The current COVID 19 crisis has changed our lives as we know it. We have seen and faced unprecedented socio-economic challenges in the last few months. Various business sectors are suffering a major setback due to social distancing and lockdown. The hiring sector is going through adverse changes too. Due to limited cash flow and demand in the economy, a wave of unemployment has hit. But this simply doesn’t mean that companies are putting off hiring. This pandemic has made remote recruiting the new normal. With that, Recruiters and HR managers are rethinking their strategies and roles. In times of crisis like this, automation is a critical part of virtual hiring. With recruiters warming up to increase the roles of technology, the role of AI in remote recruitment has never been more important.

The coronavirus pandemic has pushed businesses through a very tough time. The economic depression has been a disaster for all the industries, recruitment is no exception. We have a recession upon us. All of the adverse effects of the crisis have also brought upon a huge change in the recruitment industry. Recruiters, therefore, need to move quickly and level up their remote recruiting game. This includes the assessment of the recruitment process, the technology involved, and the functions. Luckily, over the last few years, Artificial Intelligence has had an increased role in the standard recruitment process. This is a golden opportunity for recruiters to focus on building an AI-driven recruitment process to speed up their hiring process. 

Artificial Intelligence In Recruitment

Technology is impacting the recruitment industry in a big way. A hard fact is that organizations that do not equip their recruitment with technology now, will fail to remain competitive. The rise of AI in recruitment is not a trend anymore. Trends usually rise up, mark their impacts for some time, and then fade out. But AI in recruitment is changing the conventional hiring forever. Huge tech giants like Amazon, Facebook, and even Google, are moving their hiring online. This pandemic only sped up the incorporation of AI. 

An important question that arises is, what are the benefits of AI in remote recruiting? As per a 2018 survey conducted by Knockri, companies using its screening suite see up to a 62% reduction in costs and a 68% reduced time when filling positions. Eightfold, a job-matching platform, claims that among the millions of applications its AI has processed, employers have observed a 200% increase in quality candidates. According to an article published by CIO Economic Times, AI is giving 54% returns on account of time to recruiters. 

Role of AI in Remote Recruitment

In the current times, there is an urgent need of adapting to remote recruiting. Recruiters need to hire faster and increase their productivity. So, equipping the recruitment process with AI has become extremely crucial. Here are some of the major aspects where the role of AI in remote recruitment is prominent. 

Writing perfect Job Posts

With the pandemic going on, competition for best talent has gotten fiercer. You would not want to leave out any stone unturned. Optimizing your job posts is a great start. Preparing a perfect job post is not as easy as you think. Your job title and job description must be clear. Due to COVID 19 crisis, many organizations are undergoing hiring freeze and layoffs. So, most of the eligible talents are under the impression that companies are not hiring. So, this is a great opportunity for recruiters to make a great first impression. Recruiters can do that by publishing perfect job posts. Companies have been using AI-driven software that uses data and predictive analytics for creating relevant job posts. So, you can reach the best candidates with perfect job posts. 

Candidate Sourcing

To find top talents, recruiters need to source potential candidates and build a pipeline. In today’s landscape, sourcing the right candidates can be ridiculously challenging. There are many channels to source candidates, from social media to personal networks. But recruiters need to be extensively calculative to source the right candidates. Specifically talking about the current times, recruiters should effectively identify and source passive candidates. However, candidate Sourcing can become extremely easy with the proper technology. With proper data-driven algorithms and marketing automation, relevant parameters can be set for candidate sourcing. By doing this recruiters can proactively reach out to a wider pool of candidates early. 

Candidate Screening

Screening the candidate profile for the relevant position is one of the most tedious tasks of remote recruiting. If you’re dealing with hundreds of applications, you can easily miss out on potential candidates. Automating the scanning of resumes is the most important role that Artificial Intelligence plays in remote recruiting. With the right HR technology, recruiters can effectively identify the skills and experience of potential candidates. Screening with AI focuses on relevant experience and skills, instead of keywords. With deep learning at its core, AI can screen millions of profiles of the ideal candidates. 

Remote Hiring

In today’s time, with millions of people working from their homes, recruiters are shifting to remote hiring. Remote work has been booming for over a decade now. But with the COVID 19 pandemic, it has become the new normal for recruitment. Most organizations have remote workers as a part of their workforce already. However, hiring remote workers can be challenging too. Especially if the entire recruitment process has to take place remotely. Luckily, with AI recruiters can hire remote workers with a little less hassle. There is a whole bunch of pre-employment assessment tools that recruiters can use to hire remote workers. These AI-driven tools can help recruiters to assess a candidate’s skill set and organizational fit. 

Candidate Engagement

A good recruiter is the one who can engage a potential candidate throughout the recruiting process. With in-person hiring becoming almost obsolete at present, candidate engagement can be a bit challenging. But with AI, recruiters can effectively manage their candidate engagement strategies. Today, many companies are using NLP-powered chatbots to create interactive conversational flow with multiple potential candidates. This can effectively reduce the dependency on face-to-face candidate engagement strategies. 

Background Checks

In most cases, a background check is done on all the potential candidates for the validity of his credentials. Conventionally, background checks are very tedious. But this process has sped up since the evolution of AI. AI-powered background checks let recruiters have a reduced bias and increase privacy. This way, recruiters can make sure that the candidate is genuine. It also saves time on the recruiting process.