The kind of candidate experience an organization offers is vital to its reputation and branding. Being a recruiter, the onus to create positive candidate experiences lies with you. In fact, the candidate experiences you offer will determine some crucial parameters of organizational growth.
Candidate experiences will help people decide if they want to work for your organization or not. Moreover, candidate experience will determine if people will apply to your organization again in the future. To add, it will also influence the idea of people recommending your organization to others. Hence, candidate experiences are paramount to creating an efficient and streak smart workforce. Having said that, you need to look at candidate experience as a dimension of competitive advantage.
The greatest advantage you have as a recruiter in the contemporary era is the incredibly advanced technological infrastructure. You can now leverage this infrastructure and integrate AI to enhance candidate experiences. Artificial intelligence is driving some major overhauls in the vertical of recruitments and facilitating recruiters in multifaceted ways. You should look to make the most of it before others do!
Before we delve deeper into how AI can improve candidate experiences, it is vital to look at some important candidate experience statistics and trends. These insights will give you a clear idea of why candidate experiences are vital for organizations in this era.
1. As concluded by Talent Board, 53 percent of candidates state that they receive no response from employers or recruiters even after three months of application.
2. IBM reveals that 38 percent of candidates are interested in joining an organization based on positive candidate experience.
3. Almost 70 percent of candidates want recruiters to optimize response time as per Careerarc.
4. As reported by SHRM. 60 percent of candidates quit in the middle of an application given its complexity
5. As per Forbes, 72 percent of candidates will share their negative candidate experience with others bringing a bad name to the organization
6. Candidate experience directly impacts consumer buying decisions as per more than 90 percent of employers, according to Careerarc.
7. As cited by LinkedIn, Virgin Media went about losing $5 million per annum due to negative candidate experiences unless the company worked on it and turned it around.
As you can see, candidate experience links to almost every domain of business success. It matters to the top-notch talents in deciding upon joining your organization. Moreover, it also impacts how many customers and clients your organization can retain. Also, it affects the image of your company, its reviews, and prospects of being recommended to others. Now you see how much power recruiters have in their hands!
Of course, as a recruiter, you have to give out heartbreaking rejections to candidates. If 500 people apply for two positions, you have to tell 498 of them that they have not been selected. That is no doubt a hard thing to do with little scope of pacifying the ones who did not make it. But that does not stop you from offering excellent candidate experiences, does it? The candidate experience ought to be so positive that even the rejected candidates should be appreciative. They should keep looking forward to attractive job opportunities within your organization! As mentioned above, you can leverage artificial intelligence in various ways to produce enriched candidate experiences. So, without further ado, let us find out how!
AI can bridge the communication gap
Job applications are often marked by communication gaps between the recruiters and candidates. This communication gap, to a large extent, is understandable. As a recruiter, you have a lot on your plate and a plethora of applications to screen. Therefore, maintaining consistent communication with every candidate becomes impractical. But we also need to step into the shoes of a candidate and see it from there. For them, consistency in communication will be a vital part of their experience.
The inclusion of artificial intelligence in recruiting can, however, bridge these communication gaps. AI can pave the way for incessant two-way communication between the candidates and the recruiters. With the integration of chatbots and AI algorithms, candidates will be able to ask relevant questions throughout the application process. You may be too busy to respond to them, but AI can do that on your behalf!
Moreover, chatbots will respond to queries in a much faster way offering meaningful answers to the candidates. Two-way communication is always far more engaging and insightful! This is where your organization can gain a competitive advantage in terms of providing pragmatic candidate experiences.
AI can offer more clarity on application processes
Candidates tend to quit amid the application process if it is too complicated. This also happens due to unclear candidate instructions in the course of filling the job application. Of course, candidates will rate this as a negative attribute of their experience. As per Zippia, 92 percent of candidates will rate their experience as negative if there is a lack of clarity around instructions during the application process. However, this is where AI can be a perfect game-changer.
AI-enabled chatbots can offer real-time direction and guidance to candidates to complete their applications. Constant and quick guidance through chatbots will change candidate experiences for the better. As they receive instructions and clarity at each step, applying for a vacancy will become far more convenient for them. Having said that, you can leverage AI to generate worthwhile candidate experiences. It is the most effective assistance you can ever ask for in this digital age!
AI can enable recruiters to keep candidates posted
During the entire course of the application, candidates do not know if the employers have received their applications. Besides, in most cases, they do not get any updates telling them if the positions are still vacant. Hence, they remain unsure if they should wait for a call or move ahead to look for more opportunities. As stated above, some applicants hear nothing from recruiters even after three to four months. Also, as cited by Lever, the majority of candidates will not reapply to an organization that did not offer notifications on their application status. This is something you would want to change for the better for sure!
Of course, it is understandable that you have a massive workload to manage. You would never have enough time to send personal texts or emails to candidates to notify them. But this is where AI can be of great help and assist you in creating positive candidate experiences. With artificial intelligence and an applicant tracking system (ATS), you can keep candidates posted. Without having to invest time in sending notifications to each application, you can rely on AI for that. The candidates will receive notifications when their applications are received and viewed by the employers.
Even when the positions close for hiring, AI will keep all candidates posted. Candidates will be happy to learn about all these developments. In this way, AI can be a breakthrough integration in recruitment to curate affluent customer experiences.
AI can help in reducing the response time
Because you have too many applications to assess, they stay in the pipeline for a long time. Given that, candidates have to wait for weeks or even months to know if they have been selected or not. Here, artificial intelligence can help you assess and evaluate candidates in a streamlined way. With the help of AI, you can screen resumes and applications in a time-effective manner and match them with the essential skills needed for a role.
Moving further, based on faster evaluation of applications, you can decide on the best candidates much earlier than usual. The selection would be much faster. This will help you greatly reduce the response time needed for conveying the final decision to the candidates. Needless to say, the lesser the response time, the better would be the candidate's experience. Both selected as well as rejected candidates would like to hear from you at the earliest—delays in communicating the final decisions tantamount to negative candidate experience.
AI can offer personalized candidate feedback
You receive an overwhelming number of applications for every vacancy. It is undeniable that it is impossible for you to offer personalized feedback to each candidate. But let us once again look at it from their perspective once. Even if they do not get selected, it will be important for them to know their shortcomings. They have every right to know why they were not selected. Hence, from their perspective, candidate feedback is of great importance.
This is where artificial intelligence can prove to be a boon again! With the integration of AI, you can offer personalized feedback to candidates adding value to their career ambitions and goals. Genuine candidates will be happy to receive honest and constructive feedback. AI can scan candidates’ qualities and core strengths briskly and match them with the requirements of the given job role. Subsequently, candidates will receive personalized feedback telling them what skills or qualifications they lack pertinent to a given job role. Feedbacks can be facilitated using the Natural Language Processing Technology (NLP). Having said that, useful feedback sharing will be an essential component of positive candidate experiences.
To conclude, AI has immense prowess to change the future of recruiting. However, AI is not here to replace recruiters. No matter how advanced the technological infrastructure gets, it will always be ancillary to human prudence and comprehension than being a replacement for it. The integration of AI in recruiting will rather add value to your efficiency and help you manage your workload in a much better way. You can leverage AI as a tool that will assist you in carrying out your tasks with optimized productivity and creating positive candidate experiences. AI can be your best team member in terms of producing positive candidate experiences. Make sure you use it to the fullest!
About the author
Jessica Robinson is a charismatic corporate leader, a selfless educator, and a versatile content creator. Despite a management degree, her vision behind blogging is not only to follow her passion but to create more informed societies. Her selflessness reflects in every piece of her work on The Speaking Polymath.
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessica-robinson10/
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