Customers’ experiences are more important to businesses these days. Of course, it is critical to the cause of corporate progress and client retention. The way firms handle their consumers has a direct impact on their income and performance. However, organizations must also consider applicant experience and employee engagement activities. The type of candidate engagement and experience provided by an organization is critical to its reputation and branding.
It is your responsibility as a recruiter to provide favorable prospect experiences. Indeed, the candidate experiences you provide will influence several critical aspects of organizational growth. Candidate experiences will assist individuals to determine whether or not they want to work with your organization. Furthermore, candidate experience will influence whether or not individuals apply to your organization again in the future.
As a result, applicant experiences are critical to developing an efficient and streak-savvy staff. Having said that, you must consider applicant experience as a source of competitive advantage. The most significant advantage you have as a recruiter in the modern day is the extremely improved technology infrastructure.
You can now take use of this infrastructure and incorporate AI to improve candidate experiences. Artificial intelligence is driving huge changes in the recruiting industry and assisting recruiters in a variety of ways. You should try to take advantage of it before others do!
Before delving more into how AI might help improve candidate experiences, it is critical to examine certain key candidate experience data and trends. These insights will help you understand why candidate experiences are so important for organizations in this day and age.
Some applicant experience numbers you should be aware of. According to :
- Talent Board, 53 percent of job seekers report receiving no response from companies or recruiters even after three months of applying.
- IBM, 38% of applicants are interested in joining an organization based on a favorable candidate experience.
- Careerarc, over 70% of job seekers want recruiters to optimize response time.
- SHRM. Given the application’s difficulty, 60% of candidates drop out in the middle.
- Forbes, 72 percent of applicants will tell others about their terrible candidate experience, giving a bad name to the organisation.
- Careerarc, more than 90% of businesses believe that candidate experience has a direct influence on customer purchasing decisions.
- LinkedIn, Virgin Media lost $5 million every year as a result of unfavourable applicant experiences until the organisation worked on it and turned it around.
As you can see, candidate experience is related to nearly every aspect of business performance. It is important to top-tier talent when selecting to join your organisation. Furthermore, it affects how many consumers and clients your company can maintain. It also has an impact on your company’s image, reviews, and chances of being referred to others. You can see how much power recruiters wield now!
Of course, as a recruiter, you must deliver prospects devastating rejections. If 500 persons apply for two positions, you must inform 498 of them that they were not chosen. That is, without a doubt, a difficult task with few options for appeasing those who did not make it. But does it mean you can’t provide outstanding candidate experiences?
The candidate experiences should be so pleasant that even the rejected applicants are grateful. They should continue to look forward to appealing work chances within your organisation! As previously said, artificial intelligence may be used in a variety of ways to enhance candidate experiences. So, without further ado, let us investigate!
Ways AI may contribute to a pleasant applicant experience:
AI can bridge the communication gap:
Communication gaps between recruiters and candidates are common in job applications. To a significant extent, this communication chasm is comprehensible. You have a lot on your plate as a recruiter, and you have a lot of applications to review. Maintaining regular communication with each applicant becomes impractical as a result.
But we also need to put ourselves in the shoes of a candidate and assess the situation from there. Consistency in communicating will be an important aspect of their experience. However, the use of artificial intelligence in recruitment can help to bridge these communication barriers.
AI has the potential to provide continuous two-way dialogue between candidates and recruiters. Candidates will be able to ask pertinent questions throughout the application process thanks to the integration of chatbots and AI algorithms. You may be too busy to reply to them, but artificial intelligence can!
Furthermore, chatbots will react to inquiries considerably faster, providing applicants with useful replies. Two-way dialogue is usually more interesting and informative! This is where your company may acquire a competitive advantage by giving practical candidate experiences.
AI can help to clarify application processes:
If the application procedure is excessively difficult, candidates are likely to drop out. This might also occur as a result of confusing applicant instructions when filling out the job application. Of course, candidates will consider this a negative aspect of their experience.
According to Zippia, 92 percent of candidates would rank their experience as bad if instructions are unclear throughout the application process. However, this is where AI may truly transform the game. AI-enabled chatbots may provide candidates with real-time instruction and help while they finish their applications.
Constant and prompt advice via chatbots will improve applicant experiences. Applying for a job will become lot more convenient for them as they obtain guidance and clarification at each stage. Having said that, you can use AI to create valuable candidate experiences. It is the most efficient support you can get in this digital age!
AI can help recruiters keep prospects updated:
Throughout the application process, candidates have no idea whether or not the employers have received their applications. Furthermore, they seldom receive updates indicating whether or not the positions are still open. As a result, they are confused if they should wait for a call or explore other options.
As stated above, some applicants hear nothing from recruiters even after three to four months. Also, as cited by Lever, the majority of candidates will not reapply to an organization that did not offer notifications on their application status. This is something you would want to change for the better for sure!
Of course, having a big burden to manage is understandable. You would never have enough time to alert applicants via personal SMS or emails. However, here is where AI may come in handy and aid you in producing favourable candidate experiences.
You can keep candidates updated using artificial intelligence and an application tracking system (ATS). You can use AI to deliver notifications to each programme without having to spend time doing so. Candidates will be notified when their applications are received and reviewed by employers. Even after the roles are no longer available for hire, all candidates will be kept up to date.
Candidates will be delighted to learn about these advances. As a result, AI may be a game-changing integration in recruiting to curate wealthy consumer experiences. Because there are so many applications to evaluate, they sit in the pipeline for a long period.
AI can assist reduce response time:
As a result, candidates must wait weeks or even months to learn whether they have been accepted or not. In this case, artificial intelligence can help you examine and evaluate prospects more efficiently.
You may use AI to evaluate resumes and applications in a timely manner and match them with the vital abilities required for a post. Furthermore, because of the speedier review of applications, you may select the top applicants considerably sooner than normal. The choosing process would be significantly quicker.
This will significantly shorten the time required to communicate the final choice to the candidates. Naturally, the shorter the reaction time, the better the candidate’s experience. Both selected and rejected applicants want to hear from you as soon as possible—delays in conveying final choices result in a terrible candidate experience.
AI can provide customized candidate feedback:
For each vacancy, you receive an excessive quantity of applicants. It is indisputable that you will be unable to provide personalized comments to each prospect. But consider it from their point of view once more.
Even if they are not chosen, it is critical that they are aware of their flaws. They have a right to know why they were not chosen. As a result, candidate feedback is extremely important to them. This is another area where artificial intelligence may be beneficial!
Using AI, you can provide personalized feedback to applicants, adding value to their professional aims and goals. Genuine applicants will appreciate forthright and helpful comments. AI can quickly assess candidates’ attributes and key capabilities and match them to the job position criteria.
Candidates will then get individualized feedback detailing what abilities or credentials they don’t have that are relevant to a particular employment vacancy. Natural language processing technology (NLP) can help with feedback. Having said that, offering helpful comments will be a key element of creating a pleasant applicant experience.
Conclusion
To sum up, AI has the power to fundamentally alter the recruitment industry. But AI won’t take the position of hiring managers. No matter how sophisticated technology becomes, it will never completely replace human wisdom and understanding; rather, it will serve as an adjunct to it.
The use of AI in recruitment will really increase your productivity and aid in better task management. You may use AI as a tool to help you complete your work more quickly and effectively while improving the candidate experience. In terms of generating pleasant candidate experiences, AI may be your best team member. Make careful to maximize its use!
