What is a recruiting chatbot and what are the benefits?

What Is a recruiting chatbot and what are the benefits?

In today's digital landscape, artificial intelligence is changing the way we interact with others — both personally and professionally. In the professional space, AI tools, such as chatbots, are becoming the norm for handling customer service and experience for businesses and organizations. More companies are integrating recruitment chatbots to streamline hiring practices and engage candidates for open jobs.

If your company is looking to reach more qualified candidates and improve the efficiency of its hiring process, a recruiting chatbot could be the answer. Find out what you need to know about recruiting chatbots and how your team could benefit from using one.

What is a recruiting chatbot?

A recruiting chatbot is a software application that's designed to replicate human conversation during the recruiting and hiring processes. These AI applications make it easier for employers to screen and gather information about candidates. They also help candidates learn about a particular role or company, as well as an organization's hiring practices and work environment. AI is changing the way employers recruit, and chatbots are becoming more common among larger businesses and organizations.

Similar to other AI and virtual assistant software, recruiting chatbots rely on natural language processing to ascertain context and provide human-like responses when people interact with them. If your company is expanding its reach into the talent pool online, integrating a recruiting chatbot to support your hiring practices can be an advantage.

How can a recruiting chatbot support your hiring process?

In a Capterra survey, 94% of HR and hiring managers who used chatbots rated the bots' performance as "good" or "excellent" when integrated into the early stages of recruitment. This high percentage of positive results points to the compelling potential benefits of these technologies. Let's explore some of the advantages of recruiting chatbots for your hiring practices.

Enhance communication

Recruitment chatbots can enhance and improve the quality of communication between candidates seeking open roles and companies looking for talent. In cases where an open position receives active interest from hundreds of applicants, chatbots ensure timely communication. These tools provide fast, immediate responses, so candidates are much less likely to feel that an employer is ghosting them. Chatbots also offer a reliable way for employees and potential hires to communicate important details after hours or during the initial recruitment process. This expedites communication between candidates and employers, giving both parties flexible ways to interact during the job search.

Streamline the hiring process

If your company is scaling recruitment practices, a chatbot can improve the efficiency of these processes. Through automation and integrated AI, you can reduce the amount of time it takes to screen, interview, and hire employees. This lightens the load for HR and hiring teams, as chatbots can screen applications, answer common questions, and schedule meetings and interviews almost instantaneously.

Streamlining your hiring processes with a chatbot can even help your company reach more qualified candidates and weed out individuals who don't meet the job requirements. With more effective pre-screening processes, your company can reduce the costs, time, and resources that go into hiring.

Gain insight into candidates' concerns

Recruiting chatbots also provide a quick and easy way for candidates to give feedback and answer survey questions. This is especially important if you're looking to dig into the data surrounding digital experience and engagement with your company. For example, you might refer to an HR or recruitment chatbot to determine how potential hires perceive your company's application and interview processes. This data is vital to understanding how effective each stage in the journey is for job applicants.

Chatbots can also collect and store common questions or feedback, which further paints a picture of how professionals feel about your company's recruitment practices. Your team can then use these insights to improve or build on the most effective aspects of your practices.

Provide information and increase accessibility

Chatbots for recruitment and HR activities can take care of many preliminary processes, such as collecting and providing employment information and answering common questions. Many companies set up chatbots to help with the early stages of hiring, such as screening resumes and cover letters, collecting contact information, and even onboarding new employees. This ultimately improves access to important information potential hires may need to continue through the application and screening processes.

When you look at chatbots from an accessibility standpoint, it's easy to see why candidates have positive experiences with these recruitment tools when seeking information about a job, confirming interview details, and researching a company's work environment. Providing this information can be repetitious and time-consuming for HR teams, so chatbots make it much easier to manage these phases of recruitment efficiently.

Reduce hiring bias

It's a painful fact: hiring bias does occur for many professionals seeking open roles. However, many companies can combat unconscious hiring biases by integrating chatbots into the recruitment process. With the support of AI, your company can ensure that the application process is the same across the board for all potential hires.

For instance, you can use a chatbot to ask and respond to screening questions that are all the same for any candidate who applies for the position. This allows you to eliminate unqualified candidates early on while moving potential candidates further along in the hiring process. In fact, in a survey conducted by Pew Research, 47% of respondents felt that AI — like recruitment chatbots — can do a better job than humans at screening candidates in the same way.

Challenges of implementing a recruitment chatbot

These AI tools aren't without their challenges, though. Before selecting a chatbot tool, it's important to consider the drawbacks of these applications and learn how your team can overcome them.

Data Privacy

Data privacy should be the top priority when conducting hiring processes online. Keeping your candidates' information secure is vital, but some chatbots may have risky implications. Do your due diligence when choosing a new tool, and look for high-quality, secure applications that will keep applicant information under lock and key.

Misinterpretation and lack of human context

It doesn't matter how efficient a chatbot is, these tools can't replace human interaction. In some cases, their lack of human context can cause AI tools and bots to fall short in their responses, leading to misinterpretation or, worse, a negative response. However, continuous developments and improvements to quality AI tools and chatbots mean better language models that can mimic more detailed conversations. This can combat the challenge of a lack of human context by allowing for adequate responses that successfully fulfill candidates' queries.

Examples of HR and recruitment chatbots

HR and recruiting chatbots can come as standalone software products or as part of a suite of tools. To find the best option for your team, you'll want to check out a few applications before committing. It's also important to test out your tools one at a time to determine the ones that have the features and performance your team needs. With that being said, here are some recruiting and HR chatbots that are popular among many companies and organizations:

Unique.ai
Xor
Eightfold
Sense
Paradox.ai

Essentially, adopting a recruiting chatbot or similar tool can support your company's hiring process. After all, increased efficiency and less time screening unqualified candidates during the initial stages can mean more time for your team to focus on what's important.