3 Ways Recruitment Automation Will Change the Talent Acquisition Process

Adrian Dixon

June 27, 2020

post featured image
Data-Driven Approach to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Download

The growing need for recruitment automation tools has fueled the recent popularity in AI for recruiting. Talent acquisition teams are now delegating their taskload and automating repetitive, manual tasks to allow the time for more strategic work on a daily basis.

With hiring volume predicted to increase next year but recruiting teams remaining the same size or shrinking, interest in recruitment automation will only get stronger.

Finding top talent will depend on a recruiter’s ability to intelligently automate their workflow.

Recruiting teams are also facing increased pressure to demonstrate data-based KPIs. Talent acquisition leaders are increasingly measuring their recruiting teams by quality of hire in addition to time to fill.

According to LinkedIn’s data, the most important recruiting KPIs are:

  • Quality of hire is the top priority for 60% of talent acquisition leaders
  • Time to fill is the top priority for 28% of talent acquisition leaders

recruiting KPIs improved by recruitment automation

Advances in technology have transformed finance, sales, and marketing departments and industry experts believe recruiting technology is now a necessity to maintain a competitive edge.

By streamlining some aspects of the recruiting workflow, experts predict recruitment automation will enhance a human recruiter’s capabilities.

Here are three major ways recruitment automation is changing talent acquisition.

1. Recruitment automation for resume screening

One of the most promising applications of recruitment automation is for resume screening due to three main reasons.

  1. Manually screening resumes is still the most time-consuming part of recruiting.
  2. Up to 88% of resumes received for a role are considered unqualified.
  3. A recruiter spends on average 23 hours screening resumes for a single hire.

Although screening resumes is still the biggest bottleneck in recruiting, technology to address this problem has only recently become available.

Powered by AI for recruiting, intelligent screening software automates the resume screening process. Designed to integrate with an ATS, the software learns what the job requirements are and then learns what qualified candidates look like based on previous hiring decisions.

Leveraging machine learning for data insights can be a gamechanger for evaluating your talent automatically.

Using employee data on performance and tenure, the software figures out which candidates went on to become successful and unsuccessful employees.

This type of recruiting software can also enrich resumes by using public data sources about previous employers and candidates’ social media profiles.

AI fits into the recruitment automation process in the screening step. Intelligent screening software applies the knowledge it learned about employees’ experience, skills, and other qualifications to automatically screen, rank, and grade new candidates.

Recruitment automation applied to resume screening promises to be a boon to reduce time to hire because it automates a low-value, repetitive task that most recruiters hate to do anyway.

How does this impact your talent acquisition team at the end of the day? Automated resume screening allows recruiters to re-focus their time on higher value priorities such as talking to candidates to assess their personalities and culture fit.  

2. Recruitment automation for pre-qualification

In the current candidate-driven market, candidate experience can make or break whether a top candidate accepts your job offer. Recruitment automation in the form of chatbots holds the promise for improving the candidate experience.

CareerBuilder’s data found 67% of job seekers have a positive impression of a company if they receive consistent updates throughout the application process.

recruitment automation through chatbots

Recruitment automation in the form of chatbots allows human recruiters to provide these consistent updates in real-time by asking pre-qualifying questions related to the job requirements and providing feedback, updates, and next-step suggestions.

By automating repetitive tasks such as answering the same questions about a job, chatbots enhance the pre-qualification capabilities of a human recruiter without additional strain on their time.

3. Recruitment automation for interviews

Recruitment automation for interviewing augments recruiters’ capabilities by allowing recruiters to conduct interviews anywhere any time.

Digitized interview technology records candidate interviews and assesses factors such as their word choices, speech patterns, and facial expressions to predict how well a candidate fits the role.

Recruitment automation applied to interviewing promises to improve quality of hire by providing additional data points on how well the candidate fits the job requirements or company culture.

The takeaways for recruitment automation

Industry experts believe recruitment automation will augment and enhance human recruiters’ abilities, rather than completely replace them. 

Recruitment automation is changing recruiting in three major ways:

  1. Automated resume screening that reduces time to hire by saving recruiters the hours spent manually reading resumes.
  2. Automated pre-qualification through chatbots that enhances the candidate experience by providing continuous, real-time feedback.
  3. Automated interviews that improve job fit by analyzing candidates’ words, speech patterns, and facial expressions.

As the adoption of recruitment automation continues to increase, the recruiter role will change.

Talent acquisition is a marketing role, not a sales one.
       -Maren Hogan

Industry experts predict that by reducing time to fill and improving quality of hire, technology will enable recruiters to become more strategic by freeing up time to spend on proactive hiring and workplace planning.

Ironically, recruitment automation will enable recruiters to become more “human” as their skills in candidate engagement and persuasion become more important to compete for talent.