Recruitment Chatbots: How can they help you get the best candidates for your open positions

Chatbots are a new way to make hiring processes, like scheduling interviews or telling recruiters how many interviews they have for the day, easier. 

They look like a messaging chat window and can help to carry out basic hiring tasks using conversational AI. They can be implemented on differents messaging canals (Slack, Teams, Facebook Messenger...) or as pop-up windows on your website or intranet.

They are a helpful tool for recruiters and help them automate tedious tasks like filtering out resumes, while also saving time and providing a more personalized touch to the recruiting process.

For example, chatbots can be programmed to ask questions to candidates about their education, experience, or qualifications and see if the candidate matches the requirements for the position.

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How do recruitment chatbots work?

The recruitment chatbot can be used in several ways:

• instead of a job application form
• As frequently asked questions
• As a managing assistant for HR people
• And more depending on your imagination…

As a job application form

The recruitment chatbot is essentially an automated job application form, they are simply a faster, more efficient way to help to find the right people to fill open positions. It can automate the process by asking questions about the candidate and their qualification and can save them in the HR CRM. 

Of course, the candidate can also upload their resume and cover letter so they can be accessed later on. It can also screen some unqualified candidates so HR members don’t waste time on resumes. 

As a FAQ

Recruitment goes both ways and sometimes candidates also have questions about the company. They can wonder about many different topics, like employee benefits, work environment, hiring process, and more.

Having questions answered by a chatbot instead of a FAQ page is more authentic and natural. The chatbot can use NLP, a subset of AI, to understand the candidate’s question and respond accordingly.

Moreover, if the chatbot cannot answer the question, the conversation can be transferred to a human representative so they can answer the candidate in real-time.

As a managing assistant for HR

Recruitment chatbot can also be used internally for HR managers to automate routine processes. You can set up a recruitment chatbot to automatically send appointment reminders to recruiters and candidates, or other important information like the place of interview or how to access the building.

Connect it to your calendar, and they can also schedule interviews, as well as cancel or reschedule them based on what you or your candidate wants. You can even push it further and connect via API to your internal reservation app so you can book a room for the interview within the chatbot.

Recruitment chatbot benefits

As you can see, chatbots can be used at every step of the hiring process. Moreover, according to a survey done over 200 job candidates almost 60% of candidates were comfortable interacting with a chatbot or an AI for their application process.

By automating the most tedious parts of recruitment (like scheduling interviews, getting resumes, or automating answering the frequently asked queries), HR can concentrate on really getting to know candidates. In fact, using recruitment chatbots to automate the hiring process can make your recruiting 67% faster.

Indeed, a study showed that 56% of recruiters spend more than half a day per week scheduling interviews. Recruiters have to jungle between candidate's availability and their own obligations. With a recruitment chatbot that can schedule interviews, you let the applicant choose the time that fits you both.

How to make the most of your recruitment chatbot

Chatbots are useful for many things, but it's important to address the challenges associated with them before implementing them in the recruitment process.

There is no-code chatbot builders available on the market. This facilitates the chatbot building and implementation process because HR people can build their chatbot with their expertise. This also reduces, or even eliminates, the back and forth between developers and HR teams, thus gaining time.

You still need a human touch

Even though most candidates are comfortable interacting with a chatbot, you should not treat your candidate, whether you’re looking to hire a locum tenens, software engineer, or another role, like a simple number. You still have to pay attention to candidates' singularities, after all, robots can't evaluate human qualities. They are not here to replace the HR department, but merely here to help humans automate tasks and facilitate their life.

Furthermore, sometimes candidates will need to get in touch with real, human HR representatives. They may need further information on the company for example. 

To overcome this, you can connect a livechat to your chatbot, HR people can chat in real-time with the candidate. If you don't have anyone available, you can ask for the applicant's email and contact them back later on. Your chatbot will notify you when someone needs to talk with you.

Maintain your chatbots and update it

If you wish to use Natural Processing Language (NLP), you have to continuously train your chatbot. Each candidate has a way to express themselves, they may have questions you didn't think of or they may use words your chatbot doesn't understand. That is why you have to update and maintain your chatbot will all the news information so it can continue to learn and improve.

With Ideta's chatbot, there is an easy interface you can use to train your chatbot. It's connected to the best NLP providers like Google Dialogflow or Microsoft Luis.

Conclusion

Chatbots can drastically transform your hiring process and can become one of the most effective ways to streamline the recruitment process and improve the hiring experience They can handle everything from initial candidate screening to follow-up interviews.

Further down, they can also help you with your employee onboarding by automating the process of introducing new employees to the company and help with professional training

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