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A recruitment chatbot is basically an HR manager’s dream assistant. In reality, it’s a conversational interface (that looks like an instant messenger chat window) that helps carry out basic processes using artificial intelligence and machine learning. This could be something as simple as letting a recruiter know how many interviews they have that day to something more complex, like setting up interviews with candidates.
What Can a Chatbot Do?
A chatbot can essentially do anything it’s programmed to do. That means it can be candidate-facing, internal, or both! Some common uses for chatbots include collecting basic candidate information, like education or past experience, asking screening questions about candidate qualifications, and then ranking candidates based on those (or other) metrics. They are also incredibly helpful for answering common frequently asked questions that the candidates typically have. They’ll even go so far as to connect worthy candidates with human recruiters and/or set up interviews and meetings between recruiters and candidates.
The best part is that all of this information can be collected in real time! According to ideal, chatbots automate up to 80% of top-of-funnel recruiting activities. This information is then fed directly into your business’s ATS or an internal database.
Why Would a Recruiter Want to Use One?
There are many benefits to using a chatbot, but one big one is the fact that it can be active in more places than an actual human recruiter. What do we mean by that? The same chatbot can be talking to one person on email, another via SMS, one on a social media channel like LinkedIn, and another still doing actual work with the recruiter within their ATS. If one person had to have all those conversations at the same time, it could get confusing and overwhelming really quickly. A chatbot is able to field all of those questions and help each individual concurrently.
Plus, when it comes to the hiring process, a lot of candidates find the actual experience falls short of their expectations. This is because, on average, 65% of resumes received for a role are ignored. So, while 35% of people see the interaction that they hope for once they’ve submitted a resume, someone (or something) should be interacting with the others who don’t quite make the cut. This is where a chatbot can be extremely helpful, offering a way to interact with those that a recruiter simply might not have the time to do so themselves.
Why Wouldn’t a Recruiter Want to Use One?
There are undoubtedly some challenges that come along with using a chatbot, mainly centered around it’s lack of human perception. Chatbots, no matter how advanced their AI is, still fall short when gauging candidate emotions and sentimental statements. On top of that, they cannot identify things like sarcasm or humor, which can make them feel obviously fake. Plus, everyone has their own “slang” when speaking/typing/texting, and these nuances and subtle differences can be lost to a bot. This can cause them to give irrelevant or incorrect answers, thus only serving to frustrate the user.
However, almost all of these things can be overcome with time and data. The more data you feed into a chatbot, the more accurately it can handle requests like that in the future. So, while chatbots typically start out only offering a few options/questions to answer, eventually they expand to be more comprehensive and human-like.
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Are All Recruiters Using AI Chatbots?
While not all recruiters are using AI chatbots…most PEOPLE in general are! According to survey’s conducted by Userlike, 99% of people have used a chatbot and nearly 80% of those rate the experience as favorable. It was also found that many people perceive chatbots as innovative, not as a cheap “out” for not offering a real person to talk to. So, with their highly positive reception, it is no surprise that more and more recruiters / recruiting agencies are starting to adopt them.
Which Recruiters Are Using Chatbots?
CEIPAL is one proprietary recruiting software offering recruiter-facing chatbots built directly into the ATS platform. Deep automation provides increased productivity and saves time with a simple command-line interface. By being able to ask the chatbot to answer questions, recruiters can reduce the time spent checking tasks by asking for a summary. It’s easier than ever to get consolidated answers without manually searching across the ATS.
Plus, by living right in the ATS, any company can keep using their client-facing chatbot while using CEIPAL’s internal chatbot for personal tasks. The chatbots can even be configured to work together, so information collected from a client by one can be relayed to the recruiter through another.
Now that your questions are answered, what are you waiting for? Get started with your own chatbot today and see how it makes recruiting easier than ever.
