Elevate your efficiency: How to use AI in recruiting

4 mins, 28 secs read time

Artificial intelligence (AI) entered the conversation in early 2023. But if you haven’t defined your AI policy yet, it can overwhelm and confuse you. How do you respond with no information? With so much speculation and ambiguity, AI has been raising eyebrows.

Using AI in recruiting successfully in a complex process like talent acquisition (TA) boils down to knowing what it can and cannot do.

We spoke with Madeline Laurano, Founder of Aptitude Research, and Henry Tsai, Chief Product Officer at Greenhouse, during our “AI in Greenhouse: Your key to hiring efficiency in 2024” webinar about how to use AI in your hiring process.

How AI in recruiting enhances your hiring process

AI in recruiting can make hiring more efficient, faster and more equitable by absorbing the mundane tasks that take up so much of our time. With time back, we can focus on higher-priority tasks. Henry highlighted several low-risk areas where hiring managers can use AI.

Content creation

Need customized, thoughtful job descriptions? Use AI in recruiting. It writes powerful job descriptions that help hiring managers discover unconventional candidates who provide a fresh infusion of skills and experiences.

Automation

No more playing Tetris with candidate schedules. AI’s automation capabilities sync schedules, prioritize meetings, write candidate response letters and populate forms. Hello, more calendar white space!

Transcripts

AI can transcribe interviews, summarize key attributes and remove unconscious bias. Even if you weren’t in the interview, transcriptions give you every detail as if you were sitting directly across from the candidate.

Categorization

Categorize and update decades-old processes in seconds by leveraging AI. You can even sort candidates by custom parameters like tenure, skills and values.

Candidate experience

Hiring managers don’t have time to write rejection letters for every candidate. But not doing so can impact your brand and candidate experience. Use automation and other capabilities of AI in recruiting to let your company values radiate at every touchpoint along their journey.

The more that you can become a champion for AI, get curious about AI, question AI, become skeptical about AI, the better you’re going to be at your job … and [improve] the candidate experience as well.
– Madeline Laurano, Founder of Aptitude Research

Caveat: AI isn’t a decision-maker

AI should facilitate the decision-making process, not make the decision itself. It’s not here to replace you – rather, it’s a tool you can, and should, leverage.

Privacy, security and trusting AI

We caught a glimpse of employee concerns with AI during the historic writers’ and actors’ strikes in 2023. But Hollywood isn’t the only place skepticism lives. In every industry, there are still those reluctant to use AI.

Madeline pointed out that the entire webinar could have been titled “Transparency” because of its importance to the process. Every step needs to foster trust.

Echoing Madeline’s sentiment, Henry added three considerations for hiring teams using AI in recruiting:

1. Take ownership. Companies must define AI’s role. Prioritize policies around diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging (DEI&B), sourcing, information sharing and legal compliance. Once laws go into effect, you won’t need to pause operations to adjust.
2. Share data carefully. What information will you share? Sending candidate information across the European Union? You might need to consider General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and other privacy policies.
3. Seek expert partners. At Greenhouse, we’re defining what privacy means for talent acquisition. We’re looking at the red lines to help companies understand what is and isn’t proprietary.

Bottom line – embed transparency and information security in your organization’s AI policy.

AI and DEI&B

Hiring the best team goes hand in hand with DEI&B. But how does AI factor in? Consider this:

AI will give you what you ask for. AI is a tool and behaves according to how you build it. If you want to prioritize DEI&B, train your AI with models that support that mission.

Remove unconscious bias. Use AI to interrupt bias early in the sourcing or advertising stages to make more equitable decisions.

AI can eliminate blind spots. Copy and paste job descriptions give you more of the same. Careful setup can eliminate bias, unconscious or otherwise.

Greenhouse’s take on AI and hiring

Ethical practices, DEI&B and curiosity drive our AI advances at Greenhouse. It isn’t enough to provide exceptional hiring software. It needs to be a good helper. Sometimes the best candidate is hiding in your blind spot. What if instead of missing out on that candidate, AI could zero in on their potential?

Henry offered an example from his own hiring experience. When looking for a software designer, he prioritizes the intent behind the opening, not finding the perfect resume. Using AI gives him more space to consider the nuances and details.

Sometimes, hiring managers miss something. Or candidates can’t communicate everything they need to. That gap can be the difference between whether you hire the best candidate or look over a potential game-changer.

We’re not the sum of the data we provide.
– Henry Tsai, Chief Product Officer at Greenhouse

Technology can help us fill in the gaps, and utilizing AI in recruiting is yet another tool that can fill that gap. Remember, it should make your job easier – it’s not a replacement for you.

Want to build AI into your hiring processes? Catch the replay for tips on creating hiring efficiencies with AI.

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