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How AI Drives Results for Talent Acquisition

In recent years, AI has revolutionized almost every industry and business function – and now it’s coming for talent acquisition.

Uptake of AI tools that can augment existing talent activities and enable new ones is already gathering momentum. According to research in 2022, 63% of companies plan to invest in AI hiring solutions in 2022, with the goal of increasing efficiency, diversity and reducing time-to-fill.

While AI has potential to transform areas such as diversity, equity and inclusion, getting the most out of it requires a clear vision for what outcomes are needed and how different tools and solutions enable them.

So when evaluating AI solutions, it’s important to ensure they align with and help drive critical business outcomes. Start by categorizing the impact of AI tools on the key stakeholders in the talent ecosystem: recruiters, candidates and employees.

Recruiter experience

The pandemic made an already-challenging talent landscape even tougher for recruiters. Not only are some skills in short supply, but there’s also a shift in worker priorities as people reconsider what they want from their careers.

Recruiters need tools and practices to help them add clarity to their communication with both internal and external candidates, and that improve their ability to make accurate, data-driven decisions, all while cutting costs.

AI tools can help recruiters become more productive and efficient, by enabling them to reach high volumes of candidates without sacrificing quality.

By automating the collection and parsing of data – and enabling the creation of custom rules to prioritize key roles – AI-powered tools allow recruiters to more easily create rich, targeted talent pipelines. And because the quality of data is better, so too is the predictability of hiring results: strong candidates can be sourced at scale, reducing time to hire.

It lets talent teams put their limited human resources to better use, improving their own performance and creating positive business impacts in a much shorter time.

Candidate experience

Attracting talent in a competitive marketplace requires an excellent candidate experience – both for those who get the job, and those who don’t.

But recruitment has historically had a bad reputation, thanks to patchy processes characterized by long waits, poor communication, and aggressive questioning from ill-prepared interviewers.

In today’s market, that approach won’t cut it. Candidates need to be at the center of the talent experience from day one. They need to feel desired and empowered; that companies are trying to earn their attention, and not vice versa.

Delivering a personalized candidate experience at scale becomes much easier with AI. Intelligent sourcing tools can suggest candidates from outside recruiters’ usual talent pools, identifying relevant skill sets in people with roles or backgrounds recruiters might not think to consider. That helps generate a wider, more diverse talent pool that AI can automatically match up to open roles, speeding up an often slow process.

The candidate experience on career sites or during automated interactions (such as with chatbots or email campaigns) can also be personalized, increasing engagement and conversion rates. AI systems learn more about candidates as they browse, and can serve up customized content and targeted recommendations for job roles or content consumption with every new visit.

Employee experiences

According to the The Talent Trap, 83% of business leaders are concerned about talent loss or leakage in their organization. Yet, the fifth edition of our Talent Index found that 80% of people said they would be likely to stay in their current organization if they had more opportunities for internal moves, or were trained appropriately to move into a new role within the business.

Top talent is difficult to attract, and businesses need to work hard to retain valuable employees once they have them, or risk churn. But existing employees are usually an afterthought when looking for skills to fill open roles – even though they’re already a proven culture fit, and take far less time to hire, onboard and create impact. To ensure they have the right people in place to meet the future needs of the business, talent teams need to prioritize internal mobility as much as hiring.

AI-powered talent platforms enable talent teams to create unique, transparent, personalized maps for employees’ careers, so that they have “turn-by-turn” guidance on the internal roles and learning opportunities open to them and don't need to look elsewhere.

By gathering reliable data, AI can infer skills from roles and job titles, suggesting tailored growth paths for employees to help them further their own development and improve retention. AI can also spot the valuable skills that already exist in house, and the ones you could invest in developing. Optimizing available skills within the existing workforce means businesses can execute on plans faster.

Gaining the AI advantage

As the HR technology space matures, more AI-led solutions are coming to market which enhance recruiter experience, candidate experience and talent mobility.

Tools that offer more efficient, more intelligent ways to bring new talent into businesses and improve career pathing for those already in the ranks are a must. For talent teams, reliable data and AI can be an invaluable asset, helping them deliver on their ever-increasing talent acquisition and management remit at scale.

Find out more about AI and its use in Talent Management.