Welcome back to another Fetcha insight, this time exploring the knock-on effect of automation, integration and AI, on the tech and IT recruitment landscape. We’ll be covering the top automations that have dramatically changed the recruitment process, as well as new AI and integrated processes which shape the way businesses hire (and who they hire).
AI, what's the fuss?
Artificial Intelligence has exploded onto the recruitment scene over the last 8 years, with machine learning powering new functions, reports and predictive capabilities. All helping to reduce the previously large manual burden of human only processing. You’ll see companies like Zoho that can map behavioural assessments and explore human matching, based on defined requirements that human operators input. We’re big advocates of using AI tools to help in recruitment, ensuring we spend more time speaking with the right applicants that ‘fit the bill’, so to speak. But, we are also aware that placing trust solely on an algorithm to define the ‘right’ candidate, is not the smartest idea. Instead, we focus on AI tools that can alleviate the pressures of reading and responding to hundreds of emails, messages and personal notes. Allowing us to gather the information we need quickly. Work smarter is the goal. For a more comprehensive read of AI within tech recruitment, we recommend checking out Monica’s post over at Phenom. She’s put together a great read that covers the basics, to more direct effects to individual recruiters, not just company-wide AI automation.
Automate the right way
Automation is built directly from good quality data. That’s why, when recruiters are beginning their modernisation journey, they first need to look back at the past and crunch the numbers. Whilst recruitment is very much trust based, building real and valuable relationship with companies, job seekers and industry experts, there is still a heavy amount of numbers and stats which help steer the direction of what’s important and what can be dropped. Having one ‘source of truth’ is paramount to a good automation workflow. That, combined with a tried and tested process of first call logging, interview notes and reminders, can form an automated hiring journey that still keeps a human firmly in the loop (just not as involved in the admin).
The top two automations we’ve seen across recruitment are as follows (please get in touch if we’ve missed one you think is important):
LinkedIn Recruiter – The G.O.A.T. If you’re not using LinkedIn Recruiter, regardless of what industry/field of recruitment you work in, you’re missing out. LinkedIn Recruiter allows you to expand your searches beyond your personal connections, and have access to over 690 million LinkedIn members worldwide. You can search faster with 25+ smart and simple-to-use search filters and recommendations. And their new “Find more people like” feature lets you create a search based on ideal candidates you may know or have reached out to already. Like any new tool, it takes a while to get used to it. But once you know the basics, and begin working through more defined searches, the automative tools are ‘almost’ perfect.
SeekOut – SeekOut is smart. It automatically pulls data from internal and external sources—with no manual data entry required. It then derives insights that drive re-skilling, redeployment and recruiting priorities. SeekOut also has a heart, as it specialises in hard-to-find talent, with dedicated technical and cleared talent pools. As well as providing critical insights around diversity within your talent pipeline, helping you reduce unconscious bias and find underrepresented candidates. Job well done. 
Integration for a streamlined approach
Automation ties in perfectly with our final section of todays insight. Integration. This is the underlying process that not only connects your different systems so they can work together (with applicant details that move seamlessly between them), but gathers all the decision-relevant information about your candidates into one place, in a way that’s highly automated. Think of it as having the right tech stack that is open to all users of an organisation, showing each one what’s important to their role and function, whilst also having the facility to be accessed by senior members, other recruiters, auditors and the like. Integration should always be based on improving the experience that candidates go through, making the adventure of exploring a new role, having those first video calls and accessing company details, paperwork and contracts, a breeze.
Final thoughts
We’ll finish up our insight with some interesting stats, highlighting what/if using the above automation, AI and integrated processes actually does for the businesses out in the wild. Sourced from SHRM. As always, if you’d like to talk recruitment, our Fetcha journey, our partnership with Amazon Web Services (AWS) or any other topic, feel free to reach out.
– 25% of companies report using HR automation, mainly for recruitment and hiring.
– 69% of HR professionals that do use automation in hiring reported that it significantly decreased the time spent on this process.
– However, only 40% of companies that use HR automation for hiring stated that their software provider was transparent about how they combat bias in their technology.
– 54% of companies using HR automation for hiring have faced challenges with using the tools, including the algorithms mistakenly excluding qualified candidates.
– 30% of survey respondents agreed that HR automation does help them reduce any potential bias from their hiring process, but 46% want resources to identify and correct for any bias when using the tools.