The recruitment process is never as simple as it sounds, it can take far too long and it can be far too uncertain. For candidates especially, this can be a negative and daunting experience.
As AI continues to develop within the recruitment space, there has been widespread discussion towards the positive impact it could have on the recruitment process for job seekers. Especially in terms of time and bias, but what do our panel of experts think? Will AI really improve candidate experience for the better?
Jonathan Kestenbaum
For one, I think artificially intelligent bots will make great career coaches. I am still unclear on whether candidates will enjoy the experience of talking to a robot over a human being, but I am sure that the instant feedback candidates can get from Chat Bots will give them a level of satisfaction impossible today.
Jonathan Kestenbaum, Executive Director, Talent Tech Labs
Cheryl Cran
Candidates will be able to ‘interview’ and ‘get the inside scoop’ on employers via AI – Siri, Google Talk, Alexa and more will provide instant information for candidates to prepare for interviews and find out relevant data to ‘nail the interview’.
Cheryl Cran, CEO & Future of Work Expert, Synthesis at Work Inc
Nathan Perrott
If we can deliver a relevant experience to the candidate using real AI (there is a lot of ‘fake AI’ out there at the moment), then the benefits are huge. For example, personalising and contextualising the candidate experience at all stages of the recruitment process can only have a positive impact on the employer brand. AI can also be used to anticipate and predict candidate actions in order to provide the right content, information and call to action at the right time, in the right format and in the right place.
Nathan Perrott, Director of Digital Marketing Strategy, AIA Worldwide
Adam Glassman
In a word? Tremendously. AI will be the top of funnel entry point but also the brains behind many of our talent attraction efforts. It will be smart enough to know “John the Candidate” from “Joe the Candidate” and will provide personalized experiences for each of them. Candidates will love it, as it will provide them the information they need faster and easier than ever before. Recruiters will love it, too, as it will find the purple unicorn candidate in a matter of minutes, not weeks.
Adam Glassman, Recruitment Strategies Manager, Alorica
Hung Lee
AI might be the technology that finally kills the CV blackhole. Perhaps the most frustrating part of any candidate experience is the lack of feedback and information on the status of your application. This is almost always a human labour / prioritisation issue. AI will solve this problem really soon – I anticipate AI chatbots to widely adopted by most corporate businesses to provide real time / on-demand information to candidates on where they stand in the recruiting process.
Hung Lee, CEO, WorkShape.io
Chris Russell
I see it affecting things like pre-screening questions, FAs and scheduling. Candidates will likely interface with bots to pre-screen themselves, ask questions and schedule interviews.
Chris Russell, Managing Director, RecTech Media
Bryan Chaney
We’ve always used technology to automate the things that we either don’t enjoy or that we don’t do well. As AI continues to creep into recruiting, I feel that our acceptable threshold will get further and further from real human interaction. If we know that we’re not dealing with a real human, our expectations change based on previous experiences. Meaning, we get more patient when we realize we shouldn’t expect too much. After all, automated communication is better for the candidate experience than no communication at all.
Bryan Chaney, Director of Employer Brand, Indeed
