Whether recruiters love it or hate it, the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in recruitment strategies is likely not going anywhere soon. In fact, according to this article from The Guardian, most recruiting executives currently use AI in at least one part of their recruitment or hiring processes.
That means to stay ahead of the competition, progressive-minded recruiters will need to make the most out of all available tools that can help them hire better.
One of the areas where these tools can be applied to is candidate quality, while decreasing the time it takes to source candidates. This is where AI-based tools can come in to help, by finding better candidates from multiple sources and automating what can be automated for recruiters.
The key to unlocking AI’s potential in your recruitment strategies is understanding that AI (at least in its current state) must not replace the decision-making part of the hiring process. Rather, it should be used as a tool to help find the best candidates before a human makes the final hiring decision.
And in this article, you will learn everything you need to know about using AI-driven candidate recommendations to improve your recruitment strategies. Read on to find out how you can maximize the value of these tools and take your candidate sourcing to the next level.
What artificial intelligence (AI) is, and how it’s used in recruitment
In short, AI is intelligence that comes from machines. Originally coined as a term in around 1955, AI was first developed simultaneously with new computing technology. Originally developed for uses in computer science, it soon found its way to other industries, namely manufacturing.
Fast-forward to over 60 years later, AI has entered the world of marketing (AI-driven copywriting and designing), as well as recruitment and hiring.
Although it is unclear exactly when AI was first used in recruitment, we can clearly see that interest in the term “AI recruitment” has grown significantly since the start of the 2000s, peaking in March 2022:
(Source: Google Trends)
In response to this demand, we have seen the introduction of thousands of services to support recruiters’ needs to improve their recruitment strategies, such as AI-based resume and CV scanners, and automated job posting.
And considering that there could be a talent shortage of over 85 million jobs globally by 2030, it is no wonder why recruiters are getting a head start on anything that will help them find more and better people faster than their competitors.
READ MORE: How AI Helps Recruiters Ace Hiring Goals
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The benefits of using AI in your recruitment strategies
Now that we have covered the origins of AI, let us explore the main reasons why recruiters have started integrating it into their recruitment strategies.
1. AI helps you save time in the recruitment process.
According to this article by the Society for Human Resource Management, recruiters typically deal with 30 to 40 open requisitions at one time.
Think of it in terms of output, and it will be clear why most recruiters need a helping hand. Imagine managing 40 job openings at once, where each opening is posted on eight different job boards. That is 320 different posts to keep track of at once, along with all the applications from those different posts.
With the help of AI, recruiters can work with pre-selected candidates from the entire list of applicants. It also helps eliminate the instance of duplicate applications, by creating candidate profiles in a recruitment database.
This saves hours of valuable time that would otherwise be spent cross-checking whether an applicant has already applied or not.
RESOURCES: Here are some ready-to-use (and free!) job description templates to get started.
2. AI helps improve recruiters’ productivity while saving the recruitment firm’s money.
Using AI to save time also comes with significant financial value. By improving productivity, one recruiter can be responsible for more monthly recurring revenue for their recruitment firm, without having to add several hours to their work day.
This spells more growth opportunities for recruiters, as it increases their chances of being high-value team members. And for the company, it minimizes the need to hire more recruiters without first maximizing progress for existing team members.
3. AI can help improve the likelihood of finding the right candidates.
Modern AI in recruitment can be used in a recruiter’s search for great people to work for their clients, by expanding their talent pool. Specifically, current recruitment AI has the ability to recommend passive candidates–as in, people who are currently working elsewhere–to your job openings, based on their skills, experience, and overall relevance to the opening.
This effectively turns hours of cold emails to passive candidates into minutes of browsing one’s talent pool for potentially great fits for each role.
How to use AI in your recruitment strategies
Now that we have covered the biggest benefits of using AI in recruitment, let us understand how AI-driven technology can be applied to your recruitment strategies. Keep in mind that with each method of integration, the goal is to use AI as “help” to make the final hiring or qualifying decision easier, not replacing the recruiter’s job.
AI in recruitment can most commonly be seen within recruitment SaaS, such as applicant tracking systems (ATS). And with a reliable ATS comes AI-driven candidate recommendations, to help make life as a recruiter easier.
Here are different ways that AI-driven recommendations can improve your recruitment strategies:
1. Scanning and parsing candidate information
For recruiters, there is generally an overwhelming amount of information on resumes and CV’s that need to be viewed, analyzed, and categorized every day.
With a comprehensive ATS or other recruitment software, AI can be used to collect and analyze information from applicants and resumes in minutes. So instead of sifting through each resume manually, recruiters can now get a simple list of candidates who fit a job opening’s criteria.
Information that AI can help analyze in recruitment includes skills, work experience, and educational background, among other elements.
With an ATS like Manatal, for example, all results are automatically cross-referenced with your talent pool to ensure you get the best recommendations for the role you are looking to fill.
2. Relevancy ranking
Another way that AI helps simplify your choices for a candidate shortlist is by providing you with relevancy rankings for every candidate in your talent pool. This means that every candidate that is recommended or selected for a role will come with a percentage, which reflects their likeness to your role’s requirements.
For example, this is how relevancy rankings look like on Manatal’s ATS:
As you can see, all candidates have relevancy rankings attached to them. This makes it much easier to move candidates up or down the pipeline, especially in a time crunch.
Keep in mind, though, that the decision to select a candidate is still entirely yours. Hence, the percentages are only treated as recommendations, based on criteria that you customize for the role.
In each role, you can select filters and specify the degree of importance to finding a great candidate for the role, like this:
If you are looking for someone who needs to be the main communicator in a client’s team, you would increase Communication and Employee Engagement in this list. If the job you are hiring for requires hard skills like the ability to create financial statements, Finance and Financial Statements would remain a higher priority, for example.
3. Candidate profiles
Another game-changer linked to AI’s involvement in the recruitment field is the ability to automatically generate candidate profiles of every person in your talent pool.
These candidate profiles typically include a brief summary of the candidate, their resume, publicly available social media, your emailing history with them, and the jobs they have applied for within your organization or with your clients.
The best part is that all of this information is contained within one page, under separate tabs. Here is what a candidate profile looks like on Manatal’s platform:
Their core skills are also available for display, making it easier for you as the recruiter to match them to the right job opportunity.
Candidate profiles were introduced as a time-saving feature, to eliminate the need for recruiters to manually do background checks on all potential candidates. With this AI-driven assistance, you can use that saved up time to optimize your recruitment strategies, by allocating more time to doing things that generate more revenue, like taking in more clients or finding better candidates.
YOU MIGHT LIKE: Keeping Candidate Profiles Secure with Recruitment Tech
4. Boolean search
The objective of using recruitment technology in the first place is to make things faster and more effective. This is why it is also crucial to use a recruitment system that has boolean search capabilities, to find candidates more accurately.
Originally developed in the 19th century, boolean searches involve using operators (search terms) to either broaden, limit, or more accurately define your search.
Think of it like using a search engine, but instead of regular search results, you are getting a list of candidates who match your criteria for the role you are looking for.
Manatal’s boolean search feature, for example, works the same way a typical google search would work:
As seen in the screenshot, the candidate search engine allows you to use the operator terms to find all sorts of candidates who could more accurately fit your criteria.
All search results are already based on candidate profiles, their social media, resumes, CVs, and candidate tags that we discussed above. This can be a great help whenever you receive a recruitment request for a very challenging industry, like IT.
Inputting the specific skills or location you need will greatly help focus your energy and time on finding the absolute best people for the position you are looking for.
RELATED: 5 Steps to Improve Your Recruitment System for IT Hires
5. Posting channels
Although this last point is not exactly purely AI-driven, it is equally valuable in the world of AI-assisted hiring.
Time-saving technology should give you the ability to automate all that can be automated. And one of the most time-consuming parts of being a recruiter is posting and monitoring job openings.
Manatal allows its users to share jobs on over 2,500 free and premium channels and job boards, where multiple job postings can be done at once, instead of one by one.
The best part is all applicant information across every single channel you selected will be stored directly in the ATS, meaning recruiters can now monitor all applicants under one platform.
Here are some examples of job boards where you can post multiple openings at once with Manatal:
The combination of being able to receive applicants on one platform and having access to AI-driven candidate recommendations is a crucial pillar for success in modern recruitment strategies.
And now that we have covered the main ways that AI and automation can improve your recruitment strategies, let us conclude with what you can take away from this article.
What can you take away from all this?
1. Understand that AI will likely not be going anywhere any time soon.
The world has pushed forward with AI, and now that it has made its way into the world of recruitment, recruiters all over the world are making the most out of these available tools.
Manatal alone currently has thousands of clients across 135+ countries, and each of these recruitment firms and HR leaders have access to these AI-driven capabilities.
As time progresses, AI will likely be a staple requirement in next-level recruiting. Thus, if you have not made AI or automation a part of your recruitment strategies, it is recommended to start with at least any step that can be automated, like job posting, for example.
2. AI in recruitment should not be treated as a replacement for recruiters. Rather, they should assist recruiters in making the best hiring decisions.
Hiring very much involves people, and people operate with emotions, feelings, social skills, and empathy; The list goes on.
Currently, these AI-based tools help human recruiters make better hiring decisions based on providing them with more information on their candidates. And if you have ever juggled hundreds of applications at once, you will understand why such technologies have surfaced, and are being used by so many recruiters today.
To find out how Manatal’s ATS with AI-driven candidate recommendations can help you transform the way you recruit, sign up for a 14-day free trial today!
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