The recruitment industry is no longer a stranger to the advancements in artificial intelligence (AI). Companies have realized they need to accelerate their hiring strategies and optimize hiring funnel with AI. There are several reasons why AI has grabbed the attention of recruiters. One of the key features is the ease that it brings into the hiring pipeline. The smooth functioning of the recruitment pipeline is essential to hit all the checkmarks. A glitch in any stage, whether sourcing, selection, or interviewing, could risk losing competitive candidates. With AI, every section of the talent acquisition funnel can be enhanced to yield faster and better results. So, if you optimize hiring funnel with AI, what can you expect? Let’s take a look. Eliminate Unconscious Bias One of the main challenges that recruitment has to overcome is that of human bias. Recruiter bias is inevitable, and that leads to similar types of people being chosen. Unconscious bias can happen at various levels, such as education, location, gender, experience, brand names, job descriptions, resume parsing, etc. Creating a recruitment funnel with AI can help eliminate these biases.  By scanning through thousands of applications in seconds, AI has the ability to go through all the applications and find the best-suited ones. When recruiters are bombarded with hundreds or even thousands of applications, human bias will creep in to hasten the process. When these unconscious biases aren’t checked, it can lead to a lack of diversity in companies. By introducing AI into the recruitment system, companies can target a larger talent pool, which is an important way to increase diversity. Overcome the Diversity Challenge One of the biggest challenges recruiters face today is addressing the issue of diversity. Multiple studies have proved that diversity helps in adding to the productivity of a company. According to Forbes, a diverse company can bring in about 19% more revenue. Introducing an AI-based recruiting funnel creates a level-playing field for candidates. Traditional resume-based hiring has several flaws that lead to the creation of a homogenous team or company. On the other hand, by integrating AI into the hiring system, the focus shifts to the skills and experiences of candidates regardless of their background. AI helps in creating a structure that addresses inherent biases that may leave out sections of society. About 63% of professionals believe that using AI has helped improve their company’s recruitment process. Better Hiring Experience for Candidates Recruiters tend to believe that the best way to improve the hiring pipeline is to get tons of candidates to apply. However, instead of achieving their target, recruiters end up being frustrated and lose valuable money and resources of the company. What they need to know is that the candidate is the most important cog of the talent acquisition funnel. There are several ways in which an improved talent funnel with AI can create a positive candidate experience, such as:

• Search for lookalike candidates
• Source intelligence to minimize administrative work
• Creating job campaigns that are better aligned with candidate hunt

Several times, companies already have an idea about their ideal candidate from previous applications or employees. In such cases, they can leverage AI to find candidates with similar talent and reduce routine administrative work. Creating focused and targeted job campaigns are essential for maximum impact. By understanding the way candidates look for jobs, such as their preferred mediums, their keywords, etc., companies can tune their campaigns accordingly. The end result is a better experience for both the hiring manager as well as candidates, and ultimately, the company’s brand image is elevated for its seamless process. Scan through Existing Company Database Every time a job comes up, recruiters turn to external sources to seek candidates. The current recruiting process starts with collecting a large sample of candidates and then eliminating the unfit ones out. But, companies are sitting on a goldmine of candidate data. Little do they know that with AI for candidate matching, they can fill the role faster and with minimal effort. AI helps in identifying and collecting data on candidates that can be kept and used when needed. For example, if a company has a vacancy, AI would already have searched through the company database to find top-matching candidates for the role. In fact, using the right mining techniques can reduce recruitment time by about 54% while also finding talented candidates with minimal time and cost. The idea is that rather than look for active candidates from scratch, candidate rediscovery using AI becomes faster and more accurate. Recruiters realize that they can optimize hiring funnel with AI by just making the most of the existing database rather than increase the candidate supply from external sources every time they need to hire. Relief from Administrative Work One of the biggest inefficiencies in hiring is the number of repetitive and time-consuming tasks. An improved recruitment funnel with AI can relieve recruiters of this administrative work and focus on important areas, such as understanding the roles and engaging candidates. By automating mundane tasks such as scheduling interviews, screening candidates, sourcing resumes, etc., recruiters can realign themselves to more important things at hand without worry. This can even be extended to creating a chatbot that replies to frequently asked questions. AI can provide insights for metrics like time to hire and fill a role, cost per hire, anticipate candidate churn, and even seek out passive candidates for future vacancies. Without AI, many of these results may not be possible, and many others would require hours of hard manual labor. These are just some of the ways companies can optimize hiring funnel with AI while also boosting the quality of their hire.  With the uptake of this technology still at the nascent stage, companies have an added advantage over their competitors. What is known is that more companies are seizing the opportunity and integrating AI into the hiring mechanism.