Reejig Blog

How recruiters are using AI to get ahead in today’s talent acquisition market

Written by Siobhan Savage | Mar 2, 2022 2:00:54 AM

Artificial intelligence (AI) is a powerful talent acquisition tool that’s essential for any business looking to stay a step ahead of the market.

The leading global talent teams are using AI platforms like Reejig to make it easier for recruiters to tap into their total ecosystem and use data to make better-informed talent decisions.

So, how can recruitment teams work with AI to achieve zero wasted potential? Let's dive into three ways that AI improves your recruitment work, rather than replacing it.

3 ways AI improves your talent acquisition strategy

1.  Creating a central nervous system for your talent data

Your talent ecosystem sits across many different data sources, both internal and external.

Across a range of separate systems including your ATS, CRM, HRIS, LMS, LinkedIn, and other public sources, you hold data about your current employees, previous applicants, contingent workers, interns, and alumni. Your team can check through each of these data sources, searching for all the information you have on any one person — but the reality of time constraints means most data goes unutilized. 

AI has the power to accurately aggregate all the data you have, giving your team an easy way to see a candidate’s complete profile, skills, and potential, with up-to-date data from public sources, without having to dig for it.

As an example, Reejig’s Ethical Talent AI aggregates data from all possible sources including your ATS, CRM, HRIS, and LMS, enriches it with trusted public professional data, and uses it to create a live skills ecosystem for your workforce. Reejig then uses this ecosystem to automatically build skill profiles for all your candidates so you don’t have to rely on individuals doing it.

Talent teams using AI like this have access to more accurate, complete, and current data, on a wider pool of candidates and can search their ecosystem for the skills, experiences, passions, and potential you need in seconds. That’s why these teams are winning the talent war.

 

THE IMPACT:

Our customers are now placing up to 88% of internal and external roles using Reejig, as a result of having 100% visibility of the skills within their talent ecosystem.

 

2.  Empowering data-driven decisions

AI has several benefits for talent acquisition strategies, but one of the most attractive is the ability to provide data-driven, decision-making support to talent teams. AI can help to:

  • Match candidates to roles based on skill and potential
  • Provide explainable insights as to why a candidate is well suited to a role
  • Predict critical moments in a person’s career, whether it’s that they’re about to leave, or that they’re a perfect match for an existing opportunity

The technology doesn’t, and shouldn’t, make final decisions on who should get the job, but instead provides decision-making support based on all available data to identify the best candidates based on skills and potential.

When you give your talent teams this level of insight, they can be confident they have the data to make the right decision, leaving less room for guesses, ‘gut-feeling’, or unconscious bias. With relevant information at their fingertips, decision-makers are better placed to do their job effectively and efficiently.

 

THE IMPACT:

“Reejig provides visibility of the skills of all our employees and nudges them to apply for open roles that really closely match their capabilities.” 

Tessa Pittendrigh, Director, People insights and Planning

 

3.  Using Ethical AI to avoid bias

AI has the power to do good; it can transform our professional workforces, inform business decision-making, and unlock individual opportunities.

However, if historic data sets are demographically biased, gender skewed, or imbalanced across other factors then the outcomes will be similarly biased. There are numerous examples of AI recruitment tools that analyze applications and are trained by observing patterns in the (mostly male) resumes that have been submitted to the company over the years.

Unsurprisingly (in hindsight) these tools started preferencing male over female candidates and even started penalizing resumes that included words that are indicative of a female candidate like schools and sports.

This is where Ethical AI plays a role. Ethical AI is the outcome of successfully identifying, reducing, or eliminating bias from the data, the models, and the development of AI. It involves checking the AI model against ethical principles including fairness, transparency, accountability, privacy, and security, to ensure that bias is minimized. Ethical AI has the power to eliminate unconscious bias from the recruitment and mobility process and ensure that AI’s role in talent decision-making support is built on principles of safety, fairness, and trust.

In recognizing the importance of Ethical AI, we are seeing legislative changes with regard to the ethical use of AI across HR. In late 2021, New York City was the first state in the US to pass a new law that prohibits employers from using AI and algorithm-based technologies for recruiting, hiring, or promotion without those tools first being audited for bias. This law will come into force in January 2023, and it is highly likely to see a ripple effect across other states and jurisdictions.

What does this mean for you? When your talent teams are looking at AI platforms you need to ensure the provider you’re working with is 1) adopting ethical AI practices to actively identify and eliminate bias, and 2) has been independently audited to ensure that the AI meets local and global regulations on human rights, anti-discrimination, and equal opportunity.

 

Did you know?

Reejig has the world’s first independently audited Ethical Talent AI

 

Time to get started: putting AI to work on talent acquisition