The most important thing managers and leaders do in an organization is to hire the right people for the right job. At the moment, the recruitment process has become a very dynamic one and is in constant change. We are currently experiencing an impressive increase in the use of technology and automation in almost every aspect of the recruitment industry. Will recruiters be replaced by robots and artificial intelligence?
Artificial intelligence and the automation of the recruitment process
Undoubtedly, the automation of the recruitment process and the integration of artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms into these systems has brought a number of benefits and changed the way candidates are selected. The most important benefits of automating recruitment are as follows:
• Accelerate the process of selection of candidates, reducing the time spent by recruiters in the analysis and sorting of CVs.
• Quickly identify candidates with the qualifications appropriate to the specificity of each job and eliminate the inappropriate candidates before starting the interview process
• Reduce the recruitment process time and cost by up to 40%
• Increase company performance by 20%
• Reduce the workload of HR employees and allows them to spend time with other activities
Although at the beginning recruitment automation was looking for keywords in candidate CVs, things have evolved a lot and we can talk about smarter processes in CV analysis and even interviews conducted by robot. There are three major directions in the development of automated recruitment systems, which we will further detail with advantages and disadvantages.
Automatic analysis of CVss
Manually processing CVs is currently the most time-consuming activity for a recruiting specialist, as they are spending an average of 23 hours on this task for one job. At the same time, 88% of CVs received for a job ad are not qualified for the job. The greatest benefit of automated CV analysis through Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning components is that it significantly reduces the processing time of CVs for the first selection stage of candidates. The system knows what job requirements and skills are searched for and filters the CVs received according to these criteria, calculating different matching scores that help recruiters. In addition, these components can learn from recruiters' decisions so that they can improve their recommendations.
The downside is that if the filtering algorithm is not performing well enough, candidates that fit the profile can also be removed. To ensure that CV processing approaches that of a human expert, a semantic analysis based on Natural Language Processing algorithms is required. For example, Google receives over 50000 applications a week, of which 60% are removed from the start because of grammatical or spelling mistakes. It is possible that among those automatically rejected they are also suitable candidates for the job, who have a little inconsistency in writings the CV.
Chatbots assisted recruitements
A chatbot is a robot who talks with candidates to make an initial assessment of their skills, thus improving the candidate's recruitment experience and providing real-time feedback in real time.
In real time, a recruit bot can:
• Collect information from candidates, such as their resume and contact information
• Ask questions about the candidate's experience, knowledge and skills
• Classify candidates by calculating metrics such as competencies, engagement or recent work
• Answer job related questions and guide candidates in the recruitment process
• Schedule an interview with a human recruiter
Over time, the learning component of the recruitement bots will begin to understand what metrics should look up based on the data collected and classify candidates accordingly.
Although 66% of the candidates say they are comfortable talking with a chatbot, a recent study shows that 82% of applicants feel frustrated with the excessive automation of recruitment and believe that technology has made the process too impersonal. Chatbots can make a technical assessment of the candidate, but will not consider behavioral and emotional intelligence.
Interview with a robot
If you can order a robot pizza, why couldn’t you pass an interview with a robot? Given the technological progress of artificial intelligence, the new recruitment trends are moving towards replacing the human recruiter with robots even at the interview stage. These systems are based on analyzing the words, speech patterns and facial expressions of the candidates to make the assessment. However, no matter how advanced the humanoid robots are at this time (e.g. Sophia), their emotional intelligence, understanding of human emotions and empathy is still far from human capabilities. The added value of an interview with a human recruiter is very important in selecting the right candidate, especially from the perspective of attitudes and appropriate behavioral profiles which are aligned with organizational values.
Conclusion
In the context of the current digitization, it is obvious that the role of recruiters will change through the adoption of automation solutions for the search and selection process of the candidates. Although the advantages of recruiting automation could overcome counter arguments, it is prudent for recruiters to combine technology with the human factor in the process of selecting the right candidate. According to the study "Trends and Challenges in HR" conducted by Valoria, the most important strategic challenge for HR in companies is to maintain a high level of employee engagement, which is difficult to achieve only through technology.
