HR Chatbots: the Future of Workforce Recruitment and Management

It’s evident that the always-on nature of the internet has influenced people’s expectations of businesses. In fact, research by Oracle reveals that over 50% of customers expect a business to be open 24/7.

It’s no wonder then that in order for businesses to survive, many have opted to employ chatbots, computer programs that can effectively simulate conversations with human users in place of a human employee. Trained with Natural Language Programming (NLP), modern chatbots are capable of communicating in a natural, human-like way.

In the not so distant past, it used to be common that chatbots weren’t able to answer questions that users take to be obvious. The use of AI sentiment analysis methods were used to train chatbots to become better at understanding quirks in human language and therefore answer questions effectively. In fact, research from EMO Technologies indicates that an AI-trained chatbot can answer questions 200% more efficiently.

Chatbots can save up to 30% in customer support costs. (Invespcro)

Like any business activity, there are plenty of opportunities to employ chatbots in the recruitment discipline. One of the areas where they are useful is early on in the recruitment process, when hiring managers want to determine the best way to source talent. Chatbots can perform a useful role in the triage of requirements to determine the best way to get a job done, instead of hiring managers assuming that employing someone on a full time contract is the go-to option.

Once a requirement has been published, no doubt candidates will want their questions answered about the company and its interview process. Gathering background information from candidates and onboarding them are other examples of largely manual administrative activities performed today by humans, where chatbots can lend a hand.

Perhaps the most significant role for chatbots arises once candidates have been onboarded. Workforce Management is becoming more automated these days thanks to AI powered software, taking on the task of answering hundreds of inquiries raised by candidates, such as ‘How to complete a timesheet?’ and ‘How can I book time off?’

Chatbots are becoming key workers in the recruitment and workforce management discipline because they remove the human-in-the-loop. Specifically, they’re reducing the manual administrative tasks that have previously been fulfilled by program managers and administrators. Once the ‘human-in-the-loop’ has exited the building, so does their knowledge and experience. That means, stepping back to a more traditional ‘manual’ model becomes impractical, if not impossible.

The reality is that companies no longer want to pay their outsourcing partners for processing activities that could otherwise be performed by machines. Just as happened previously with historical job roles like personal secretaries, filing clerks and draftsmen, providers unable or unwilling to automate the manual administrative tasks performed by program managers, background checkers and HR administrators, are finding it impossible to compete.