How Artificial Intelligence Will Change Talent Acquisition

Traditional hiring models are becoming ineffective, and a rapid transformation to automated recruitment processes is in the works.

Covid-19 has been the most significant factor in pushing enterprises to accelerate their digital transformation strategies across all operations and functions. The growing distributed workforce and evolving customer priorities will also impact the talent acquisition needs of the future. In 2021, organizations across sectors and industries scout for talent equipped with emerging skills and capable of delivering post-transformation services.

However, given the pandemic-induced social distancing protocols putting physical meetings on hold, it has become hard for companies to select high-potential candidates through conventional hiring processes. Tech in Asia, which collated 274 responses, mostly from companies in Southeast Asia, said more than 50% of respondents were facing challenges in finding qualified candidates for open roles.

It is no wonder that technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) have arrived on the recruitment scene to fill in some gaps. Organizations, too, are suddenly more open to trying out digital recruitment tools to future-proof their recruitment strategies.

Let’s look more closely at how technology in recruitment can impact the future of hiring.

Pre-selection and assessment of candidates

In 2021, AI in recruitment will become even more pervasive and allow companies to let their HR teams focus on other productive tasks such as knowing their top talent to make a definite selection decision. For example, using tools powered by artificial intelligence, a candidate may be assessed remotely on their communication and negotiation skills using pre-recorded questions.

Talent leaders continuously struggle to discover quality talent, lessen hiring costs and time-to-hire. Their most significant challenge is to shortlist the right candidates from an extensive pool of applicants.

While several companies have been utilizing the AI-powered recruitment models to fast-track interview screening processes, in the post-COVID world, it will become a mainstay for organizations. Using powerful ranking algorithms, businesses can:

Screen thousands of applications at a fraction of the time humans take
Automate sourcing efforts by categorizing potential fit faster
Provide valuable insights around the candidate’s mindset and behavioral patterns.

Besides checking technical skill-sets required for performing the job, AI will help organizations assess the resilience levels, learning ability, and agile mindset of candidates – enabling organizations to focus on a wider spectrum of candidates’ personalities in today’s virtual world.

Effective decisions through predictive analytics

Evaluation of various aptitudinal attributes, which was seamless in a physical environment, is challenging to carry out in the virtual recruitment environment. Virtual facades can often mask more than reveal, thereby making it harder for human intelligence to make a duly informed assessment.

By leveraging predictive analytics, organizations can accelerate their recruitment processes, correlate past performance interference, and build data blueprints for the foreseeable future.

While these data-driven processes have been in place already, in 2021, it is likely to evolve further and enable HR functions to take meaningful decisions. For instance, by using predictive analytical models, HR transformation solutions provider NLB Services help businesses stay connected with their talent communities, regardless of whether there’s an immediate need for their expertise or not. By leveraging transformative digital technologies, the solution keeps a proactive, engaged, and targeted talent pipeline for current and future recruitment.

Using the right KPIs, HR functions can:

Get critical insights such as the candidate’s overall skills and work-location experience
Obtain engagement scores
Predict whether a candidate is a potential dropout or an actual joiner
Forecast talent processes’ outcomes and offer a higher return on investment (RoI)
Discover the critical intrinsic personality qualities of the job applicants

Exceptional hiring experience

In the post-COVID world, engaging and attracting the best talent will be more challenging for organizations simply because of the increased competitiveness. In a virtual evaluation process, candidates expect to be treated like a consumer. They expect interactive channels to address their doubts at every stage of recruitment.

AI-powered chatbots can help enterprises provide exceptional hiring experience to their potential candidates. For instance, accessing the candidates’ calendar, chatbots can automatically check their availability and schedule an interview.

Automated recruitment chatbots can:

Enhance quality engagement with candidates
Educate and inform about the company and its policies
Speed-up the interview scheduling process
Amplify automation
Provide consumer-like hiring experience to candidates

In the next twelve to eighteen months, chatbot solutions will be widely tested and leveraged to respond to various aspects of recruitment, such as measuring resumes, sending job applications to candidates, and evaluating candidates’ interest in joining a company.

Gamification of recruitment

New virtual recruitment models will see organizations abandon boring, time-consuming interactions and assessment tests to examine a candidate’s behavioral and cognitive skills. Through AR and VR, the skill-evaluation rounds will become smarter and more interactive by incorporating gamification elements.

For example, a few years back, in one of the firsts, Lloyd Banking introduced VR technology-based assessment as part of their recruitment process for Graduate Leadership Program candidates. The technology tested the candidates’ competencies on various parameters and determined how they could approach different challenges through real-life simulations.

Gamification interview models also equip organizations to give candidates an immersive experience and help them realize the real-life work environment sitting remotely.

Overall, the lessons learned from this pandemic will go a long way in enhancing the role of technology in recruitment and selection. However, before adopting automated recruitment tools and technologies, organizations must perform a comprehensive analysis of their custom requirements and reach out to expert recruitment technology companies such as NLB to leverage the most of breakthrough innovations.