How to Successfully Implement AI in Recruiting

Kathleen O’Donnell

The AI revolution has started to transform every function across organizations, and it’s showing no signs of slowing down. A whopping 92% of companies plan to invest more in generative AI over the next 3 years, according to McKinsey research.

But beyond the hype of AI, what can this technology actually do to turbocharge how recruiting teams specifically work? The answers are pretty exciting — let’s explore them in depth.

The Types of AI in Recruiting

For recruiting, there are several types of AI tools that can drive efficiency and time savings across the candidate lifecycle.

Generative AI

Gen AI, as it’s known, is the most commonly used type right now. These tools, like ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity, use large datasets to generate content like text, images, and videos.

In recruiting, you can use gen AI tools to:

Draft job descriptions
Draft candidate communications
Create interview questions
Schedule interviews with candidates

Conversational AI

Chatbots are another very common type of AI, and they can serve as a sort of always-on assistant to busy recruiting teams.

Conversational AI tools can help you:

Answer common candidate questions 24/7
Facilitate candidate communication with the recruiting team
Help recruiters find information on candidates faster

Automation AI

Automation and machine learning play a critical role in AI systems, allowing organizations to synthesize and analyze large sets of data to better understand processes and outcomes.

Automation AI helps recruiting teams:

Screen resumes faster and more accurately
Cross-check candidate references
Schedule interviews with candidates further into the process

Benefits of Using AI in Recruiting

From finding top talent to getting them scheduled for an interview, AI can assist in streamlining the process.

Sourcing Talent

AI can help your recruiting team source and identify top talent for your open roles. It can do this by helping draft job descriptions, identify key traits for success in roles, pinpoint internal employees who might be a good match for open roles, suggest candidates who are good fits for roles other than ones they applied for, and more.

Screening Candidates

Recruiting AI tools can perform initial resume and candidate screening, like pre-hire assessments, and analyze the results to find your top candidates to proceed with. They can also assist in gathering basic information and answering questions ahead of in-person interviews.

Scheduling Interviews

Interview scheduling is a huge administrative burden for most recruiting teams, but AI tools make it easy to find a time that works for both parties without the endless back-and-forth.

How to Successfully Implement AI in Your Recruiting Process

AI offers potentially significant time savings and efficiency gains for recruiting organizations across the whole candidate lifecycle. But in order to see the maximum from those gains, it’s important to know how to successfully implement AI in your recruiting strategy.

First, beware of the most common pitfalls of AI models. They often hallucinate or make up information, meaning that careful fact-checking by a human is needed. They also come with a whole host of issues with privacy, data storage and usage, legal, and even copyright concerns, particularly if employees are using an off-the-shelf model like ChatGPT.

This is why comprehensive training is a must-have for organizations looking to implement AI solutions. And it’s lacking at most organizations, unfortunately. In the McKinsey report cited above, 48% of employees rated training as the most important factor for gen AI adoption, but almost half feel they’re receiving only moderate or less support.

Candidates often have strong feelings on AI being used to screen resumes, conduct and evaluate interviews, and being used in the hiring process in general as well. Transparency and honesty are key to keeping candidate trust.

Finally, picking the right AI tools and carefully evaluating them before you start inputting sensitive candidate or organization information is essential. Any tool you use should be able to clarify its policies on how it eliminates bias, how it keeps everyone’s data and privacy safe, and any concerns your legal team has as well.

Once you have these building blocks in place, you can start to reap the benefits of a comprehensive and effective AI policy for your recruiting team. If you’re looking for a platform that offers all of this in one easy-to-use package for all of your talent intelligence needs, Cangrade is happy to help.