Chatbots are causing a buzz all around the globe and making their place in many digital circles. But do you know employee recruiting is also one of them?
Chatbots can support businesses screen, communicate and vet with candidates more efficiently and effectively than manual processes. Today, we are going to review the benefits and role of deploying a chatbot for HR for companies.
Clutch Survey suggests, only 3% of current job applicants interact with employers using a chatbot for HR. But experts believe that bots can offer value for HR professionals.
Moreover, if chatbots are appropriately used, they can offer better customer services and candidate screening functions to support companies with recruiting processes.
As per CareerBuilder, over 67% of the candidates have a positive impression about companies who keep them updated throughout the application process.
Thus, this is where chatbots for HR can transform the applicant experience and take it to new heights.
It’s a fact that artificial intelligence will take your HR experience to another level. It can help you handle the recruiting process, productivity, and retention more effectively than old HR techniques or methods. Besides, it enables companies to do the recruitment faster than ever before.
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How are Chatbots for HR Simplifying the Recruitment Process?
Bots have been around for quite a while now and playing a vital role in many sectors of the marketplace. It tends to be seen in companies that allow adopting AI chatbots, especially to make efficient recruitment. It saves time and lets the task be done with ease and efficiency.
Moreover, a chatbot for HR is smart enough to gather data from applicants via text conversation rather than filling out lengthy forms.
One of the SmashFly reports says that 74% of applicants filling the form will drop off before completing it. Thus, companies issuing chatbots for HR can save efforts, time, and money.
Bot allows job seekers and employers to connect via interactive UI through SMS, website, or other social media platforms. If you’re thinking about how they can add value, let’s discuss some of the key ways.
Interview Scheduling
A chatbot for HR is an expert at scheduling interviews and screens instantly. It can easily update calendars with future routines, analyze openings, and of course, reduce the burden of the HR coordinator. It provides useful information about different levels and helps HR with repetitive tasks.
Smart and Automated Screening
Another excellent use case is chatbots can ask applicants relevant questions to analyze whether they can be a right fit for the job role or not. They also leverage NLP (Natural Language Processing) to have a deeper interaction with job seekers. Hence, it can be an excellent fit for your HR role to make it more smooth, smart, and easy.
Career Sites Connections
Having a bot conversational UI can help people who land on your site get relevant information and then guide them to the list of openings or send them directly to the recruiter. This will help you get the skilled people in your team ASAP. Integrating a bot is like an evergreen way you will support yourself throughout the journey.
Candidate Sourcing
The majority of the candidate resourcing capabilities rotates around re-engaging your talent pool members and ATS database. A chatbot for HR matches people in the database and then goes back if they want to get engaged. It also screens thoroughly and schedules interviews of those who make it through the screen. Isn’t it great?
Employee Referrals
A chatbot for HR enables employees to make referrals through their interface concerning the latest roles and vacancies. We are in a time where bots are getting smarter constantly with machine learning and other new technologies. They will reach out to employees and remind them whether or not they initiated the conversation about the job role in their network or not.
Recruitment via Chat
As discussed above, chatbots can communicate over multiple platforms such as websites, SMS, and other social platforms. Here they can drive candidates to apply via text. This is a fantastic way in the places where texting is the earliest and candidates don’t even need to have a resume and can apply via ATS. You can support your HR department with an effective and brilliant tool.
Applicant Experience Level
During the whole process, candidates have multiple questions regarding the job role, and you can quickly provide answers via chatbot. They efficiently provide information on the application’s status, benefits, policies, and much more.
Onboarding
Another exciting part of bots is that they can also allow you to have smooth onboarding of new employees. It lets the employees get timely information so that they can start working with them and to whom to report. You can have pre-set workflows to allow easy access to the virtual assistant interface. With time and inputs, bots can learn to answer various situational questions that come up during the onboarding process. So, offer a seamless employee experience and less strain on your HR via a chatbot for HR.
Limitations of HR chatbot
While artificial intelligence is improving bot technology to become more prevalent, several challenges remain for employers or HRs to leverage chatbots in the recruiting process. Besides constant advancements, bots are unable to replicate human thinking fully.
For instance, if any candidate uses slang or complex input to answer a question, the possibility of misinterpreting by the bot can be high. This can lead to confusion and affect the whole scenario, even miss the excellent fit. So, let’s dig into some of the pitfalls.
- Human interaction is key to making any deal and ensuring a better candidate experience. AI bots are here to augment what your team is doing and not replace it. But it might not be that effective in an interaction like a human.
- This, I’ll say, is kind of a tip and not a pitfall. Don’t get confused with the multiple ways a chatbot can help with. You are here because you might be thinking of deploying a bot for two or more use cases. Always try to pick a specific use case, do a more profound research, and leverage it further over time.
- Another pitfall is this technology is relatively easy to set-up but takes a long time to do it in the right way. You had to pre-set lots of inputs to make the offerings functional, which may take a ton of your time.
- Many businesses and brands are excited and interested but haven’t pulled the trigger yet. Thus, first, you need to start exploring how AI can do the tasks for you and let your HR department be more efficient day by day.
Conclusion
It’s quite obvious and to be confused or uneasy about deploying chatbot for HR in the recruitment process. Having a bot can streamline the whole process, reduce the burden on HR professionals and make the company more attractive and trustworthy to applicants. Even after learning and understanding the limitations and risks, companies can make it a valuable tool to find the next generation of perfect teams. In case you are wondering how to get started, you must consider exploring “BotPenguin” to get the smart chatbot for yourself.
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How Chatbots Help in Improving Recruitment Agencies? was originally published in Chatbots Life on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.