With growing unemployment rates and millions of people on the hunt for a job, technology has never been more important in helping your recruiters rise to the occasion. Today’s most sophisticated staffing firms are going beyond triggered emails and SMS integration to provide a seamless, polished experience throughout the talent lifecycle. If you want to foster better candidate relationships and max out your return on investment, your next superpower might be a conversational AI assistant — also known as a chatbot.
Recruiting chatbots are on the clock 24/7 to have accessible, personalized conversations with candidates. These automated chat systems leverage Natural Language Processing (NLP), Natural Language Understanding (NLU), artificial intelligence (AI), by applying powerful machine learning (ML) to provide a remarkably human experience.
If you’re considering adding a chatbot to your tech stack — or already have one in place and want to better understand its ROI — it’s essential to think holistically about how you measure its success. Most importantly, avoid the trap that a chatbot is only net positive in ROI if it’s directly driving placements. There are many more ways to get value from recruiting chatbots, from saving precious time to cleaning up your database. When evaluating chatbot ROI, consider how your technology impacts these important facets of your business:
Perhaps one of the most meaningful reasons to implement a chatbot is to grow your recruiter productivity. Inbound volume is at an all-time high, so it’s important that your recruiters are laser-focused on the best candidates for the job. Chatbots can source and screen applicants at the top of the funnel, making sure each new candidate is well-vetted based on specific criteria. Trusting your AI tools to take on tasks like screening, scheduling, and answering basic help inquiries will let your recruiters reinvest that time savings into revenue-generating activities.
You can even let your chatbot play “traffic cop” to screen out candidates that aren’t the right fit early in the process. If a negative chatbot experience results in a candidate being excluded from the pipeline, that’s ultimately enabling your recruiters to nurture stronger relationships with the candidates that are a good fit.
Our research shows that recruiters spend 2/3 of their day on data entry and other tedious work — but what if your chatbot could handle those routine tasks? (Heads up: it can!) AI is one of the most efficient ways to keep your database clean and enable your recruiters with accurate data. Your chatbot can reach out directly to talent in your database to ask questions like “Can you lift 50 lbs?” or “Are you skilled in javascript?” — and it’ll automatically write that data back to your ATS, updating or overwriting designated fields. Data enrichment is one of the best ways to quantify the impact of a recruiting chatbot, giving your ATS (and thus your recruiters) more and better information. Think of it as a pre-screening tool that both reactivates dormant candidates and empowers your recruiters.
With an increasingly high volume of applicants, sourcing and screening can take away from recruiters’ ability to focus on the most important part of their job: providing a first-class candidate experience. Delegating some of these early tasks to your conversational AI assistant allows your team to have higher-quality conversations with only the most promising candidates. Having a database flush with up-to-date, powerful data will also allow your recruiters to have a more customized, advanced conversation with candidates, given that your chatbot has already screened them for basic job requirements.
While driving more placements isn’t the only measurable impact of recruiting chatbots, it is a significant part of understanding their ROI. The comprehensive benefits of a chatbot can ultimately shorten your time-to-fill, reduce acquisition costs, and help your recruiters get the right candidate into the role faster.
The most effective technology platforms will give you visibility into each of these efficiency gains and show you the full impact of adding a recruiting chatbot to your tech stack. To learn more about our conversational AI assistant, Reva, and see what Sense can do for you, contact us to schedule a demo.
