Is AI The Answer To Recruiting Effectiveness?
David is a veteran human resources leader and President of IQTalent Partners, an on-demand talent acquisition and executive search firm. getty  When it comes to KPIs, a recruiter is almost always judged by two metrics: time to hire and quality of hire. The recruiting function is asked continually to reduce costs while delivering better results, even though finding quality talent to fill important roles is almost always named one of the top challenges faced by CEOs. Heads of talent must constantly ask themselves, How do we make recruiting more efficient and effective?  Recruiters and HR professionals have long considered the effects of artificial intelligence and how it can create a more efficient talent acquisition process. Reduce Time To Hire  People and the talents they bring to an organization are the most important ingredients to a companys success. Finding the right person to join your particular organization and its particular situation takes nuance and human experience. AI is not yet ready to replace humans in this important process. It can, however, be a useful tool in reducing the time spent on repetitive and mundane tasks that take much of a recruiters time. The technology can be smoothly integrated into the recruitment process by utilizing software that manages interview scheduling or by automating the application process while using AI to screen resumes for keywords. Up to 40% of a recruiters time can be spent entering data into an ATS or sorting through resumes. This time is far better spent engaging with candidates, building relationships and improving candidate experience. Advanced artificial intelligence uses machine learning to mimic human behavior. It takes volumes of data to achieve this effectively, and the risk remains that AI will learn a humans unconscious bias as well. The most public instance of AI bias was the 2018 story that uncovered Amazons recruiting AI had a bias against female applicants in its hiring algorithm. But this example is not an outlier; machine learning must have human oversight for it to have the most optimized results. Improve Quality Of Hire  Many of our firm's clients and members of our own team claim that finding the right candidate within a large talent pool to be the toughest part of the hiring process. Artificial intelligence and machine learning can be leveraged to assist in this process by instantly searching through a substantial data pool to find candidates who meet the search criteria. The more the recruiter uses the AI, the more it will learn what outcomes the user is seeking. This technology is especially helpful in the recruitment of passive candidates. The pool of qualified passive candidates is exponentially larger than the number of applicants actively seeking an open role. Having the ability to efficiently search the entire universe of possible candidates allows for a more inclusive and effective search. Using AI to narrow a candidate pool or provide valuable data about a certain candidate group can add significant value and efficiency to recruiting. Thus, the recruiter is able to introduce more quality candidates to the process that they otherwise may not have found. The information AI can provide in seconds would have taken weeks to find just a few short years ago. With the onset of this relatively easy access to data, recruiters may become overwhelmed by the sheer volume of information, thereby becoming less efficient. The addition of data scientists and data analysts to the recruiting team may be the next step in the evolution of talent acquisition. Having access to information is only as valuable as knowing how to apply it. AI And Skilled Recruiters: A Winning Combination  Clearly, artificial intelligence can improve recruiting efficiency and effectiveness. Recruiting and talent acquisition functions have evolved past personal networks and job boards, but AI is not the sole solution to increased proficiency. Used alone, it may provide data that does not prove useful, it will ignore the human idiosyncrasies of culture fit and it may overlook qualified candidates with underachieving resumes. Engaging a talent acquisition strategy that leverages todays powerful technology with experienced human talent acquisition professionals will prove to be the most successful way to win the battle for top talent in the future. Forbes Human Resources Council is an invitation-only organization for HR executives across all industries.