Recruiting With AI In 2023: Your Questions Answered

Artificial intelligence (AI) has quickly become an integral part of many aspects of the business world since its inception in the mid-20th century. It has shown particular promise in improving finance, IT, and marketing functions due to its ability to streamline processes and enhance service delivery.

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HR activities, including recruitment, are another area in which AI can have a massive impact on the many employers who struggle to connect with the right talent, make lasting hires, and retain employees. These challenges are the main reason that AI recruitment is expected to become more commonplace in 2023.

That isn’t to say that the ways every employer is using AI for recruitment are productive or delivering the desired results. As with any technology, adopting AI to cope with buzzy trends, and without considering factors like your employees’ skill sets and how it will support specific objectives, can lead to wasted investments.

Fortunately, there are abundant examples of how AI has been implemented successfully for recruitment efforts. It proves that AI recruitment solutions deployed effectively can contribute to significant productivity gains and provide insight into the recruitment activities that are working - as well as those that aren’t.

How Do I Define AI’s Place in Recruitment?

Before moving full steam ahead with plans to implement AI across your recruitment organization, it is essential to discuss what the technology is capable of today to understand what goals it could help recruiters achieve in the future. There is a lot of hype surrounding AI, so it is essential to suss out viable opportunities to leverage this rapidly-expanding technology.

In simple terms, AI is a field of computer science in which machines are configured and trained to make decisions and perform functions that were previously only possible by humans.

As IBM puts it, AI “combines computer science and robust datasets to enable problem-solving.” What we know of today as AI is actually an umbrella term that includes the fields of machine learning and deep learning.

We see AI applications all around us through speech recognition services like Siri and Alexa, e-commerce chatbots and automated cross-selling recommendations, and self-driving cars - to name a few.

For recruitment teams, AI recruitment has helped them automate hiring tasks and drastically reduce the time it takes to source candidates. What used to take days - and even weeks - of manually reviewing resumes can now be completed in minutes to help recruiters fill positions faster.

With the time saved identifying candidates, recruiters can spend more time ensuring that they are hiring the best cultural fit for their organization and that the organization is being represented favorably.

AI recruitment also leads to better-quality hires. With AI, recruiters can quickly review candidates’ professional experience and other predetermined qualifications to find the best possible fit for a job in their database, as well as send out skill assessments.

During the interview process, chatbots can also enhance candidate experiences by ensuring that basic questions are answered in a timely fashion, interviews are scheduled efficiently, and candidates remain updated and engaged.

Costly issues associated with employers ghosting candidates or candidates dropping out of lengthy interview processes can be eliminated with AI recruitment. These features can increase the chances of a lasting hire for organizations.

In the coming years, AI will continue to expand and evolve as businesses come up with more commercial applications for the technology. The AI engineering market itself is projected to grow at a CAGR of 35% between 2023 and 2032 from USD $8 billion in 2022.

This shows the immense potential that businesses across industries believe AI has. The immediate future will see the expansion of generative AI, which can create new content such as audio, writing, video, code, images, and simulations. The introductions of Chat GPT and CodeT5 have drummed up a lot of mainstream buzz for their ability to create text and code, respectively, in seconds.

According to McKinsey & Company, generative AI could manifest in HR with the creation of interview questions and enhancement of self-serve HR functions such as employee onboarding.

This can help to standardize candidate experiences, ensure that the most vital information is being obtained in the hiring process, and reduce the time that recruiters spend answering basic questions - especially when there is a large number of applicants or many job vacancies to fill.

These efficiency measures will contribute to reductions in hiring costs over time and improve metrics such as time-to-hire and turnover rates.

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AI versus Human Workforce?

There have been many predictions that automation will ultimately replace the work of humans, and while some repetitive tasks may be taken over by AI, in HR, human labor will remain essential.

That begs the question: how will workers and AI coexist in HR? Despite the impressive benefits that AI recruitment can deliver to recruitment organizations, it can’t replace the value of candidate experience that interpersonal interactions provide.

While candidate experiences can be augmented by chatbots, interpersonal communication is still a vital aspect of the interview process. It is an opportunity for recruiters to develop a relationship with candidates and assess whether they will be a good cultural fit for the organization.

AI can quickly identify candidates for a job, but recruiters will still need to review these selections to verify that they are indeed the right people to interview for a job. Recruiters will still need to ensure that the criteria set for the AI engine are correct and hiring is done in line with the organization’s core values.

Essentially, AI will be crucial in supporting the work of recruiters as their responsibilities and hiring challenges in the current environment increase.

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Can AI help in tackling bias?

Another benefit that is often discussed when talking about AI recruitment is the elimination of structural biases that are regularly perpetuated by humans - either knowingly or unknowingly. 

With predetermined criteria set, AI can select candidates based on their qualifications and not consider factors like race, ethnicity, or gender.

Yet, recent studies still indicate that companies have a long way to go in terms of achieving diversity & inclusion (D&I) goals. Only a third of large firms in 15 countries tracked by McKinsey significantly improved their diversity figures between 2015 and 2020. 

The rest have stalled or gone backward. How well then is AI working to eliminate bias if hiring disparities still exist?

The truth is that AI only works as well as the information fed to it. AI can reinforce biases if it isn’t given data to counter them. Recruitment teams should focus on reviewing their D&I initiatives to make updates as needed, address issues that are undermining their goals, and write more inclusive job listings. These steps can ensure that AI recommendations reinforce diversity and inclusion goals.

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How Do I Get Started with AI technology?

AI will be a significant feature of recruitment in 2023. The question now for recruitment teams is how can they access this powerful technology. The good news is that many recruitment tools are powered by AI, from applicant tracking systems (ATS) like Manatal to onboarding, employee engagement, and career development. 

Many of these solutions are low-cost and simple to implement in your recruitment organization. The key is to select a solution that supports integrations with other HR solutions and holds information security and compliance in the highest regard.

Manatal’s AI recommendations cross reference job descriptions with your specified criteria, such as skills, experience, and education, to select the best-qualified candidates for a role.

Recruitment teams have the ability to customize their search criteria and personalize how the data is structured to ensure that it aligns with D&I goals and the company’s values. It makes searches for niche skills simpler and more efficient.

If you are interested in learning more about how Manatal’s AI-powered ATS can benefit your recruitment team, watch this quick explainer video below and start a free trial today.