Technology's Place in Recruitment

Brad Mandacina, Vice President & Director, Lockton Companies

Brad Mandacina, Vice President & Director, Lockton Companies

The struggle for employers to attract talented employees is real; there have been countless articles and books addressing it over the past decade. Consistently well performing investments are giving boomers the confidence to think about retiring, opening the way for younger generations. With jobs to fill, how can employers most effectively find and assemble the all-star team?

Significant investments and enhancements in the technology space can now help identify and recruit talent like never before. For the last couple years there has been an astounding increase in vendors specializing in the talent management space. The increase in competition has forced all viable alternatives to enhance their offering much faster than non-talent management vendors. The most noticeable gains have come from artificial (or augmented) intelligence (AI) and machine learning.

How can AI and machine learning help with recruitment? Let’s start at the beginning of the candidate experience. A recruiting technology with a focus task automation helps put the right candidates in front of employers. The HR practitioner will feed a job description into the technology solution then the system will scrape multiple websites to find a short list of qualified candidates. Some similar technologies will help HR staff by identifying and removing any biases in the job description before running the search to return a comprehensive list of possible candidates.

One recruiting tool has leapfrogged their competition by combining natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning to review hundreds of resumes per second. It then engages quality candidates via text message, reducing human interviewing time. The cool part: the resumes are deconstructed using NLP and the system learns which candidates meet the criteria. This continuous feedback loop allows the technology to improve as it creates the short list of candidates to engage.

For some employers there is a deep candidate pool and following up on received applications can a laborious process with miserable close rates. One technology firm closed the gap by enlisting text messaging to instantly follow up with applicants to schedule the interview. The impact of the speed to engage the candidate is producing staggering results. A similar technology will take this one step further and engage the candidate in a list of prescreening questions so that by the time the recruiter receives a list of candidates they know they are qualified and willing to make the move.

Whether an employer is looking to find a list of quality candidates, leverage text messaging to prescreen applicants or use NLP to learn specific job criteria, the ability to recruit and assemble the next generation of talent is becoming increasingly easier thanks to technology.

Machine Learning

Natural Language Processing

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