What’s one of the most challenging aspects to manage in any business? Recruiting new team members.
Even more so, when it comes to tech recruitment – where you need very specific skills that are relevant to your business and will help you keep up with technological changes in today’s industries.
If you’re not yet incorporating tech advances into your business, you’re missing out on important savings in time, money and effort. Technology can make hiring a little easier for you. Indeed, tech innovation—AI specifically—can transform how you recruit developers, benefiting your business in more ways than one.
Benefits of using AI
Many companies are apprehensive about using AI (Artificial Intelligence) due to myths about the technology, the fear of it taking people’s jobs, or simply because it’s challenging to incorporate something new into an existing system.
We think that utilizing AI for business is worth your investment in time and money and can do wonders for your company. The majority of hiring managers think so too!
“62% of hiring managers expect AI to substantially change the nature of work.” – Salesforce, Future of Workforce Development report
Assist current employees
Contrary to common belief, AI won’t necessarily put your current employees at a disadvantage and steal their jobs. Yes, it may take over some of their tasks, but this means that their time and attention are freed up to spend on other projects, helping them accomplish more in a day.
AI—Machine Learning specifically—is often incorporated into a system where repetitive, time-consuming tasks affect workers’ productivity. Removal of these somewhat boring tasks helps employees stay more focused and creative, fostering job satisfaction.
Save time
AI may lack finesse or common sense, but one thing it’s good at is speed. You’ll get data analysis done fast and reports will be on your desk much quicker than before. That’s good news for:
- Increasing productivity in the HR office
- Informed decision making based on accurate data
- Preventing workers from wasting precious minutes each day
Make fewer errors
Technology in the form of AI is effective in managing data. Plus, when entrusting certain tasks to AI, such as copying information from one platform to another, you eliminate the risk of human error. No accidental punching of keys on the keyboard or erasing of one digit that changes the outcome of an entire report (it happens!).
When it comes to HR and recruitment, where you deal with multiple people’s data, every tool you use that ensures accuracy is valuable. You won’t lose the data of talent you want to employ or have inaccurate reports on which you make your team decisions.
Since your team determines your business success, accuracy in the recruitment process clearly has far reaching effects.
Be fair to everyone
The recruitment process is also one of the areas where your company needs to prevent bias by any means possible. What better method to screen job seekers than a source that has no preferences?
Objectivity is the power of AI for recruitment and fairness is the one of the greatest motivations behind products such as CodinGame Assessment.
CodinGame is paving the way for skill-based hiring: hiring based on technical skills only – educational, racial and social background don’t come into it! AI tools can help you make data-based decisions and avoid unconscious (or conscious!) biases in your recruitments.
Now, how exactly can you implement AI in tech recruitment?
Effective tech recruitment in the 21st century
The good news for companies facing tech recruitment challenges in 2020 is that AI and Machine Learning have come on in so many ways: your options are numerous. Implement new technologies in the areas where you need the most assistance and enjoy a more streamlined, effective and financially viable process.
Finding available talent
Yes, you can advertise new job openings, but the best talent out there may already be working at companies where they’re happy and well looked after. They won’t spend time scanning job boards to find other jobs.
That’s where AI comes in.
Advanced AI can scour online data on forums, social media (such as LinkedIn) and other platforms for candidates that fit your ideal employee profile in terms of:
- Skills
- Personality and interests
- Experience
For your HR team to do this manually would take days to source even a few viable candidates. In contrast, AI can provide you with a relevant list within hours, after analyzing millions of profiles online. This method is called “profile scraping” or “data scraping”. A number of different scraping tools will allow you to do this (Phantom Buster is one of them).
You can contact the individuals on your “scraped” list, inviting them to apply, and land some of the best tech talent. Alternatively, you can even use AI to initiate contact.
Warning: AI is incredibly useful. However, make sure you keep a human eye on who you’re reaching out to. Nothing hurts your employer brand more than irrelevant outreach messages. If you message a front-end developer specialized in React about a job opening for an embedded software engineer specialized in Linux, for example, they’ll laugh in your face (or worse!).
Vetting applicants in a relevant way
The tech industry is booming and, whether you headhunt candidates or receive resumes, you’ll end up (hopefully) with a list of interested applicants. Now, who do you pick?
As mentioned above, AI can assist you in filtering them, especially for the first rounds of the hiring process. Innovative products such as CVViz can help you screen resumes for certain keywords or features.
You know it. We know it. There are various factors that determine whether a certain employee is a valuable asset for your company in the long run. AI has become so advanced that it can now discern the most valuable applicants based on many of these aspects. AI can give you clues and nudges in the right direction, helping you to make the best hiring decisions.
You’ll be surprised how much AI can tell you about a person:
- Word choice and speech can be analyzed to determine specifics of the candidate. Will someone’s dominant traits fit with your company culture?
- Facial expressions provide insight into someone’s personality to ensure the individual will be compatible with other employees.
- AI assesses your current team and determines which characteristics would complement the company going forward. Then you simply need to look for applicants that showcase these features.
We’ve mentioned that there are many aspects that will determine whether candidates are valuable additions to your team. Above all, you want to hire people that can actually do the job, right?
It’s important to evaluate hands-on skills for any job. However, this is especially true in tech recruitment. AI can help you here as well, with handy tools that test coding abilities.
With online platforms like CodinGame, you can gauge developers’ skills by inviting them to take a technical test as part of the interview process. Candidates receive a relevant and gamified technical test. You, the recruiter, receive a detailed results report (with a global score, a score per skill and a valuable comparative score).
CodinGame helps you select the best-suited candidates for your job opening while providing outstanding candidate experience. Indeed, in our latest developer survey, 63.1% of respondents said that “Hands-on assessment tests with real coding questions” were the best, most acceptable way to evaluate developers as part of the recruitment process.
Impressing talent
When meeting an applicant for the first time, they’re not the only one under the microscope. The job market has changed over the past few decades and now developers have the upper hand, they’re vetting you too! They expect certain advantages that will make their work life pleasant (and it’s more than just a salary).
Most applicants want to determine whether they’ll experience long term job satisfaction when they move to a new employer. So, what exactly are they looking for?
We asked developers what matters most to them when considering a job offer. “Technical challenges and interesting problems to solve” is the number one thing that developers look for.
Mentioning your technical stack and how AI technology is used in your tech recruitment process proves to future employees that your company moves with the times (and that developers who join you will be able to sink their teeth into new and intriguing challenges).
Onboarding your new tech employees
Tech recruitment doesn’t come to an end once you’ve employed someone. His or her success as a team member depends on how well they’re integrated into your company. For this you need effective onboarding, but where do you or another team member find the time to mentor a new tech recruit?
Once again, AI can come to your rescue, saving everyone time and effort:
- Answering simple questions with the help of chatbots instead of the HR department attending multiple meetings or responding to emails.
- Automatically offering timely onboarding information (even before someone’s first day on the job).
- Training and onboarding in the form of interactive gamification instead of tedious information sessions (this ensures that valuable information is grasped and remembered easily, helping someone integrate much sooner than the norm).
Brands such as Employment Hero provide HR software with an automated onboarding module. This helps the HR office track someone’s progress while he or she is integrated into the company. Among its features is online assistance for new employees with questions about the company. These tools make it a paperless process: easier to track and friendly to the environment.
Another huge advantage of using AI tech, such as chatbots, is that onboarding isn’t limited to office hours. If your new tech recruit wants to learn quickly or has questions on policies, he or she can soak up information with the help of online chatbots even when everyone has gone home.
Successful, tech-driven, recruitment in 2020 is only a few steps away.
Technology has changed our world and if you don’t start using it for tech talent acquisition, your company may suffer. Chances are, your competition has already implemented it. What are you waiting for?
