Conversational AI can help Human Resources teams to optimize activities, from onboarding, recruitment, and retention to employee offboarding with ease.
Technology is constantly evolving to better fit the needs and expectations of the up-and-coming generations. These changes continue to simplify tasks, shifting more and more towards the automation of everyday activities to ease the burdens that may arise from the tedious aspects of jobs that employees aren't always thrilled to complete.
A great example of this is today's conversational AI technology, which has changed the way HR teams operate in terms of daily activities, from onboarding, recruitment, and retention to employee offboarding. Conversational AI has taken the place of simple chatbots by enriching them with advanced self-learning capabilities that seamlessly integrate and interpret data to simplify users' tasks. For HR, this means self-service for users, answering repetitive employee/candidate questions, qualifying interview candidates, or performing specific HR-related processes.
Conversational AI is typically associated with chatbots despite their drastic differences. However, chatbots are far less sophisticated in their overall mannerism, making it obvious to users that they are interacting with a robot. Typically, the user enters some text, and the chatbot replies with an answer that was generated based on a few keywords given by the user. Receiving the desired answer from a chatbot is not only time-consuming but oftentimes far more frustrating than the experience needs to be, as users must often rephrase their requests in multiple different ways. This does not make for a great recruitment experience.
Conversational AI differs from chatbots in a variety of ways which makes the user experience a pleasant, human-like one. Conversational AI uses Natural Language Processing to adapt to the inputs it receives from its users by guiding them to the responses it needs using information that was gathered from asking the users more questions. Due to its learning abilities and advanced evaluation tools, DRUID conversational AI assistants can pick up on different conversations, which can change from one candidate to another, allowing bot authors to assist the AI virtual assistant in learning new topics that it may not have been previously programmed for. In addition, Conversational AI can also help HR teams navigate away from bias when considering candidates, as it can be programmed to treat all applicants equally.
There are thousands of recruiting tools available on the market that each address issues in the recruitment process in their way. If your HR team is looking to hire, here are a few ways Conversational AI can be used to address multiple recruitment challenges, so they don’t have to:
Building solid, engaging relationships with potential applicants as soon as they begin the application process is essential if you want to attract top talent. However, this presents a challenge: How can you develop relationships with every applicant when you receive hundreds of applications for each position? It typically takes recruiters weeks to revise applications, and as time goes on, candidates become disengaged and start seeking work elsewhere.
Conversational AI excels in this particular scenario. Organizations can begin developing relationships with prospects with conversational AI even before they apply. A conversational AI assistant can automatically start engaging candidates when they visit a company's career page and begin responding to their questions. As a result, candidates will be guided through the process without any involvement from the recruiter. They can be screened to see if their qualifications match what the company is looking for before advancing to the next stage of the hiring process.
As mentioned previously, conversational AI can assist in narrowing candidate searches by identifying the ideal people to interview from a vast pool of applications with only a few brief messages to each candidate. Conversational AI can swiftly determine who has or does not have the skills required to fill an available position, thus improving efficiency by only considering the best-fit job seekers.
Efficiency is also improved during virtual interviews, allowing the hiring teams to hire the appropriate individual faster. This is done by rapidly analyzing transcripts for themes, keywords, crucial concepts, or specific phrases for the hiring teams so they don't have to. When conversational AI is utilized to interpret virtual interviews, better hiring decisions can be made. Interviews become more informative as they are transcribed and interpreted. Hiring managers may ask better questions and engage in more meaningful dialogues with potential workers. The better the dialogue, the better the hire, and outstanding hires position an organization for growth and success.
When recruiters utilize conversational AI to connect with applicants, they can reach out to more people than they could on their own. Conversational AI can function at any time of day and with any number of individuals. Hundreds, if not thousands, of candidates can be quickly contacted for interview scheduling, follow-up, or document management, such as resumes or portfolios.
Conversational AI may collect basic information from applicants and only provide the best candidates to recruiters. When recruiters aren't swamped with applications, they have more time to form relationships with the most promising individuals.
Many businesses have enormous databases of people who applied for positions but were not hired for various reasons. Some of these people may be qualified for other available positions. While many rejection letters state, "we'll keep your information on file and contact you if something comes up," few businesses have the resources to follow through on that promise.
A conversational AI assistant will help the user (the recruiter, in this case) to trigger insightful information that already exists within the company's candidate database and help him identify potentially fit candidates for certain open positions - in a blink of a... word! This is possible through automation, a DRUID conversational AI assistant being able to connect to your internal systems through APIs, connectors etc. and surface the precise information—all in minutes rather than days. The recruiter will ask the AI virtual assistant to send emails to all possible candidates with specific questions or schedule interviews with some of them etc. He will, thus, have more time to personally engage with more valuable candidates and attract talents that are a perfect fit for the company.
Conversational AI has applications beyond recruiting as it can provide solutions for onboarding and beyond. For example, once an employee is hired, HR staff must collect information for payroll, benefits, and other administrative functions. With conversational AI, this process can be further accelerated by having the AI collect that information and answer new hires' inquiries about onboarding. As a result, conversational AI may undertake the majority of the effort for the HR personnel. Instead of an HR manager manually sending out documents, following up, answering queries, and hunting down vital paperwork, the AI does everything. HR teams may then use the time saved to focus on higher-priority, higher-value tasks like engaging new employees, defining goals, and acclimating new hires to the corporate culture.
Conversational AI is also capable of answering questions and providing information to employees at every stage of their journey, not just in the recruitment process. A conversational AI assistant allows HR teams to save a considerable amount of time, allowing them to devote more time to creating meaningful experiences for employees. Employee demands are continuously changing, and conversational AI can assist HR departments in gathering the data and time required to appropriately respond to employees' desires.
Since conversational AI is capable of engaging with employee concerns, the data that is gathered can also be analyzed to anticipate and address possible employee issues. This can be used to track critical indicators on an individual and company-wide basis, as well as execute analytic operations to extract meaningful insights from data and share those insights with the HR team. Organizations can use these insights to spot problems early on and intervene before they become full-fledged disasters. Conversational AI, for example, can assist HR teams in forecasting when employees may be ready to leave the organization by analyzing retention trends.
Conversational AI has many uses within a company that can greatly benefit an HR team. DRUID helps you increase your HR team's efficiency, simplify and automate admin processes, while delivering a better employee experience with DRUID conversational AI-driven virtual assistants.
Learn more about DRUID AI or schedule a demo with us below to see how it can benefit your business first-hand.
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