Over the last couple of years, we’ve looked at the impact of various technology on recruitment. But more recently, we’ve noticed a lot more talk within the industry about the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI), and its benefits in terms of greater efficiency and less unconscious bias.    

We’ve covered robot recruitment, virtual reality and the effects of digital transformation in recruitment; now it seems the latest technology to be used to make recruitment more efficient is AI.

According to many of its advocates, AI has the ability to speed up hiring, improve the candidate experience, reduce time and costs and, importantly, cut out any unconscious bias to help meet inclusion and diversity objectives. But how can it do all that?

How AI works for recruitment

AI, or Artificial Intelligence, uses powerful algorithms to automate time-consuming tasks such as screening conversations between recruiters and candidates. This predictive technology analyses hundreds of behavioural data points for each candidate to build a picture of how that person thinks in relevant work scenarios.

Any personal data is anonymised to prevent bias, and the systems will rank candidates against the hiring organisation’s parameters such as education, experience and special skills. Both recruiter and hiring manager will then decide who to take forward to the next stage, with the system keeping everyone updated throughout the process.

The benefits of using AI

Most obvious is being more consistent in hiring the right people for the right role. It’s estimated that hiring the wrong person at mid-management level costs a business around £132,000 in recruitment, training, re-hiring fees and reduced productivity – so getting it right can make a big difference to your clients.

The technology also makes for a much better candidate experience, with rapid updates on progress and chatbots that can offer immediate answers to questions.

For recruiters themselves, AI offers several advantages.

It eliminates any unconscious bias by anonymising data (try as we might, being human means we subconsciously make decisions based on gut instinct)– and uses more personality-based criteria to judge candidates, as opposed to the traditional CV that only really provide details of a person’s education and job experience (and how often have you found candidates lying on their CV?).

We cover the impact of unconscious bias in recruitment in more detail in our blog, how to write inclusive job descriptions, which also offers up some tips on how to eliminate bias and improve accessibility of your job postings).

Cost and efficiency savings

Most crucially though, using AI tools could drastically cut costs for recruiters. For example, they can source candidates already in your database who have previously applied for similar roles, reducing sourcing costs by up to 30% with less reliance on expensive job boards; reductions in screening timeframes, from initial job posting to interview, of up to 60% are not uncommon; and time-to-hire can be substantially reduced, with one IT client reporting a 50% improvement, with the quality of candidate applications also improving by a factor of three.

Other ways to improve efficiency

On the face of it, AI offers recruiters immediate benefits such as speeding up and diversifying the recruitment process, while future-proofing recruitment strategies and practices.

But there are other, more traditional ways you can improve your recruitment agency’s efficiency – which is where Back Office can help.

Our recruitment funding and payroll management services take care of time-consuming admin tasks from paying contractors on time to chasing payments and keeping up with compliance and regulation – all designed to give you more time to focus on doing what you do best and growing your business.

Like to find out more? Just talk to any of our team on 01260 280 290 or just drop us an email.