Three ways to speed up the process

Guest post by Quantexa

Finding the right person for the job isn’t easy. First, you need to define the scope of the role, pair this with a competitive salary, and then put an advert out and hope you get a pool of suitable candidates. Then, you’ve got to review the applicants and work with the hiring manager to sort several rounds of interviews, all before actually getting contracts signed – it’s no wonder the average recruitment process takes around 42 days. 

To combat this, in recent years recruiters and in-house talent acquisition specialists have started to turn to technology to automate processes and speed up tasks where they can. One such technology is artificial intelligence (AI) – a move that some of the industry are in favour of, whilst others say it removes the personal element of recruitment. 

Whether you’re only interested in using AI for a few small tasks or want to revamp your whole recruitment process, we’ve put together some of the things it can help you with. 

Creating job adverts 

Writing job adverts is time consuming, and is often a task that can become irritating, especially when you’re hiring for multiple roles at the same time. Whilst no job advert should get published without human approval, AI can give you a great starting point, based on the job descriptions or key points that you feed it.  

AI can also rewrite your job description for specific audiences, or simply provide suggestions on how it could be improved. Getting an external opinion in this way can encourage you to keep your job adverts fresh and relevant, hopefully boosting your chances of the right candidate seeing it. 

Filtering candidates – within reason 

Using AI to filter candidates is one of the areas where opinions are divided within the recruitment industry. AI isn’t capable of original thought or critical thinking, so some professionals believe that using it to review applications can mean that great candidates get missed, just because they don’t have the right keywords in their CV or cover letter, or have the expected qualifications. 

However, there is no denying that it can speed up the process. If you’re using standardised questions, as opposed to just a CV and cover letter, this technology can pull out the answers that most closely match your expected benchmark. Plus, AI isn’t biassed in regard to decision making – so it will filter candidates purely based on their responses, rather than name, gender, age etc. You can then manipulate this data easily in a spreadsheet, saving large amounts of time and gaining a clearer picture of your applicants trends. 

Keeping candidates informed 

As a candidate, it can be frustrating to send an application off and never hear anything back. Some people may send regular chaser emails, only increasing your workload, whereas others will feel that the lack of communication reflects badly on your company. But with potentially hundreds of applicants to manage, replying to every email manually isn’t sustainable or profitable for recruitment agencies. 

AI can help create automated workflows, allowing candidates to check in on the status of their application with little to no input from you. Furthermore, it can send messages based on this status – so if you change a status to ‘not suitable’, for example, the candidate will receive a prepared communication stating that their application won’t be continuing. This significantly reduces the amount of time and in-house resources required throughout the recruitment process, ultimately saving the business money, too. 

This way, you can guarantee that an applicant will hear from you either way – whilst it might not be the response they’re hoping for, replying will foster a sense of appreciation and respect that may mean they’ll consider applying for a different role in the future.