AI-Enabled Recruiting: What It Is and How to Use It for Better Hires

We’re in the midst of an AI revolution, where new apps and models are being developed every day to tackle different challenges, make life easier, and answer all our questions. It’s no surprise, then, that an incredible number of artificial intelligence tools are available to today’s recruiters.

The question is: Are they any good?

For better or worse, AI has already begun to transform the talent acquisition industry. With AI-powered recruiting solutions now available for every step in the hiring process—from writing role descriptions to screening candidates—it’s time to get up to speed on what AI recruiting tools are out there, whether they can help you, and how to get started.

Any useful AI application should augment and work alongside humans to enhance what we’re able to accomplish in the limited hours of each day. It should never be a replacement for the human element that is so essential to recruiting successfully and with compassion, but it certainly can help you work faster and make more informed decisions.

Here’s a quick look at how AI in hiring can be used with just that purpose in mind.

What is AI-Enabled Recruiting?

Artificial intelligence comes in many forms, and its applications can be leveraged across many use cases for recruiters.

Three of the most prominent AI components you’ll find built into recruiting tools include:

• Machine learning, in which computer systems learn from patterns in data using algorithms and statistical models.
• Natural language processing which, in combination with generative AI functions, enables computers to understand and generate human language—so users can engage with the AI in plain language.
• Automation of rote and repetitious tasks, which free up time for humans by virtue of empowering AI to do some of the clicking and other steps in various processes.

The best recruiting tools leverage various forms of AI to enable recruiters to work more quickly and effectively, without replacing the human decision-making that is so essential in the hiring process.

For example, recruiters can use automated recruiting tools to:

• Generate job descriptions that are consistent with other examples from your organization
• Create a first-draft list of interview questions specific to those job descriptions
• Write email and social media copy to promote open roles
• Schedule interviews

AI-enabled recruiting also opens the door for more advanced applications, such as:

• Resume screening and summarization
• Chatbots to answer common questions from candidates without the delays of sending emails back and forth to recruiters
• Summarizing interview responses and hiring evaluations

And this is just the tip of the iceberg.

The Benefits of AI in Recruiting

Like many other professionals, recruiters have found immense benefits in the use of AI throughout their everyday workflows.

Some key advantages of using AI in recruiting include:

• A faster hiring process: AI speeds up tedious tasks like screening and scheduling, helping recruiters move through more applicants quickly and minimize the resource strain of back-and-forth email conversations and calendar syncing. This means you’ll be able to identify the best candidates quickly and move them through the process more efficiently, leading to a better candidate experience and minimizing the time in which critical roles sit unfilled.
• Better quality of hires: AI can analyze large pools of applications to help recruiters identify the best potential fits more quickly. It’s difficult to meaningfully assess more than a few resumes and applications per hour, but with AI, you can quickly sort through a large pile to assess which candidates have the most relevant experience and skills.
• Cost savings: By automating manual tasks, companies can reduce time-to-hire and associated costs. Investing in AI recruiting tools means your talent acquisition team can spend less time sorting, drafting, and scheduling, and more time working one-on-one with candidates to assess fits and ensure a more high-touch experience for all involved.

AI can apply to both complex and rote tasks, but many teams that are new to AI-enabled recruiting tools can benefit from experimenting with simpler entry points first. For example, interviewstream’s AI Interview Summary tool can accelerate your screening experience by analyzing one-way video interviews and generating concise, insightful notes for each question for you.

This means you can get a straightforward assessment of how the candidate responded to your screening questions, share quick insights with stakeholders, and eliminate the need to take your own notes as you review recordings yourself—freeing you up to pay closer attention to what you’re hearing and make an assessment without administrative distractions.

The Challenges of AI in Recruiting

AI must always be used with caution, especially when it comes to talent acquisition. This is, after all, a very human, social process—and there’s no easy button for finding your ideal candidate in a single click.

Recruiters using AI-enabled tools should be mindful of its risks and challenges, which include:

• Uncertainty around the accuracy of AI algorithms: AI tools can sometimes make mistakes, particularly when it comes to nuances in communication. While AI-generated judgments and summaries can be a helpful way to categorize and evaluate applications at a high level, best practices require your close attention and human verification, too.
• Potential for bias in AI models: AI systems can reflect the biases of the data on which they are trained. Selecting high-quality AI-enabled software, engineered with these risks in mind, is essential. The most thoughtful talent acquisition teams will be mindful of this risk and ensure any AI-augmented processes do not cause harm to your applicants or organizational goals.
• Earning candidate’s trust: Some candidates may be wary of being evaluated by AI instead of humans. Rightfully so; each applicant deserves your time and attention, and exceptional hires can often have unexpected backgrounds. Be transparent about how you use AI during your recruitment process and invest plenty of human energy into evaluating candidates every step of the way.

The major takeaway here is that AI should complement your human team’s efforts, not replace them! While AI can be helpful in bringing the most objectively qualified candidates to the top of a pile or note-taking during interviews, recruiters are exceptionally skillful at getting to know people and assessing their potential to mesh with a particular organization in a particular role. That shouldn’t change; AI should simply help them make those person-to-person interactions more intentional and less logistical.

How to Effectively Use AI-Enabled Recruiting Tools

As previously stated, beginning with smaller, discrete use cases can help your AI-enabled recruiting transformation feel more achievable. For example, leveraging AI for interview summaries and job description drafts are both phenomenal ways for recruiters to start experimenting with AI, getting comfortable with how it works, and seeing how it can add value to their daily routines.

From there, it will be easier to explore the more complex tasks AI can help recruiters accelerate: resume reviews, candidate screening, chatbot integrations, and more.

Of course, the very first step is to identify the right tools for the job—and to build organizational support for this type of technology.

HR teams looking to onboard AI-powered recruiting tools should:

• Start with the right tools: Research and choose AI platforms that are developed responsibly, tested, and, preferably, integrated with existing ATS systems. Attending industry conferences is a great way to get exposure to the options out there and find out what your peers are using.
• Train your team: Make sure your HR teams understand how to use AI tools effectively, interpret AI-driven data, and the features and limitations of each tool. They should also be educated on the potential for bias and best practices for responsible AI usage.
• Balance automation with human insight: Use AI to handle repetitive tasks, yes! But always make final decisions with human evaluation as your north star. Especially as you first integrate AI into your workflows, touch base as a team frequently and ensure consistency in your processes.
• Measure results and optimize: Track key metrics like time to hire, cost per hire, and candidate quality, and continually optimize AI usage based on performance. This will help you prove the ROI of any new software—and pivot when necessary.

As you search for the tools you’d like to onboard for your team, keep in mind that flexibility and customization are some of the hallmarks of a high-return investment for modern recruiters. You’ll want to look for a platform that, like interviewstream, offers many different features and options—AI and otherwise—to streamline your recruiting processes.

This will ensure you can centralize your activities in a single piece of software, with the flexibility to opt in and out of various add-ons as you adapt to the technology, rather than scattering your team’s efforts and sensitive data across many platforms.

The Future of AI-Enabled Recruiting

It’s an exciting time to dive into AI for recruiting. The technology available to us today is already making waves, helping recruiters move faster and devote more of their time to the one-on-one conversations they thrive on. The potential for evermore insightful use cases abounds. It’s easy to imagine a future where recruiters can use predictive analytics to see how one set of skills might transfer to a new type of role, the likelihood of a candidate staying with the company for the long haul, and more.

Likewise, AI could someday make the candidate experience so much better. From improved job recommendations to more self-service options and the ability to optimize their applications for each role, AI can be a win-win for recruiters and candidates alike.

No matter what the future may yield, it’s essential, right now, for recruiters to stay on top of AI trends in order to stay competitive in a rapidly evolving hiring landscape.

Stated simply, AI can save you time, accelerate simple, repeatable tasks, and help you optimize your screening and interview processes. But it absolutely requires human intelligence to be applied well, and that’s where your expertise remains as essential as ever.

To learn more about how interviewstream’s AI-enabled features can help optimize your recruiting workflows, schedule a demo with us. We’ll be happy to walk you through the many features of the platform and see how they could be tailored to meet the unique needs of your team.

About The Author

Drew Whitehurst is the Director of Marketing, RevOps, and Product Strategy at interviewstream. He's been with the company since 2014 working in client services and marketing. He is an analytical thinker, coffee enthusiast, and hobbyist at heart.