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What Recruiting Tools Will You Be Using in 2020? I Will Tell You!

Written by: Roger Lear
Published on: Oct 19, 2018

Recruiting Tools 2020

 

I love going to talent acquisition technology conferences. It’s kind of like going to a boat show. Whoever thought you could put three 300’s on a pontoon boat! The amount of money being poured into talent acquisition marketplace is mind-numbing. While this technology is great to look at, many talent acquisition managers can’t imagine the day when they will be able to purchase and implement all this new, powerful technology for their company.

 

Boat Show
Three 300's!

 

On top of that, you can’t even read anything about talent acquisition today that doesn’t include the words artificial intelligence (AI) or machine learning. All new TA products claim AI is their “secret sauce” while at the same time telling you that you will never have to source, prescreen, and set interviews ever again. This sounds great but is it real?

Last month in New Orleans, I attended the TATECH Conference which bought together job boards, technology companies, recruitment marketing agencies and talent acquisition managers from around the world. (If you never been to one, this is a good one!) The entire conference dealt with the challenges in recruiting and the technologies that are being created to solve these problems and possibly even replace you!

Here are a few of the categories and products that I thought were interesting.

  1. Chatbots. Chatbots use many platforms (Text, email, WhatsApp, social media) to reach out to job seekers (or source candidates in your ATS or job board databases) and ask them a variety of questions. They are AI enabled so they can hold a conversation with potential candidates without them ever knowing they are texting with a robot. If one thousand people apply for your open job, a chatbot can screen all of them at the same time. Once a chatbot learns what they are looking for, they can set the interview with a recruiter. This is happening. They claim to help the candidate experience. Instead of a candidate going into a black hole, the chatbot will prescreen everyone and be able to kindly reject those who don’t make the cut. It is also supposed to end any discrimination. Companies doing this today are Mya, Talk Push and Olivia.
  1. IBM Watson Recruitment. AI-powered and has features that can take your job descriptions and forecast in seconds how long it will it take to hire, where the available candidates are, and how you have to write your job descriptions to get them interested. IBM Watson
  1. Video Interviewing with AI. Hire Vue is the clear leader in this arena. One of their products will interview via video all your applicants without the need for a recruiter. Once the interview is complete, the technology will then use AI to “score” the candidate on millions of data points. This technology doesn’t just analyze answers to questions, but it also uses AI to analyze facial movement and voice structure. When each interview is compared to thousands of others who are successful in a specific role with all these data points and a fit is determined, the candidate will be scored high and an interview set with the recruiter.

Hire Vue

  1. Live Robots. This is a combination of chatbots and video interview. Vera will go into any database, find matching candidates, schedule interviews, screen each candidate, and then video interview the best candidates, without a human even being present. It uses AI to analyze facial, voice, and answer patterns. A human does the final interview. Sounds pretty cool and, for most, scary. Vera is starting most of her work in high turnover positions and, like all the new technology, it can interview hundreds of candidates at the same time. This is a huge time saver. Go ahead and give it a try. You can do that on their website. (IKEA uses Vera)

Vera

  1. Text Recruit. Text Recruit uses the power of text to help the candidate experience. Texting interested candidates are producing a 37% faster response rate in 12 minutes. This can all be set up automatically and will automate many recruiting tasks like sourcing and screening.

These are just a few examples. The big question most employers have is if these products discriminate. AI recruiting companies will all tell you they do a better job than human when it comes to discrimination (actually helps diversity hiring). Talent acquisition managers are not so sure and may be the reason less than five percent of all companies are entirely dedicated to robot screening and AI products. In 2020, I think over 30% of companies will be using some AI product not because they want to but it may be the only way to find deep talent their competitors are getting to first.