Late last year, one of our director’s slash daytime TV stars, Julian Lambert, jumped into a live slot on the Breakfast Show to chat about the rise of AI in recruitment. From that, it was clear that there’s an appetite to know more (outside the pressure of a 3-minute live interview), so here we are! How do recruiters actually use AI and automation in their day-to-day jobs?
Marketing Automation
The recruitment industry was a little late to the automation party but this has ramped up significantly in the last four or five years, with the majority of agencies now having some sort of automation platform plugged into their CRM/ATS. Common examples include Bullhorn Automation and Roi-AI.
What does this look like?
- Automation of repetitive, admin tasks such as consent forms, onboarding emails, applicant updates, NPS and candidate re-engagement messages.
- Enhancing communication by ensuring that certain processes and comms don’t slip through the cracks, such as internal notifications/task reminders
- Improving data health and helping to transform CRMs from candidate dumping grounds to genuinely powerful recruitment tools. A common example is the use of surveys to self-update candidate data.
- Multi-posters such as Idibu or Broadbean – like Hootsuite in the recruitment world. Write one job ad and publish it to all the relevant job boards like SEEK, Trade Me, LinkedIn etc.
- Machine learning algorithms that match candidates with jobs and vice versa
- Personal branding and BD tools like Paiger.
The rise of ChatGPT and generative AI
Whatever your stance on the use of generative AI, it’s here to stay – and it’s only getting better. The quality of job ad writing has long been a challenge for recruitment consultants, so it was only a matter of time before similar models were created to support this process. While still in its infancy, ‘AI Assistants’ are being rolled out all over the place, with some tools even embedded within CRMs for consultants to use within the same ecosystem.
The modern day recruiter
A few decades ago, all we needed was a Rolodex and a landline. While today’s consultants have all the modern tools on hand to support their activity, the emphasis is on the word ‘support’. Instead of replacing the role of a recruiter, the use of AI in our industry is all about giving consultants more time to focus on what they’re great at. At the end of the day, recruitment is all about relationships and that human connection is irreplaceable. While AI might have a solution for that in decades to come…it won’t be happening anytime soon.
