About twenty-five years ago when I was a young, bright-eyed corporate recruiter in the telecoms industry, I never thought I’d be talking about robots and their place in the world of talent acquisition, writes Darcy Wells, the head of solution design at Alexander Mann Solution. Of course, I also never thought that my cell phone would also be my Walkman, my camera, my calendar and, for good measure, would make restaurant reservations for me.
Tech entrepreneur, Mark Cuban, recently said: “You need to study artificial intelligence (AI) or you’ll be a dinosaur in three years. AI will have a bigger impact than any technology in the last thirty years.” He went on to say that he believes the innovations of the next five to ten years will “blow everybody away” – especially in the field of automation. Cuban even believes that computer programming is vulnerable to eventual automated, thereby reducing the number of available programming jobs.
It’s becoming increasingly clear that innovation, automation, and yes, artificial intelligence and robotics will become a critical component within the talent acquisition space. And as an industry that has contributed plenty to the innovations of the last quarter century, telecoms is well-positioned to take advantage.
I spent some time thinking back to the way I found and engaged with talent back in the 1980s, and how that compares with today. Back then, I was part of a company called Telenet, which has long since been acquired by Sprint. We were in hyper-growth mode, and I – along with a co-worker – were challenged to add over 100 sales people in just a few months.
Here’s a glimpse into how we got it done: then and now.
Want ads versus predictive analytics
Then:
Once we knew how many new hires were needed in each sales office across the country, which was determined in a rather hit or miss manner – dart boards may have been involved, my colleague and I wrote want ads that were printed in the appropriate local newspapers of each target city.
Now:
Predictive analytics, when applied to the talent acquisition process, can help organisations anticipate their future workforce needs before they become critical. Tools such as Wanted Analytics can help companies better understand what kinds of workers they’ll need, where they’ll need them and when they’ll be needed. The tools can also use macroeconomic data to identify which locations hold concentrations of people with the skills they need. The volumes of data needed to perform these analyses are too much for humans to process and act upon — but predictive analytics tools make that possible.
Envelopes vs. inboxes
Then:
Each morning, I would check my wire basket inbox on the corner of my desk for resumes that had come in via snail mail the day before. The envelopes had been opened and resumés organised by my faithful assistant who sat just outside of my office.
Now:
In comparison to the post and pray methods of days gone by, today’s recruiters leverage tools such as Avature CRM and LinkedIn Recruiter in order to:
- Harness social media to proactively source, connect with and engage talent
- Engage with passive candidates, instead of waiting for candidates to come to them
- Build robust talent pools and pipelines of candidates ahead of demand
- Utilise fully branded, mobile-optimized landing pages – as opposed to the four-line want ads I used in the 1980s
AI and bots are now being used to do much of the front-end, repetitive candidate sorting and screening, freeing up recruiter’s time to focus on more value-added activities. Recently, we used our own robot, named DORIS, to process 72,000 candidate documents for a client — a task that would otherwise have taken 10 full-time staff two months to complete. With these kinds of rule-based tasks managed in the background by AIs, front-line recruitment professionals can now focus on building better relationships with candidates to sell them a job and corporate culture, and hiring managers can better understand their needs.
Sorting by piles vs. electronic matching
Then:
I would spend most of the morning reviewing the paper resumes I’d received and sorting them into two piles: one for those I’d screen by phone, and another for those who were rejected. The latter set would go back out to my assistant who would type, print, address and send a decline letter. Again, via snail mail.
Now:
We use tools like Joberate and Applicant Tracking System (ATS) knock-out questions to determine how likely a candidate is to be interested in a specific job, and how closely they match the job requirements. AI tools like Joberate can help to build a more complete profile of a candidate by combining the information they provide in their resume with unstructured data gathered from their social media and other online activity. Those who don’t make the cut are automatically eliminated from the process and an ATS system sends a personalised ‘thank you but no thank you’ letter by email.
Human vs. chatbot correspondence
Then:
I spent most of my afternoons scheduling – and rescheduling – and completing phone interviews. Once finished, I created two more piles: one for candidates who would be invited to a face-to-face interview, and another for those I rejected. These would go back out to my assistant, who would type up a decline letter and send it out by email. Throughout the process, I would spend a good part of my days fielding candidate questions, managing changes to interview schedules and providing candidates the information they needed to prepare for the interview, all via phone).
Now:
Today, we use AI tools to chat and schedule interviews with candidates. We’re currently working with a client to pilot Mya, which bills itself as the first AI recruiting assistant. Mya combines AI with natural language processing (NLP) to appraise job applicants, answer routine questions about the company and keep candidates in the loops on where they stand in the process. These chatbots can be integrated with the ATS system and workflow, or they can stand alone on a career website.
Gauging employee interview satisfaction
Then:
Next, it was time to hit the road for face-to-face interviews. During the course of this project, I spent weeks travelling to each of our sales offices across the country, flying out Monday morning and back home Friday afternoon. Interview schedules would be finalizsed manually and my assistant would reach out to candidates by telephone for scheduling. My colleague and I would typically spend a day or two in each sales office, interviewing 10-12 candidates per day. We would then forward top candidate profiles to sales managers for a second round of interviews and a hiring decision. Though the information would have been incredibly valuable, we didn’t have the time, nor the means, to gauge how satisfied the candidates were throughout the process.
Now:
Today, especially in industries like telecoms that depend on hiring the best technical talent available, delivering a great candidate experience is vital to standing out from competitors. Today’s candidate is looking for the same easy, personalised experience they have when they buy a book from Amazon or look for new music on Apple’s iTunes. That’s why candidate sentiment analysis has come to the fore. We’re helping many of our clients get a real-time view into how satisfied candidates are with their hiring process. Insight from these findings can help employers address problem areas and emphasise what they do well to deliver a positive candidate experience.
The bottom line, especially for industries like telecoms that are largely innovation-oriented, is that this new approach to recruiting brings incredible levels of process efficiency, accuracy and improvements to hiring results. However, perhaps the biggest value is that this level of innovation, if applied correctly, creates a positive paradox. Contrary to what many would assume, technology is actually enabling organisations to push more human, high touch service into the process, while increasing their focus on candidate and hiring manager satisfaction.
With technology now spanning many processes in the background, recruiters working in the telecoms industry can now step back from their desks, walk around, and build relationships with internal colleagues and external candidates.
