Can A.I. Really Help you to Recruit Faster?

This is a blog written for us by Barry Chignell. Barry has over 15 years experience in the HR technology sector spanning software support, account management and digital marketing. He has also been writing for over 8 years with 750+ published articles on all aspects of professional life and photography. These articles have attracted links from such sites as New York Times and Huffington Post.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has been in the news a lot lately. It really is amazing how far AI has come in the past decade, and from the looks of things, we will soon be taking advantage of AI tech to help us with all kinds of tedious jobs in the workplace.

Surprisingly one of those tedious tasks that AI can help with is writing job adverts. As recruiters, we all know how important it is to get your job advert right. Use the wrong language and you can easily end off putting off the very people you need to fill your vacant position.

How the language you use affects your recruitment

It may surprise you to learn just how much the words that you use affect what type of candidate applies. For example, statistics show that if you use the term ‘works well under pressure’ the chances are you are not likely to get very many female applicants. The word ‘extraordinary’ also seems to put female applicants off.

Why these terms have these effects is not completely understood, but it has been measured and proven that this is the case. Just as you are switched off when you see the phrases ‘I’m a hard worker’ or ‘excellent written communication skills’ on a CV, so candidates are put off when you include certain phrases in a job advert.

The chances are you already know most of those phrases and avoid them, but keeping pace with what works and what does not is tedious and time consuming. That is where AI comes in.
A group of linguists have fed tens of thousands of job adverts into an AI system along with details of how well the advert worked. Data like who applied, how many people applied and how many potential candidates there were has been collated and fed into the system. The AI system has crunched that data and worked out what language works and what does not. It is now possible for you to feed your job advert into the system and to get a report that explains how effective your advert will be and highlight how you can improve it.

Effectively this new AI based system is teaching recruiters how to write more effective job adverts. AI can also now be used to turn boring company data into written reports that are user friendly and do so literally at the touch of a button.

This is just one of the many unexpected ways in which AI is being used in the work place. The technology will soon be added to HR software to help human resources departments to manage their recruitment processes better.

Artificial Intelligence is still very much in its infancy, but as understanding of how to programme AI software improves; its use will definitely become more widespread. Using AI will free recruiters up from many of the more tedious tasks giving them more time to spend interviewing and putting potential candidates through assessments. Being able to better assess potential candidates will greatly improve the effectiveness of the recruitment process and result in far better retention rates.