Six Specific Steps to Success
How do you improve candidate and hiring manager satisfaction and deliver better quality candidates? To begin, you need to ask yourself who your customer is. Whose satisfaction is most critical to your success? I believe that answer to this has equally been the hiring manager or human resources. They judge you on speed and cost with little consideration for satisfaction.
And yes, the hiring manager is your initial customer. They are giving you an order to fill, and their expectation and your goal are to provide them with prompt, high-quality service.
Even though, in many ways, the candidate is a “product” to be sourced, qualified, and delivered, they are also customers who also expect prompt, high-quality service. By not providing it, you increase dissatisfaction and potentially damage your brand and the reputation of recruiting.
So the more complex and useful answer is that you have two customers, the hiring manager and the candidate.
We have generally failed to satisfy either party using our traditional methods, as it is tough to serve two masters well.
So what can you do? How do you deal with this dilemma?
With the advent of powerful AI-based tools, we now have a chance to change the equation. We will need to develop a strategy and a working model to provide exemplary service and create a satisfied customer. By enabling both AI/automation and developing better skills at the human interface, for example, in influencing, overcoming objections, using judgment, and having good decision-making skills, we can serve two masters effectively.
Six Steps to Success
#1. Develop a strategy driven by step-by-step goals.
Use Figure 1 below to help you think through and develop a comprehensive strategy for using both AI and your skills. This strategy will include a timeline for acquiring and implementing AI and overcoming legal and privacy concerns within your firm. A significant part of successful strategy implementation is getting buy-in and support from management. This will take time and will have to be implemented in a piecemeal way to begin.
#2. Start with essential tools.
Begin with using ChatGPT, for example, to help hiring managers write job descriptions. Use a Chatbot to greet candidates and answer their questions. Make sure your career site is accurate, comprehensive, and connected to the application process as seamlessly as possible. These will get you on the road to a fully integrated approach. Eventually, all the HR and recruiting tools you use need to be integrated. The data they collect with the candidate’s permission and awareness is how you can continuously improve the quality of candidates and automation. This is a tricky step, but necessary for AI to have the data it needs to be accurate.
#3. Provide as much personalization as possible.
The whole point of incorporating AI is to make the candidate experience fruitful. Candidates who come to your site and explore the opportunities should leave with a clear idea of their suitability for the positions you have. The goal is not volume but the quality of applicants. AI will reduce the number of people who apply or enter into serious consideration leaving only very qualified people showing up on the recruiter’s desktop. A personal experience, whether it results in a job or not, will be remembered positively.
Outside the organization, the candidate is king and your primary stakeholder. On the inside, the hiring manager is clearly your number one stakeholder. However, the career site, screening tools, and your processes must make the candidate the most important ingredient. The goal of your career site and marketing efforts is to make the job-seeking process satisfying and informative for every person.
#4. Over time harness the full power of AI and automation that puts the candidate first
Through its automation and machine learning capabilities, AI reduces time spent screening resumes/applications and scheduling interviews while better matching candidates with suitable roles.
Here are a few benefits of using a chatbot and AI.
Automated Screening: Using natural language processing (NLP), AI can screen resumes or applications based on pre-defined criteria set by recruiters and hiring managers, saving time spent on each application manually.
Candidate Matching: By analyzing job requirements & candidate qualifications, AI can suggest suitable candidates with matching profiles for specific roles. This provides a more objective and accurate screen. Recruiters can always revisit any candidate to verify or improve the matching algorithm.
Interview Scheduling: AI can automate interview scheduling by coordinating between recruiter & candidate availability using chatbots which send automatic reminders/updates, thus freeing up the recruiter’s time to focus on other tasks
4 . Customized Feedback Reports: Based on screening and assessment data from interviews or tests conducted, Ai can create feedback reports that indicate strengths/weaknesses of individual candidates and, if desired, offer developmental suggestions making their next job search even better informed.
Bonus AI Services
AI can provide extra personal services for candidates outside the job application process.
-Job Search Assistance: Through a chatbot integrated with the career site, candidates could ask questions about available positions at different companies, including company culture information such as team dynamics allowing them to make better-informed decisions regarding their career choices.
-Resume/CV Writing Support: With AI-powered tools like resume builders, candidates would be able to get feedback on their resume and learn how to create resumes optimized for Applicant Tracking Systems used by most employers,
-Personalized Career Guidance: As part of the onboarding process, a chatbot could offer candidates personalized career advice based on their skills, experience & educational background as well as industry trends so they can confidently navigate the job market.
-Interview Preparation: Candidates could get help preparing for interviews via AI-powered mock interview simulations or by accessing best-practice guides from recruiters, thereby improving their overall performance during the selection process
#5. How the hiring manager benefits
The savvy hiring manager using AI tools will find the hiring process easier, faster, and better. Here are just a few of the benefits.
-Job Description Optimization: With AI algorithms analyzing jobs and job descriptions across various parameters like the skills currently being used, traits of the most successful current employees, and different salaries, hiring managers can create far more accurate job descriptions that align with the company’s culture, budget, and needs.
-Talent Sourcing: AI can identify people already in the organization who may have most of the skills needed. While this may be controversial, the hiring manager can play a more significant role than they do now in sourcing candidates. AI allows a hiring manager to search outside the organization and suggest suitable candidates without going through a recruiter.
-Interview Assistance – At a basic level, a chatbot could provide the hiring manager with questions to ask the candidate. But, a chatbot fully integrated into the software used during video interviews could guide the conversation between the hiring manager and the candidate and provide prompts/questions tailored to each candidate’s unique profile. AI could also rank various candidates for the hiring manager.
#6. The Role of the Recruiter
AI will not eliminate the need for recruiters, but it will drastically change what you do. As I have written before, you will need new skills to remain effective.
By thoroughly incorporating AI into your processes, you improve the candidate and hiring manager experience and free up time to do things you do not have time for now.
Reducing your workload by only 25% gives you the equivalent of a workday of uncommitted time. For example, this time can be used to learn new skills, spend more time in conversation with prescreened and qualified candidates, or with hiring managers coaching them on better interview skills.
Warning
While I advocate integrating AI into your process, I do so with the warning that this is not going to be an easy journey. There will be legal and privacy concerns. It will seem like it is failing at the beginning, especially when a human does something better than it can do. There are many stories of how AI failed, gave bad information, or even lied. Like all new things, it has limitations and bugs that will be fixed.
This is a journey for the brave. For those willing to go where none have gone before.
Book A Talk
If you would like me to speak at an event, virtually or in person, or give your team a briefing, I would be pleased to discuss it with you.
Help Me
It really helps to have your financial support to generate articles each week and bring you unique features occasionally. Your small investment makes a huge difference to me.
As a paid subscriber, you can access past articles and white papers over four years. This is not available to free subscribers.
Paid subscribers can start threads using the new Chat feature.
Your subscription keeps this newsletter ad-free and unbiased.
A few times a year, I publish something just for paid subscribers – a white paper, report, or podcast – I try doing two or three of these yearly.
Thanks for considering upgrading to a paid subscription.
Could You Use A Trusted Advisor?
If you are looking for guidance or help in becoming a more strategic leader, we may be able to help. For the past twenty-five years, I have been helping recruitment leaders in major corporations, non-profits, and NGOs to redesign, improve, or transform their talent acquisition functions. I work with you as a partner to assess and improve your processes, find and remove constraints, create more engaging career sites, and choose the most useful and relevant technology. I will work with you as a coach, mentor, or consultant – whichever meets your needs. I have only one goal – to make recruiting strategic and pertinent to your organization. Let me know if I can help. Send me an email at kwheeler@futureoftalent.org.
Recent Comments