Changing jobs is so important for candidates! They deserve to be treated as the unique individuals they are. Artificial intelligence is a tool, but it will never replace the intimacy of person-to-person talent engagement. AI will certainly have a role in helping automate and streamline sourcing and screening, but as you move into the interviewing phase, the human touch is a must.
Talent engagement is vital because the hiring marketplace is still hot. Despite talk of recession and layoffs in some industries, 77% of organizations maintained their hiring pace in 2022. And although new job listings declined toward the end of 2022, 60% of HR decision-makers still expect to increase hiring in 2023. However, many continue to worry about candidate dropoff.
In a still-competitive hiring environment, it is imperative to streamline and speed up your hiring process. Otherwise, candidates will simply give up on you or, worse, get spirited away by some other firm.
24/7 availability is a fact of life
Your candidate may be several time zones away. Candidates who are currently employed may be available to you only in the evenings or on the weekends or when they’re driving in their car. And the always-on nature of communication technologies means we can connect with one another in an instant.
Candidates expect responsiveness and a human response can be most powerful in building your reputation with candidates. So meaningful engagement requires that recruiters and HR staff be accessible, available and act as advocates throughout the process.
That includes speedy acknowledgment of their application and frequent feedback as the interviewing process progresses, especially if the candidate is pursuing multiple job opportunities simultaneously. It includes explaining the “why” behind concerns about their candidacy or reasons they were not chosen for this particular position. And it includes maintaining contact after the process comes to an end.
AI can offer real value
Certainly, HR teams want and deserve personal downtime, but it’s still a candidate’s market, and you have to accommodate that. Artificial intelligence in the form of auto-responders and chatbots can augment your team when humans are away and make your humans more productive when they are officially at work.
AI can perform initial applicant screenings or send an alert to a candidate in your pool when a potentially interesting position comes open. Bots can handle interview scheduling. Automating these mundane, repetitive tasks can improve candidate experience and allow HR humans to focus on the personal side of recruiting and hiring.
Greater efficiency is good for harried HR teams, but it may not be best for candidates.
Don’t underestimate the human aspects of recruiting
Some in the staffing industry suggest that AI can assist with career counseling. At Power-4, we believe over-reliance on AI can lead to a disconnect with candidates rather than improved engagement. Why? Because the process should be consultative, not transactional. You have to get close to candidates in order to understand who they are and what they are looking for, so you can help them effectively. AI is great, but people still yearn for your opinion. And for your subject matter expertise.
Would you turn over all your company’s legal or finance/accounting tasks and decision-making to AI? Of course not. AI may be capable of identifying skills that fit a particular position, but not when it comes to subjectively assessing cultural or personal fit.
More than half of candidates are applying for positions outside their current expertise. How will AI make sense of that? Quickly winnowing obviously unqualified applicants is one thing, but the nuances are complex and highly individual when it comes to transferrable knowledge or skills. Recruiters and HR teams are looking for people who can bring peak performance regardless of their resumes.
There are increasing data privacy concerns, diversity, and inclusiveness about using AI in hiring or upskilling processes. If the goal is DEI, but algorithms are supposed to be unbiased (and there is controversy about that, too), how is an AI to know what traits are “good” and what filters are detrimental?
Talent engagement matters because candidates are people. If every aspect of attracting, hiring, and retaining employees was quantitative, AI could take over the process entirely. But it’s not, and as yet, AI is not able to humanize the process. We’ve all had terrible, frustrating experiences attempting to interact with chatbots when visiting websites or reaching out for customer service.
Just as the candidate wants to stand out with you, your company has to stand out in their mind. You can do that by focusing on the human side of talent engagement.