Ever since humans learned about the phrase ‘artificial intelligence,’ there’s been a fear that, eventually, these robots will take over everyone’s jobs. Though many industries have already adopted AI-backed automation, it is now creeping into the recruiting world. Recruiting is such a personal industry, how could this be? Like any tool, recruiting chatbots are meant to help you and improve your work life, not take it from you. But what are they, and how can they really help you?

What are Recruiting Chatbots?

Recruiting chatbots (also called AI-powered chatbots, recruitment chatbots or recruiting assistants) replicate many of the basic communication tasks that recruiters are typically responsible for, such as:

• Greeting job seekers that come to a career site or a job requisition landing page
• Collecting contact information from the job seeker for follow up later with an actual recruiter
• Pre-qualifying job seekers by asking questions about experience, interests, etc.
• Scheduling time to chat with a potential client or candidate at a future time
• Answering basic questions that can help the job seeker with his or her job search
• Bridging the gap between technology and human connection

How Do Chatbots Work?

Recruiting chatbots mimic an actual human recruiter and, in many cases, a chatbot can give the impression that the job seeker is talking to another person on the other end. Does this mean they will replace actual recruiters? We don’t believe that’ll be the case, so lower those pitchforks.  

What Are the Benefits of Recruiting Chatbots?

Recruiting chatbots can help recruiters with conversions, save time with repetitive communication, decrease time-to-hire and improve the candidate experience. Let’s break those down a little further to better understand how recruiting chatbots really can help you.

1. Conversions: If a job seeker comes to your career site and is interested in a job but hesitant to fill out a cumbersome application, the recruiting chatbot can automatically initiate a conversation, making the candidate less likely to leave and more likely to enter your pipeline.
2. Time Savings: Communication is the bulk of a recruiter’s job—period. It’s so important because recruiting is mostly about relationship building, but some of that communication is also about getting answers to help move the process forward. This takes a lot of time, especially if there are a lot of candidates. Recruiting chatbots can help you with some of the more menial tasks that take place at the top of the recruiting funnel-like collecting contact information, scheduling time to chat and pre-qualifying candidates.
3. Time to Hire: Since recruiting chatbots can automatically qualify job seekers for you, you’ll be able to spend more time with the relationship-building aspect of the hiring process. This means human recruiters have more time to spend on meaningful conversations with candidates. By devoting more of your time moving candidates forward, you’ll be able to decrease the time to hire.
4. Candidate Experience: Since recruiting chatbots are always online, no candidate will have to wait to “talk to a recruiter.” Plus, if your chatbot is built correctly, it can alert an actual human recruiter to enter the conversation when the bot identifies a really good candidate. For both candidates and recruiters, the recruiting chatbot serves as a concierge, which creates a great candidate experience.

How Do I Get a Recruiting Chatbot?

There are a number of options available. Tools like Snapengage, Jobvite, Talview and XOR can be integrated into your existing website. Contact our dedicated web design and development team at Recruiters Websites to learn how this tool can help your company. We would love to see your company thriving!