The other day I watched a Facebook live of a recruiting pro panel talking about AI and chatbots and the impact on recruiting. One guy said they were coming to take away recruiters jobs. Another gal compared it to letting a robot write your legal documents so you don’t have to talk to an attorney.
First things first. AI stands for artificial intelligence. In short, software being able to do tasks that are usually carried out by humans. Decision making, visual, voice, and translation. AI has been around for years actually – from AI-powered ATS’s to scanning hundreds of resumes for keywords. If done right, AI is there to help recruiters find the needles in the haystacks. But…
Before you can do any AI or cutting-edge technology, you need relationships with hiring managers. Start by meeting with your hiring manager before you do your search. Create a Google form that captures all the information related to what they want a successful hire to look like. Many people call this a “recruiting intake form.” At a minimum, print a paper form, have a call or meeting with them, and write down what they say. Then follow-up. Not cool technology but effective.
Once you have the relationships and boring form out of the way you can use AI to make your wildest dreams come true, like…
- Save time. How about using a robot to schedule interviews or send out job offers? Hmmm.
- Remove bias. Instead of using your gut or a good feeling, church buddy or bunko friends – use some pre-selected software to predict the success of a candidate so you can use less of your feelings and base your decision more on data.
- Find candidates. Use software to scan all over social media to find candidates. This helps the recruiter get more people and faster at the top of the funnel.
- Improve the candidate experience. AI-infused chatbots never take a day off, not even paternity or maternity leave. Midnight or Sunday – your candidate’s questions can get answered.
For the skeptics – yes AI will not solve everything. Watch out for software products that claim to predict everything. Many candidates are nervous when interviewing or maybe they just like to put their hands in the pockets when they talk so they use fewer hand gestures. How do you replace empathy or contextual understanding with AI? Seems like a stretch to me.
AI can do the mundane and boring work most people don’t like so they can focus on more interesting tasks, like building relationships with hiring managers over good coffee and helping them solve big problems.
AI is here – get after it once you have the relationships with your hiring managers.
PS need a basic recruiting intake form to copy? Click HERE.
Ben Martinez – family guy, coffee critic, planker, and HR & Recruiting journeyman. He has successfully worked in HR leadership roles around the US and Mexico for Fortune 500 companies (Pepsi, Honeywell, and Energizer). Most recently he was the VP of People & Culture for HireVue, where he hired 400+ people in almost five years using video, social media, and created the employment brand, VueNation in partnership with HireVue.
Ben now runs his own consulting company, Ramp Talent, where they ramp recruiting and HR for startups. From recruiting ready-to-go talent to implementing ongoing best practices to preventing legal headaches, we build the first HR and recruiting systems for fast-growing startups.
PS – coffee is for closers – Ben founded an e-commerce subscription coffee company focused on re-imagining coffee in the workplace and home – Sumato Coffee Co. They only roast your beans within 48 hours of your order.
Ben lives in the SLC, Utah area.