Teaming Up with AI: How We’re Maximizing Recruitment Efficiency

Maximizing efficiency in talent acquisition is essential in today’s competitive landscape. As recruiting professionals, we strive to enhance efficiency while ensuring fair, unbiased hiring processes. Recently, we turned to an innovative solution—a virtual AI recruiter named Jamie—to meet this demand. Here’s how it transformed our talent acquisition strategy.?

The Challenge?

Before adding Jamie to the team, our temporary staffing team faced a series of challenges. We were spending an enormous amount of time manually screening hundreds of resumes, resulting in an overloaded amount of administrative time to make placements. We needed a solution that would not only streamline and speed up the process but also ensure we maintained a high level of candidate engagement and satisfaction.?

The Solution?

To address these challenges, we hired a virtual AI recruiter, Jamie, capable of screening hundreds of resumes a day. The AI tool leveraged advanced algorithms to analyze candidate qualifications, matching them to job descriptions far more effectively than manual methods could. Jamie immediately reaches out to connect with candidates the minute they apply. She will use emails, texts, phone calls to connect with candidates and schedule initial phone screens. She’s able to connect with candidates 24/7 and easily work around their availability to interview for the role, even if it’s 10pm at night on a Saturday.? She takes thorough notes from her phone screens and all the documentation is recorded in our ATS.?

By automating the most time-consuming parts of the hiring process, Jamie has freed up our staffing team to focus on more strategic aspects, such as final interviews, assignment offers, and onboarding.?

The Results?

The results were both immediate and impressive. Within just four months, we saw a 50% reduction in time-to-offer, which significantly improved the overall efficiency of our recruitment process. The quality of the candidates who reached the final placement stage was noticeably higher, and our client’s have reported an extremely high stick rate for candidates who were originally screened by Jamie. In the initial four-months since Jamie was hired, she has assisted in helping us place nearly 70 candidates in customer service and light industrial roles with three of our clients that have significant hiring needs. We have also received amazing candidates. They’ve shared with us that the process is quick and flexible to meet their specific needs. They’ve even shared that by the end of their conversations with Jamie, they’ve almost forgotten she’s a virtual recruiter.?

Lessons Learned?

Introducing AI into the recruitment process was not without its challenges. While the benefits of automation and unbiased decision-making were clear, we had to navigate several hurdles to fully integrate Jamie into our talent acquisition strategy. Here’s what we learned along the way:?

1. Managing Initial Skepticism: When the idea of a virtual AI recruiter was first proposed, we encountered resistance from various team members. There was a natural concern that AI would replace human judgment and empathy, two crucial aspects of hiring that our team members highly value. Some feared that relying on an automated system would depersonalize the recruitment process, reducing candidates to mere data points.?

To overcome this skepticism, we focused on positioning the AI recruiter as a tool to assist, rather than replace, the human element in hiring. We emphasized that while Jamie could handle time-consuming tasks like resume screening and initial candidate phone screens, our team would still make the final decisions, especially in areas like assessing cultural fit or evaluating soft skills. This approach helped shift the perception of AI from a threat to a valuable partner in our recruitment efforts.?

2. Training and Adaptation: Like any new system, there was a learning curve. Our team needed to understand how to work with AI—how to interpret the data it provided and adjust parameters to fine-tune the selection process. We asked one of our experienced Workforce Managers to take point on being the liaison and subject matter expert on how we use recruiting AI. Amber has worked with our recruiting team to continually refine the process and expand from our initial ‘test’ client to multiple high volume temporary staffing clients. Through regular training and collaboration with Amber, the team was able to integrate the AI recruiter seamlessly into our workflows.?

3. Continuous Improvement through Feedback Loops: One of the most valuable lessons was the importance of maintaining a feedback loop between our internal AI liaison, our recruiting team, the clients, and the candidates. As recruiters provided feedback on Jamie’s screening success rate, we were able to fine-tune its algorithms to better meet our hiring needs. Most recently we’ve found that Jamie is spending more time on her phone screens and collecting additional information that helps us improve interview-to-offer and offer-to-placement rates. This iterative process ensures continuous improvement and alignment with our goals. We also have started tracking candidates placed by Jamie compared to feedback from the clients regarding their performance to ensure the candidates are great fits for our client.? And lastly, we want to make sure the candidates have a great experience talking to Jamie, so we continually ask them to provide feedback on their experience with both Jamie and our overall on-boarding experience.??

Conclusion?

For HR and Recruiting professionals looking to streamline their recruitment process, a virtual AI recruiter can be a game-changer. By leveraging AI, we’ve not only saved time but also improved the quality and fairness of our hiring decisions. The future of recruitment is here, and it’s intelligent, efficient, and unbiased. We’ve love to talk to you more about your hiring process and how we may be able to use our latest new hire ‘Jamie’ to help you.?

Author: Sue Ann Naso

Credit: Amber Satola, MLRHR, SHRM-CP