Category: Talent Technology

How to Improve Your Candidate Experience

Posted on by epadmin

Candidate experience is becoming a popular topic of discussion in the talent acquisition and recruiting community—with good reason. According to a CareerBuilder survey, 78 percent of candidates say the overall candidate experience they receive is an indicator of how a company values its staff. What’s more, the same survey found that 86 percent of job seekers believe employers should treat candidates with the same respect as current employees.

The results of CareerBuilder’s survey illustrate that the lines between the candidate and employee experience are blurring, making it critical for organizations to strengthen their candidate experience. In this post, we outline the importance of improving the experience of your candidates and how organizations can streamline the hiring process.

What is the Candidate Experience, and Why Does it Matter?

In order to build a strong candidate experience, it is important to understand what is and why it matters.

So, what is the candidate experience?

The candidate experience is the sequence of interactions a job candidate has with an organization throughout the recruiting and hiring process. These interactions can include correspondence that a candidate receives from an organization’s HR department, recruiters and its software systems.

Common candidate experience touch points include:

  • An organization’s career site
  • Job advertisements
  • The online job application process
  • Any communication from an applicant tracking system
  • An organization’s interview process
  • Any correspondence with HR professionals, team members or leadership
  • Notifications about a candidate’s application status
  • Candidate rejection letter or job offer

What is a positive candidate experience?

According to Talent Board’s CandE Research Report, candidates rated “communication” as the number one way to engage talent. So, organizations looking to craft a positive candidate experience should communicate clearly and honestly with job seekers to create the type of candidate experience they value.

A positive candidate experience meets the following standards:

  • Communicates realistic expectations for the job and work environment
  • Clearly communicates an organization’s employee value proposition
  • Outlines all of the employment details to candidates upfront
  • Provides an easy and mobile-friendly application process
  • Respects a candidate’s time at all stages of the application process
  • Provides a pleasant and smooth interview experience
  • Seamlessly transitions selected job applicants into new employees
  • Maintains a kind and respectful process for rejecting job applicants

What are the Benefits of Improving Candidate Experience?

Improving candidate experience not only benefits candidates and job seekers, but it can also have a positive impact on an organization’s workforce. Below, we outline three ways a strong candidate experience improves the overall talent acquisition process.

Improve applicant retention  

According to research conducted by Indeed, applications with 45 or more screener questions lose 88.7 percent of their potential applicants to application abandonment. Improving the candidate experience often begins with refining the application process. A short and streamlined job application process will increase the likelihood of job seekers finishing job applications, thereby increasing an organization’s applicant pool.

Create a better first impression

Research from labor economists Lawrence Katz and Alan Krueger suggests a growing interest in joining the gig economy. The number of Americans working these “gigs” has risen from 10.1 percent a decade ago to 15.8 percent in 2015. Nearly 40 percent of workers in these jobs have a bachelor’s degree or higher. This means that organizations are not only in a battle with competitors for skilled talent but also with the candidates who may want to work for themselves.

To win the war for talent, organizations need to see the experience of candidates as more than just a part of the recruiting process; it is also a sales tool that can help win over top talent. A job application is often the first interaction a candidate has with an organization. So, making a great first impression on top talent with a superior candidate experience will help organizations differentiate themselves and stand out as great places to work.

Increase brand awareness

The candidate experience affects more than just job applicants; it also plays a significant role in how consumers view an organization as a whole. If an organization offers an exceptional experience, candidates are more likely to share the experience with colleagues and write about it online. What’s more, a survey conducted by Software Advice found that 71 percent of candidates are more likely to purchase from a company they feel treated them well throughout the recruiting process.

How Technology Can Help Improve the Candidate Experience

Technology continues to shape the way job seekers search for work and how organizations find and hire qualified talent. The rise of social and professional networking sites, mobile devices, job boards and online applicant systems means that creating a meaningful candidate experience often begins with crafting a technology-first approach. Below we list three ways in which organizations can use technology to improve their candidate experience.

Offer a mobile-friendly candidate experience

Research conducted by Indeed found that 78 percent of Millennials, 73 percent of Generation Xers and 57 percent of baby boomers conduct job searches from their mobile devices. This means that organizations looking to improve their candidate experience should look to create a mobile-friendly recruiting environment for job seekers. Organizations should make sure that their career website and other resources candidates may need while applying for job openings are mobile-friendly.

Affinix®, PeopleScout’s proprietary talent technology, is designed as a mobile-first platform for both candidates and recruiters, ensuring seamless engagement from any mobile device at any time throughout the application, scheduling and screening process.

Quick questions to ask yourself to improve the mobile the experience for candidates:

  • Is career-related text and content easily readable on mobile devices?
  • Are job pages optimized for better visibility in mobile search?
  • Is navigation of the career site and job application simple on mobile devices?
  • Will candidates have to go through trial and error to complete applications on mobile devices?

Clear Communication

Establishing timely and clear communication between candidates and recruiters is essential for developing a positive candidate experience. However, many candidates are left without feedback or status updates on their application. In fact, a Talent Board report found that 47 percent of candidates were still waiting to hear back from employers more than two months after they applied.

The right technology platform can help by sending automated messages to candidates via email or chatbot technology letting them know their application status. You can even craft messages letting a candidate know if they did not get the job. While missing out on a job is never pleasant, receiving prompt feedback communicates to a candidate that their application and time were respected.

Social Recruitment Marketing

Enhancing the candidate experience also means reaching candidates where they are. According to Social Talent’s 2016 Global Recruiting Survey, 37 percent of survey respondents said that social media is the primary source of finding candidates. This shift towards a digital hiring model has seen the traditional résumé be displaced by the online footprint of candidates which showcases their skills and experiences.

PeopleScout’s Affinix platform can help organizations reach digitally native candidates with customized ads, optimized job descriptions, personalized landing pages, career portals and recruitment marketing that elevates job postings with robust content and campaign management.

Conclusion

Learning from past mistakes and successes is essential to improving the experiences of your candidates. While there is no such thing as a perfect hiring process, learning and evolving processes and procedures will improve an organization’s ability to attract great talent and retain the strongest workers.

Healthcare Recruiters: How Technology is Improving Healthcare Recruiting

Posted on by epadmin

According to a recent study conducted by Georgetown, healthcare providers in the U.S. will need 5.6 million more healthcare workers by 2020 to meet the growing demands on the healthcare system. From 2010 to 2020, the healthcare industry will grow by more than 70 percent, from $1.8 trillion to $3.1 trillion. This will require the most dramatic workforce growth of any sector in the U.S. within the next decade. For healthcare organizations looking to keep pace with growth, investing in the right recruiting technology can streamline the recruitment process and help healthcare recruiters keep up with staffing demand. In this post, we outline how recruiting technology helps healthcare organizations stay ahead of the talent curve from the beginning to the end of the hiring process.

Optimized Job Descriptions

A well-written job description is essential for attracting the best candidates for open positions. Accurate and optimized job descriptions not only engages great talent but clearly outlining the scope of the position also ensures that once hired, healthcare workers can fulfill their duties and responsibilities.

Optimized job descriptions also enable healthcare recruiters to match the right candidates with available positions by documenting the specific responsibilities of each role, including the certification and licensing requirements, the physical demands of the job and the location of the facility.

By creating more appealing and inclusive job descriptions, healthcare organizations can also increase the diversity of their candidate pool while attracting better-fitting candidates to open positions.

Tips for creating appealing job descriptions include:

  • Use keywords in job titles and descriptions so applicants can find the postings more easily.
  • Make job descriptions concise and easy to read on mobile devices.
  • Answer the “so what?” question: what makes your healthcare organization a place job seekers should want to work at?

How technology can help optimize job descriptions

Technology can be leveraged to optimize and create more engaging job descriptions for both clinical and non-clinical healthcare positions. For example, some recruiting technology platforms can conduct sentiment analysis on job descriptions to identify the potentially biased language and suggest alternatives and synonyms for more objective and neutral terminology.

Removing biased language is not the only way technology helps healthcare recruiters optimize job descriptions. At PeopleScout, our Affinix® platform can help healthcare organizations improve job descriptions by optimizing career pages and job postings for search engines. One way the tool does this is by offering suggestions for optimized title tags for every job posting.

Examples of optimized title tags are:

  • Nursing Job Opening | XYZ Healthcare
  • RN Jobs Available, Chicago | XYZ Clinic
  • Hospital Food Service Jobs in Chicago | XYZ Hospital

Technology platforms that provide SEO guidance are also powerful tools for adding relevant keywords, which are crucial for job description optimization. Once relevant keywords are identified, recruiters can add them to the job description text, especially in the page title and subtitles, in order to help the page rank higher in search engine results for those specific keywords.

Helping Healthcare Recruiters Source Candidates

For healthcare recruiters, maintaining a steady pipeline of qualified talent is essential. Unfortunately, the tight healthcare labor market can make consistently sourcing qualified candidates difficult. What’s more, it can be difficult for healthcare recruiters to identify and keep track of previous applicants who may be a good fit for new roles.

The unfortunate reality is that many healthcare organizations lack the time and resources to source high-quality candidates consistently. This can add up to a lot of stress for those responsible for maintaining a healthy talent pool for an organization’s open positions.

How technology can improve sourcing candidates

Recruiting technology can help reduce the amount of time recruiters spend on sourcing candidates by finding more platforms, channels and databases to search for passive candidates. Beyond time savings, one of the more significant developments in recruiting technology is the proliferation of AI-enabled candidate sourcing, which has the following benefits:

  • AI-enabled sourcing tools can discover patterns in resumes, social profiles and other sources of data to find candidates that are ideal matches for a job’s requirements.
  • AI technology can help reduce bias in candidate sourcing by disregarding candidate demographics (e.g., race, gender, age) in its decision making.
  • AI algorithms crawl potential candidates’ online profiles and portfolios to help source passive candidates.
  • AI can be used to source both external and internal candidates by screening the existing resumes in a healthcare organization’s applicant tracking system (ATS) to find strong matches for current open positions.

Screening Candidates

The process of screening candidates, much like candidate sourcing, can be time-consuming for recruiters who are already stretched thin. Recruiters need to analyze workforce data, formulate job descriptions, verify candidate information and check references. To make sure recruiters are able to perform all of these functions, it’s important that the screening process is as efficient as possible.

How technology can help healthcare recruiters screen candidates

One of the most efficient applications of recruiting technology is utilizing AI to automate the resume screening process, especially for high-volume or high-turnover positions. Intelligent screening software that incorporates predictive analytics and machine learning to understand top talent behaviors and predict factors such as cultural fit. Smart screening that analyzes a healthcare organization’s existing ATS or CRM to figure out which candidates became successful and unsuccessful healthcare workers based on their performance and tenure and turnover rates make screening and hiring the top candidates easier than ever.

Digital assessments that test an applicant’s skills and capabilities are also making screening candidates easier. Hiring managers can deploy digital assessments to test aptitude, personality, and skills and use the objective data and results to help make more informed hiring decisions.

Interviewing and Hiring Healthcare Candidates

In the healthcare industry, it is crucial to attract and hire the most qualified candidates because many positions have a direct impact on patient care. Hiring the wrong candidate can be not only dangerous for patients but also costly, as healthcare organizations can face litigation for injuries sustained or maltreatment of patients by staff. The right healthcare recruiting strategies and interviewing techniques can ensure that healthcare facilities hire the best candidates.

How technology can improve the interview process

There are a variety of ways that recruiting tools and technology can improve the interview process, such as:

  • Automated interview scheduling that allows candidates to schedule or reschedule interviews themselves. All recruiters have to do is provide candidates with available time slots.
  • Digital video interviews that can be conducted be pre-recorded and viewed when it’s convenient for recruiters and hiring managers.
  • Chatbots that can help answer candidates’ questions and provide information on next steps in the recruitment process.

Conclusion

Technology streamlines the healthcare recruiting and hiring process by providing an improved experience for both recruiters and candidates. While technology can assist recruiters in improving the functions of the recruiting process, it cannot replace human touch, experience and instincts when it comes to hiring the best talent. Employers should look for a talent partner with comprehensive talent acquisition and workforce management solution, where technology is just one part of the puzzle.

How to Use Chatbots to Improve Recruiting

Posted on by epadmin

The use of artificial intelligence in recruiting is one of the most significant trends in talent acquisition. These solutions are driving candidate management and engagement in many ways, including through chatbot technology.

Chatbots have become much more advanced in the past few years, as natural language processing continues to improve. Much of the evolution is due to the improved technology that can read and respond more naturally to candidates.

Additionally, the growing popularity of products like the Amazon Echo or Google Home shows that people enjoy the convenience of chatbot technology.

Improving the Candidate Experience

As the talent landscape continues to tighten, a competitive candidate experience is essential to attract and engage the best talent. In addition, candidates have come to expect a consumer-like application and hiring experience that is similar to other interactions they’re having online and on their smartphones every day. Chatbots can help improve the candidate experience and address these challenges through their ability to interact with candidates on demand, streamlining and assisting throughout the application process on the channels candidates prefer and when they are available.

Chatbots are effective tools for candidate engagement, and they are continuously evolving to make the application process easier for the candidate. Many candidates need to complete application processes outside of normal business hours. Chatbots allow candidates to receive answers to questions immediately, at any time of day. They can also answer candidate questions on company policies, benefits or culture, and when it gets stumped, a chatbot can contact a human recruiter.

Through chatbot functionality, candidates can contact organizations around the clock.
Chatbots can also take on some tasks throughout the application process that would typically be done by recruiters over the phone or through email. Extended job application forms may feel time-consuming to job candidates. Through a chatbot, candidates can provide that same information in a conversational way that feels less daunting.

Streamlining the Process for Recruiters

Throughout the recruiting process, recruiters often take on tasks that are necessary but don’t add value for candidates. Chatbots can allow recruiters to spend more time with the strongest candidates by taking on some of the administrative tasks.

Chatbots can handle tasks like scheduling interviews. With a strong candidate experience enhanced by chatbot technology, recruiters will have a wider and stronger pool of applicants, which enables them to identify and engage with the best talent more quickly.

Additionally, one of the most significant issues facing us all is time. Chatbots can help recruiters gain more time in their days by taking on some of the time-consuming tasks that recruiters handle, like responding to simple questions, scheduling interviews and gathering basic information from candidates.

In this tight talent market, that extra time that recruiters spend with strong candidates will give employers an edge. The unemployment rate in the United States is around record low levels, so strong candidates will have several options. When a recruiter has more time to spend with those candidates, it increases the likelihood that the candidate will choose that employer.

Implementing Chatbots in your Recruiting

When rolling out chatbots in your recruiting program, it’s important to remember to strike the right balance between automated communication via chatbots and communication from a recruiter. Chatbots should be used for repeatable, automatable interactions, giving organizations the opportunity to enable recruiters to engage with best candidates in more high-value ways.

It’s important to remember that chatbots shouldn’t take on all of the candidate communication. They can automate some of the hiring processes, but candidates still need to interact with a recruiter. Studies show that candidates want an experience that includes a balanced mix of technology and human interaction – not just one or the other.

It is also important to keep in mind that simply launching a chatbot does not ensure success. Organizations need to take steps to continuously make their chatbots more attuned and responsive in order to drive successful engagements. This can take time, as well as the resources needed to understand the technology behind AI-enabled chatbots.

It’s also important to recognize that not all chatbot technology is created equal. Low-quality technology could mean that a chatbot would have a hard time answering common questions or respond inappropriately. That would harm the employer brand even more than relying on slower, more traditional communication. To make sure that the technology can effectively communicate, employers should look for a chatbot that is part of a larger technology solution that works throughout the entire application process.

For example, in Affinix®, PeopleScout’s proprietary talent technology platform, chatbot assistance is integrated within the technology stack in order to engage with and assist candidates during the application process. Through Affinix, we can integrate chatbot technology on an organization’s career page, during the interview scheduling process and to help candidates and recruiters prep for an interview, among other use cases.

Looking Forward

Chatbots can play an essential role in creating an improved candidate experience, but the talent acquisition industry has moved well beyond using just chatbots for communication. Now, AI and machine learning are transforming the industry. Rules-based onboarding functions, candidate sourcing, interview scheduling and candidate matching are being automated to enable talent acquisition professionals to spend more time with the best candidates and on critical talent acquisition functions that involve creative and strategic thinking. In addition to these evolutions, candidates may soon interact with chatbots primarily through voice, like Siri from Apple or Alexa from Amazon, rather than through text.

While chatbots, automation and AI are fundamentally changing candidate communications, we believe that striking the right balance between personalized technology and human interaction is key to success. PeopleScout uses AI and other emerging technologies that personalize the candidate experience while also enabling our talent professionals to spend more time on critical functions. Employers should look for a talent partner with a comprehensive technology solution, where chatbots are just one piece of the puzzle.

2017 in Review: PeopleScout Thought Leadership

Posted on by epadmin

Throughout 2017, we’ve covered the biggest technology trends impacting talent acquisition and we’ve seen the growing gig economy increase the need for Total Workforce Solutions programs. We’ve also seen a low unemployment rate and a large skills gap impact a variety of industries. As 2017 draws to a close, we’re looking back on our most important thought leadership from the past year.

Technology

To stay ahead in the constantly shifting talent landscape, it’s important to take advantage of the best technology solutions. In 2017, PeopleScout launched Affinix™, our propriety tech platform designed to help connect our clients with the best talent faster. These blogs and ebooks cover the technology you need to know to stay ahead.

Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning and Data Analytics: What Does it Mean for Recruiting

Defining the Terms of Data Analytics

New Ebook Download: Seven Tech Trends Shaping the Talent Landscape

Introducing Affinix – Empowering Faster Connection with the Best Talent

Does Your Candidate Experience Meet Candidate Expectations?

Four Applications of AI to Improve your Talent Acquisition Program

RPO, MSP and Total Workforce Solutions

RPO, MSP and Total Workforce Solutions are the core of what we do here at PeopleScout. As more people join the gig economy, Total Workforce Solutions are becoming even more important for employers who want a holistic view of their entire talent strategy

Lexicon for RPO, MSP and Total Workforce Solutions Terms

Whitepaper: Total Workforce Solutions: Optimizing Talent Acquisition by Blending RPO and MSP

The Outlook for Total Workforce Solutions: Why Now?

Designing a Total Workforce Solution

Ready, Set, RPO: What to Expect in a New RPO Partnership

Leave it to the Pros: Why Contingent Labor is Better Managed through an MSP

Gig Economy: Beyond the Buzzword

Recruiting in the Gig Economy

Five Key Drivers of MSP Programs

Diversity and Inclusion

Diversity and inclusion are important in every workplace. A diverse workforce increases business outcomes, but it can be difficult to attract diverse talent.

Getting it Right: Understanding and Managing Diversity in the Workplace

Creating an Effective Diversity and Inclusion Program

Workplace Diversity: Benefits of Hiring LGBTQ Individuals

Improving Racial and Ethnic Diversity in the Workforce

Age Discrimination in the Workforce: What Employers Need to Know

Veteran Hiring

The veteran hiring landscape has transformed over the past several years, and it’s important for employers to understand the needs of veterans and military spouses so that they can build veteran hiring programs to meet their needs.

Exploring the Veteran Talent Landscape: Why it’s Time to Focus on Turning Veteran Jobs into Veteran Careers

13 Best Practices to Hire Veterans

Ebook Download: Best Practices for Hiring Veterans

Hiring Our Heroes: A PeopleScout Commitment to Veterans and Military Spouses

Recognizing Our Veterans

Industry Outlooks

Disruptive technology and talent shortages are impacting different industries in different ways. It’s important to understand the factors impacting an industry to build an effective talent acquisition program.

The Commercial Driver Talent Landscape – Candidates are in the Driver’s Seat

Healthcare Talent Shortage: A Generational Divide

Managing the Skills Shortage in Healthcare

HR Functions

There’s more to building an effective talent program than just making good hires, you need to attract and keep the best talent.

Three Ways to Increase Employee Engagement

Four Ways to Strengthen Your Employer Brand and Recruit Top Talent

The Economy

It’s important for all talent acquisition professionals to understand the job market and the economic factors that could impact hiring. Throughout 2017, we dug deep not only into the U.S. Jobs Reports, but also the international unemployment landscape.

Dissecting the March Jobs Report

Dissecting the April Jobs Report

Dissecting the May Jobs Report

Dissecting the June Jobs Report

Dissecting the July Jobs Report

Dissecting the August Jobs Report

Dissecting the September Jobs Report

Dissecting the October Jobs Report

Dissecting the November Jobs Report

PeopleScout Events

Throughout 2017, we’re proud to have attended several industry events and to have hosted our client forum on the changing world of work. Additionally, we were honored to be named the Skills For Chicagoland’s Future 2017 Corporate Champion for the Unemployed.

PeopleScout 2017 Client Forum Wrap Up

Skills for Chicagoland’s Future: A PeopleScout Partnership to Aid the Unemployed

PeopleScout at the 2017 CWS Summit North America

PeopleScout APAC 2017 Innovation Forum

Defining the Terms of Data Analytics

Posted on by epadmin

Data analytics is a valuable tool for talent acquisition professionals, as specific data can be used to predict things like the success of a candidate or the time it will take to fill a position. It can also help build the type of candidate-centered hiring experience that’s necessary to stay competitive in this tight talent market.

However, sophisticated artificial intelligence and massive sets of data can make data analytics seem overwhelming and confusing. In order to understand what this technology can do, you need to have a basic understanding of what goes into the process. We’ve put together some definitions for the terms you need to know to start to take advantage of data analytics in your organization.

Big Data:

Big data is a simple sounding term, but experts say defining it can be surprisingly complicated. Forbes argues there could be as many as 12 different ways to interpret the phrase. Some of these explanations are practical like, “data of a very large size, typically to the extent that its manipulation and management present significant logistical challenges.” Other definitions focus on the forces that drive the use of these large data sets like, “a new attitude by businesses, non-profits, government agencies, and individuals that combining data from multiple sources could lead to better decisions.”

When we’re talking about how data can be used in recruiting, think about big data as the raw material, the large sets of information, that can be used to make predictions and inferences about candidates, employees and staffing needs.

Small Data:

Data doesn’t have to be big to be useful. For many organizations, smaller sets of internal data can provide critical insights. According to the Harvard Business Review, small data is data of a manageable size that is already somewhat organized, and it mostly comes from your own data systems. Most organizations have been using small data for years.

Data Analytics:

Big data and small data are useless unless you have a way to analyze it; that’s where data analytics comes in. An article in the International Journal of Information Management calls data analytics the “efficient processes to turn high volumes of fast-moving and diverse data into meaningful insights.” There are a few types of data analytics – descriptive, predictive and prescriptive.

Descriptive Analytics:

Descriptive analytics describe what happened in the past. Descriptive analytics software combs through large or small data sets and produces useful information about trends and patterns. According to Information Week, the purpose of descriptive analytics is simply to summarize what happened.

Predictive Analytics:

Predictive analytics is the next step. It uses data to find patterns and then uses those models to attempt to predict the future. Predictive analytics can’t tell you what will happen, but it shows what is likely to happen based on past trends.

Another way to look at it, according to PC Magazine, is that predictive analytics is something you can do with AI, machine learning and deep learning. Predictive analytics takes large sets of data and then applies these different forms of technology to see trends and patterns that would be difficult, time-consuming or possibly impossible for humans to accomplish alone.

Prescriptive Analytics:

Prescriptive analytics is a type of predictive analytics that goes a step further. Rather than just predicting what could happen in the future, prescriptive analytics goes so far as to recommend one or more courses of action, as well as the likely outcomes of those decisions, according to Information Week.

Not only can prescriptive analytics predict what is likely to happen, it can also predict the best course of action for a person to take to get a particular outcome. Think about prescriptive analytics as predictive analytics with the ability to make a decision.

AI, Machine Learning and Deep Learning:

Artificial intelligence is an umbrella term. Put most simply, it is a branch of computer science that involves computers doing things normally done by people.


We use AI to perform data analysis because having humans process and analyze all the information would be overwhelming, time-consuming, expensive and in most cases, nearly impossible.

Machine learning and deep learning are the next steps in artificial intelligence, where computers are able to learn how to do something without being specifically programmed how to do that one thing. Machine learning develops algorithms, which are procedures or processes for solving problems. Deep learning is a type of AI that mimics the way the human brain works.

This is especially important to predictive and prescriptive analytics, where the goal is to look beyond what happened in the past and find ways to apply it to what might happen in the future.

What Can Data Analytics Do?

Data analytics technology has applications throughout the entire sourcing and recruiting process. The ability to make predictions and suggest a certain course of action can give employers a better understanding of factors like how long it will take to fill a position or what kind of salary and benefits package will be required to secure a successful candidate. When it comes to candidate success, predictive analytics can use candidate assessments to predict how successful a person will be in a given role and even how long they may stay with the company. Armed with that information, organizations can make better hiring decisions.

If you’re in the business of working with people, at first, data analytics can seem cold, but when applied correctly, it can actually make the hiring process more personal. Candidates leave data behind whenever they go online, log in to a social media profile or make Google search. Marketers are already tapping into that information to personalize and target content. Talent acquisition professionals can make that same data work to customize the sourcing and recruiting process.

We’ll have more on what data analytics can do for the industry and what issues to watch for on the blog in the coming weeks. To learn more about AI, machine learning and deep learning, read our blog post about what they mean to recruiting.

Data analytics is one of the top seven tech trends impacting the talent acquisition industry. To learn more about some of the possible impacts and the six other trends, download our ebook: Seven Tech Trends Shaping the Talent Landscape.

Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning and Data Analytics – What Does It Mean for Recruiting?

Posted on by epadmin

In popular culture, artificial intelligence is the stuff of science fiction from HAL 9000 to Wall-E. AI has also worked its way into our daily lives with virtual assistants like Siri and Alexa. Technological advancements like driverless cars make headlines. Now, artificial intelligence has the potential to transform the hiring process.

Defining the Terms

If you aren’t entrenched in technology, trying to understand the mechanisms behind AI can be headache-inducing.

Artificial intelligence: Artificial intelligence is the umbrella term. Put most simply, it is a branch of computer science that involves computers doing things normally done by people.

The definition of exactly what we, as a culture, call artificial intelligence changes over time. For example, Microsoft Excel’s ability to complete mathematical calculations doesn’t seem like artificial intelligence in 2017, but when it came out in 1985, that’s what it felt like.

Now, virtual assistant programs like Siri and Alexa feel like artificial intelligence because we can talk to them and they respond in the most human way we can expect from computers. Looking forward though, it’s likely the artificial intelligence of the future will make these current iterations look simple.

Machine Learning: Machine learning is the next step in artificial intelligence, where computers are able to learn how to do something without being specifically programmed how to do that one thing. Machine learning develops algorithms, which are procedures or processes for solving problems.

Examples of machine learning are everywhere. Email spam filters learn how to identify spam depending on context and subject. Facebook’s photo tagging algorithm learns to recognize faces based on previous tags.

Machine learning has a lot of potential. According to the Harvard Business Review, corporate investment in artificial intelligence is expected to triple in 2017, and experts expect the talent acquisition industry to see major impacts from machine learning advancements.

Deep Learning: Deep learning is one step deeper in AI. It’s a subsection of machine learning that uses computers designed to mimic the way the human brain works.

According to Forbes, deep learning is already common in everyday life. It’s used by Google in image and voice recognition. Netflix uses it to recommend shows, and Amazon uses it to predict your purchases.

Predictive analytics: Predictive analytics uses data to find patterns and then uses those patterns to attempt to predict the future. Another way to look at it, according to PC Magazine, is that predictive analytics is something you can do with AI, machine learning and deep learning. Predictive analytics takes large sets of data and then applies these different forms of technology to see trends and patterns that would be difficult, time-consuming or possibly impossible for humans to accomplish alone.

What’s Possible Now?

These technological advancements are already making an impact on the talent acquisition industry. New technology solutions are developed every day on the cutting edge of what AI can accomplish.

One major application for AI identified by Harvard Business Review is sifting through job applications and selecting the best candidates for the next step in the process. Applicant tracking systems already search through resumes, but AI advances can make them better, moving beyond keyword searches. The impact of AI can start even earlier in the hiring process, like using AI to source candidates by searching through social media profiles.

AI helps remove bias in the hiring process. AI structured interviews also help recruiters and hiring managers focus on relevant skills, and AI interview analysis uses data analytics to predict how successful a candidate will be at a position. TLNT further explores the ability of technology to sort through resumes, looking only at relevant information rather than social cues that may sway recruiters or hiring managers.

AI improves the candidate experience as it becomes a part of the entire hiring process. Studies already show that people prefer chatbots over humans for customer relations. That could apply to multiple stages, from applications to initial interviews and scheduling. AI also makes sure candidates don’t get lost in the process, an issue that’s frustrating for candidates and time consuming for recruiters. At PeopleScout, we use AI technology that allows candidates to feel like they’re talking with a real person and lets them to apply through a conversation instead of a long, impersonal process.

The interview process is also seeing the impact of artificial intelligence. Digital interviewing can allow for live or on-demand video interviews and can also use artificial intelligence to provide reports that analyze verbal response, intonation and nonverbal communication.

Where Do We Go Next?

The question of what is possible in the talent acquisition industry through artificial intelligence is the most difficult question to answer because the possibilities are constantly evolving.

On a different level, AI will change the jobs the talent acquisition industry needs to fill. AI skills will become indispensable. Transportation companies are already looking for workers to maintain driverless fleets, rather than drivers to sit behind the wheel. New industries and job titles demanding new skill sets will emerge and demand innovation from talent acquisition.

AI is one of the top trends impacting the talent acquisition industry. To learn more about how it could transform recruiting, check out our AI in Recruiting Handbook for Talent Acquisition Leaders.