A company’s culture and values are drivers of a strong brand. This is something so obvious, so ingrained in employer branding that it can sometimes cause leaders to overlook another significant influence of their organization’s reputation — candidate experience. More specifically, creating a positive hiring process — from job postings to application screenings and interviews — can enhance the employer brand and improve competitive advantage.
This can be especially challenging for large companies hiring at high volume. The desire to ensure efficiency can sometimes distract from the importance of ensuring overall efficacy — which must include a terrific candidate experience.
Which begs the question: How can you create a great candidate experience, and by extension a great employer brand, in high-volume hiring?
I’ll be exploring the answer to this question during an upcoming ERE webinar, “How to Create a White-Glove Experience in High-Volume Hiring” on March 25. For now, though, part of the answer lies in artificial intelligence.
Yes, AI is a buzzword that often fails to live up to its hype. And sure, it might make you skeptical of its real impact in high-volume hiring. But the reality is that AI truly can help improve efficiency while supporting and helping to strengthen candidate experience and the employer brand. Here’s how:
Matching the Right Candidate With the Right Role
AI used for candidate screening is extremely efficient. It sorts through hundreds of applicants in seconds. But again, that just speaks to efficiency alone. Its real advantage lies in its ability to match a candidate’s skills and experience with the requirements of the role.
Simply put, it’s not about screening but matching candidates.
At the same time, hiring professionals can manage relationships with candidates at scale, while the technology ranks and prioritizes them based on ideal candidate profiles per job. These tools draw on current and past employee data for achievement in a certain role and match it with a potential candidate’s skills, preferences, and experience.
Timing, which was once a limiting factor in recruiting, also becomes a non-issue with AI because the technology “remembers” candidate profiles to match them with ideal positions as soon as vacancies are posted. Candidates quickly learn which employers can connect them with the opportunities that align with their capabilities. As a result, at scale and over time, AI-enabled candidate relationships become a competitive advantage and boost the company’s employer brand.
Reducing Hiring Biases
Over the past year, many organizations have become increasingly aware of their workforce’s diversity, or lack thereof. An efficient recruiting process can help attract a diverse talent pool and ultimately create a more inclusive workplace.
AI tools help to create a more equitable hiring process through candidate anonymization and by auditing the company’s recruiting practices. A good AI tool should be able to conceal applicant information that may elicit bias, such as a candidate’s gender, age, country of origin, ethnicity, educational background, and more.
Recruiting algorithms also provide insight into where there may be blind spots. Likewise, they can identify if you’re potentially giving preferential consideration to certain candidate traits. This data can have a positive or negative influence on a company’s brand, in the sense that candidate experience influences the diversity of your workforce, which ultimately influences your employer brand.
Making Recruiting Personal and Bespoke
It is highly likely that a job posting could be someone’s first experience with and impression of your company and brand. Job descriptions should be unique and memorable to convert a job-seeker to an applicant. Through AI-based tools, employers can create personalized experiences through their career sites for individual candidates to match jobs with their skills and experience.
For instance, chatbots can be used to ask screening questions, collect information, answer questions, and even schedule interviews. Many are available with bespoke voices for individual candidates. Additionally, chatbots give companies a new communication channel with candidates to help guide them through the recruiting process. The technology also improves and learns through thousands of conversations over time, allowing chatbots to have a highly customized, nuanced voice that reflects the organization’s values.
Ultimately, as the landscape of the workplace continues to change, employers can leverage AI — particularly in high-volume recruiting — to build a reputation for a sophisticated recruitment process that gives them a consistent advantage as they compete for talent.
Interested in learning more about how to improve candidate experience in high-volume hiring? Join Christina Coyle for an interactive webinar to help you elevate your process. Register here for “How to Create a White-Glove Experience in High-Volume Hiring” on March 25.