence is becoming a more prevalent part of our lives. From movie recommendations on entertainment platforms to self-driving cars, many people are now starting to wonder if there’s anything machines can’t do or won’t be able to do at some point in the future. The advancements are visible in any area of life, including business.

This expands the recruitment industry. Many companies are now implementing AI in their hiring processes to satisfy the needs brought by the change in the market, which is now becoming much more candidate-centered.

In this article, you’ll learn what it means for recruiters and how you can start utilizing Artificial Intelligence in your organization.

What Is AI?

Artificial intelligence, or AI, is the simulation of human intelligence in robots that have been trained to think and act like humans. It’s founded on the idea that human intelligence can be defined so that a machine can simply replicate it and carry out activities ranging from the most basic to the most complicated. The goal of Artificial intelligence includes simulating human cognitive processes.

How Is AI Used in Recruitment?

Artificial intelligence has many different applications, especially in fields where large amounts of data would be challenging, if not impossible, for humans to deal with manually.

Recruitment is one of the fields in which AI supports teams, particularly in the following two areas.

1. Screening

Artificial Intelligence helps businesses sift through a vast candidate pool and select those with desirable characteristics. Questionnaires, coding exams, interviews, and CV analysis are standard ways for companies to assess candidates.

In the screening process, Artificial Intelligence already plays a significant role. AI is able to examine resumes for desirable qualities such as a specific amount of work experience or a relevant degree. Interviews can then be extended to applicants who have these characteristics on their CV.

2. Recommendations

What is perhaps one of the most important contributions of AI to the recruitment process is its ability to not just screen candidates’ profiles, but also provide a list of recommended candidates, through what is known as candidate scoring. This particular step is a semi-cognitive one, which means that the value of AI, as defined earlier in this article, is used to its fullest.

For recruiters, getting a list of high-potential and highly qualified candidates based on AI recommendations would cut down on time spent doing the same.

Manatal’s AI recommendation engine, for instance, recommends the most suitable jobs for your candidates and the most suitable candidates for your jobs within seconds, based on customizable criteria set beforehand.

How You Can Benefit by Recruiting with AI

Implementing Artificial Intelligence in your organization can significantly decrease the costs associated with processing the data manually, but there’s so much more you can accomplish by allowing machines to support your HR department, including:

1. Minimize Bias

The last thing we want is for our judgment to be influenced by bias when identifying the appropriate applicant for the position. Fortunately, AI comes to our rescue, assisting recruiters in filtering out the best candidates based on predetermined skills and experiences.

AI-powered preselection software enables recruiters and hiring managers to make data-driven judgments rather than purely gut-based decisions.

2. Enhance Candidate Experience

A candidate’s application to any role is often tied to an expectation: what is the outcome of my application? Nobody likes to be left in the dark. Here’s where the Artificial Intelligence features like fast candidate screening cut the time taken for recruiters to narrow the list. As a result, candidates are quickly sorted into those who make the next round, and those who are unsuccessful this time around.

By cutting the wait time on applications and outcomes, recruiters can enhance the candidate experience by notifying candidates quickly — no matter the outcome. At this stage, recruiters are also able to let unsuccessful candidates know that although they didn’t make the cut this time, there’s always an opportunity next time. This ‘keeping the door open’ move is essential to build rapport and keep candidates in the know.

3. Source Top Talents

Candidates’ online presence, such as social media profiles and publicly-available data, can be analyzed using AI-powered tools. Based on this data, the technology can make predictions. For instance, you can learn how likely people are to take a job, and what careers they may be interested in. It can also look at profiles of candidates who have already begun working for the company.

The software can discover people with comparable personalities and skills by merging all available data. It can determine which candidates are likely to be interested in specific jobs and send them relevant job postings.

What’s a Candidate-Driven Market?

A candidate-driven market is something that employers don’t often recognize until they’re faced with the prospect of hiring. Too often, employers hear this phrase without fully comprehending its meaning. It’s a problem that all companies face when it comes to hiring because candidates are typically in the driver’s seat, able to demand more than simply the greatest wage.

A candidate-driven market acknowledges that candidates today frequently receive several job offers, with their existing employers attempting to entice them to stay on as employees by making counter-offers.

It’s not just about the money anymore, especially on the back of The Great Resignation. It’s about the entire package — candidates have a wide range of options that may provide higher salaries, more flexible work schedules, better study help, and a comprehensive professional development plan. If an organization cannot provide the experience and compensation that a candidate seeks, it would risk losing an applicant to a competitor who can.

Why Focus on Candidates?

You might be wondering whether focusing on candidates is the right solution. After all, it requires a bit more resources and doesn’t have a 100% success rate.

To further convince you that the candidate-driven approach in the future, consider these three benefits:

1. Relationships

A candidate-centric strategy leads to a scenario that is mutually advantageous. Not only are candidates pleased because a recruiter has assisted them in finding a position that suits them, but employers are also satisfied because they now have a new employee who can contribute to their company’s success. When both parties needs are addressed, the odds of a healthy, longer-term relationship grow exponentially.

2. Reputation

People in the same industry will always keep networking and sharing information, especially that related to employers. If your process impressed a candidate, they’d be sure to spread the word to fellow professionals who might be interested in your organization. Similarly, if you deliver a poor experience, they’ll share that too, and others will take note.

3. Transparency

When you show transparency in what you do, candidates will be more likely to trust you, which translates into making well-informed decisions about joining your organization. Sharing things such as benefits, duties, and other information related to the position and company generally makes you seem more genuine and human.

How You Can Start Implementing AI in Your Organization

With all the benefits Artificial Intelligence can bring to your company, you might be wondering whether it’s as tricky as it might seem to implement. The truth is that it’s not that hard. Here’s how you can implement AI in your recruitment process in three easy steps.

1. Source candidates

Thanks to AI, you can give each candidate customized and highly targeted packages, allowing you to tailor your outreach and specifically address the needs of each individual. It can be accomplished by following a candidate’s online behavior and giving them personalized information and communications based on their preferences.

In addition, recruitment software can analyze hundreds of thousands of social accounts in seconds. On job boards and sites like LinkedIn, can find both passive and active candidates depending on their job title, industry, geography, experience, and more. It’ll ensure that you reach out to your prospective candidates wherever they are, considerably expanding your talent pool.

2. Examine resumes

During the hiring process, determining the quality of potential recruits is critical, and AI can assist you in finding the ideal candidate by matching an applicant’s experience and talents to the job requirements. Recruitment software can automatically rank and shortlist the best candidates based on the established abilities, experience, and attributes required.

The abilities being screened for can either be determined by hiring staff or by AI technology, analyzing an existing employee’s experience and success and basing the screening on those findings.

3. Keep an updated database

AI-powered recruitment technology, especially applicant tracking systems, is capable of accepting and organizing resumes from multiple channels, including employee referrals. In addition to that, AI-powered ATS systems like Manatal screens and scores candidates based on their suitability and likely fit for the role, making it easier for recruiters to prioritize which candidate to approach first for current or future open positions.

Top 5 recruitment technology trends

Artificial Intelligence has been at the forefront of recruitment over the last years, along with any other technological advancements that recruiters must be aware of if they want to keep making the best decisions. Here are some trends we expect to take over recruitment in 2022 and beyond.

1. Mobile technology

To keep candidates involved in the process, job search and application processes must be user-friendly and mobile-optimized. When you combine this with the rise of social media in recruitment, the need for your job boards and applications to be compatible with these social networks and mobile-based applications becomes critical in allowing candidates to access vacancies quickly and easily, ensuring a seamless candidate journey.

2. Working from Home

Be aware that the ability to work remotely, at least part of the time, will be a major motivator for many employees, increasing their commitment to the company and boosting their well-being. Many businesses are increasing their use of remote workers. The good news is that allowing employees to work from home has improved employee retention, loyalty, and happiness.

3. Managing Candidate Relationships

Candidate Relationship Management or sometimes referred to as CRM, is a hot topic in 2022. This is the practice of building and sustaining strong, meaningful relationships with previous, current, and potential candidates. As a result, you’ll be able to expand your talent pool, which you may use, and when new opportunities become available. An ATS like Manatal is a prime example of an intuitive AI-powered tool that lets you understand your candidate pool better, and decide how to approach building solid relationships with them. More and more, especially this year, recruitment technology will be used to help you nurture your talent pipeline and improve candidate engagement.

4. Automating Repetitive Tasks

Historically, recruiters and recruiting managers have spent a lot of time on manual or repetitive tasks. Filtering through massive amounts of potential applications, for example, is frequently mentioned as a critical source of frustration in the industry. These technologies can dramatically reduce hiring costs, streamline recruitment processes, and assist recruiters and hiring managers.

*First published on Manatal.com.

*To read the full article, click here.

Manatal is an end-to-end recruitment and onboarding SaaS platform trusted by thousands of brands in over 135 countries worldwide. It is an AI-powered Applicant Tracking System (ATS) and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tool that allows companies to hire faster, better and save costs.