Recruiters are leveraging chatbots and virtual assistants to enhance candidate experience. Here’s why.

For most organisations, it is becoming more crucial than ever before to ensure a top candidate experience for those who are applying to the organisation. It is a known fact that candidates who have the right skill sets have plenty of job options to choose from. What generally tilts a company in favour of a particular candidate is the candidate experience.

So what exactly is candidate experience?

Candidate experience is how a prospective employee perceives the company’s brand throughout the hiring process, right from the job description to interviews to the onboarding stage. Does a candidate feel welcomed into an organisation? Is the onboarding process smooth and seamless? Are new employees made comfortable with the right mentors for guidance? All these factors and more are important to convince a candidate to not just join an organisation but also stay in the organisation long term.

Candidate experience is how a prospective employee perceives the company’s brand throughout the hiring process, right from the job description to interviews to the onboarding stage. Does a candidate feel welcomed into an organisation? Is the onboarding process smooth and seamless? Are new employees made comfortable with the right mentors for guidance? All these factors and more are important to convince a candidate to not just join an organisation but also stay in the organisation long term.

These days, companies are experimenting with chatbots and virtual assistants (VA) to see how they could help with the candidate experience. Chatbots and VAs help businesses save time and money while increasing the efficiency of the hiring process.

Chatbots and VAs are most often used interchangeably. However, they are quite distinct. Chatbots are software programmes that can simulate human-like conversation. They are built using NLP (Natural Language Processing) technology and ML (Machine Learning). VAs, on the other hand, help with the carrying out of daily tasks like the making of calls. They are AI-driven and their accuracy improves with time. Some of the well-known VAs that many of us have interacted with are Siri, Cortana, and Alexa.

Let us explore some of the areas where chatbots and VAs are making their presence felt!

1. Initial engagement and screening:

   Chatbots and VAs have the ability to ask relevant questions to candidates and screen resumes. We are all aware that one of the biggest challenges in recruitment is the unconscious bias that could creep in. Chatbots and VAs remove this bias by evaluating candidates objectively. Thus, all deserving candidates stand a fair chance of getting the job by showcasing their skills and experience!

2. Handling frequently asked questions and queries:

   Imagine a talent acquisition professional getting bombarded with questions and doubts from scores of candidates. To top it all, most candidates have the same doubts plaguing them. In such cases, it is a good option to use chatbots that can respond to these questions for the umpteenth time without getting flustered! Chatbots ensure consistency in responses to candidates. Their use also gives talent acquisition specialists the time to focus on more strategic tasks and initiatives without getting bogged down by answering routine queries.

3. Scheduling interviews:

   VAs can schedule interviews for prospective candidates by syncing the calendars of interviewers and candidates and finding suitable time slots. Even mails to the candidates regarding the time slots can be sent out by the VAs.

4. Collecting and analysing feedback:

   If you are keen to improve your hiring processes as an organisation, then taking the help of virtual assistants might just be the way to go! They are capable of sending out and collecting feedback forms after interviews. Not only that, they can even analyse vast amounts of data, detect trends and help HR managers to make informed hiring decisions.

5. Onboarding assistance:

   The time that a candidate takes to become an employee and join an organisation is most crucial. Organisations must ensure that the transition phase for the employee is smooth. There are several steps involved in the onboarding of candidates, right from document collection to reference checking to answering the queries that new hires might have. All these tasks and more can be efficiently taken up by VAs, reducing the possibility of manual errors and improving the candidate experience at the organisation.

6. Continuous engagement and talent nurturing:

   Employee surveys can be run with the help of VAs. The VAs are capable of understanding the learning and development needs of newly-hired employees and recommending relevant courses that they could take to improve their existing skill sets.
   

There’s no doubt that chatbots and VAs are making their presence felt in almost all areas of recruitment. They have the ability to deliver a level of personalisation that even humans might not be able to match. Their use is driving efficiency, impact and improved candidate experiences across all areas of recruitment. A Gartner survey revealed that 56% of HR leaders have admitted that their HR technology solutions and strategy do not match current and future business needs. For organisations that have not jumped onto the chatbot or VA bandwagon yet, it is certainly time to do so without further ado!

Vinod Kumar

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