First, I promise this is not just some dumb ChatGPT auto-generated article (although that’s probably exactly something an AI would say). Also, when you ask ChatGPT if AI will crush recruiting and take over the world, it’s way too smart to just say, “well, of course!”
The actual response you get from generative AI models about recruiting is actually kind of boring and sounds like a big corporation wrote them trying not to get sued. It’s a lot of stuff about being strategic and more productive. Now that I think about it, the people who should really be worried about generative AI aren’t recruiters, but corporate communication professionals! (I kid! Love all you comms pros!)
The reality is AI is going to change recruiting as we know it. That’s a given, and it’s sort of already happening. But there are still a ton of questions on when and where this whole AI thing will take us.
So I thought it would be interesting to go straight to the source for answers.
I asked ChatGPT “how to be a better recruiter” and it gave me five key tips. Now, as we keep saying, we can’t let AI solely make critical decisions for us. But if I take those five recruiting tips and combine them with my own experiences and insights, I think we can come up with interesting ways to make recruiters even better at recruiting.
AI + human ingenuity and experience = magic.
Here are the five AI generated tips, and my point of view on how to best interpret them into something tangible for your and your teams.
1. Treat candidates like you would treat your best friend if they were the ones you were working with on a specific job.
Can you imagine how great candidates would feel about you and your company if we actually treated them less like an asset and more like a close friend? Of course, at scale, we all know this is impossible to do. Unless you had this “magical” assistant who could do everything, everywhere, all at once (surprise: this actually exists). AI might not be able to fool your BFF that it’s you, but it can do a great job helping you scale yourself to the masses and make them feel like one of your BFFs! The best AI shouldn’t actively try to trick anyone into thinking it’s not AI, but it should be conversational and seamless enough to where candidates sometimes forget they’re not talking to a human.
2. Follow up the moment you have new information with every single interested party.
There is a direct correlation between recruiter performance and their ability to be an expert in following up with candidates and hiring managers. I’ve hired, trained, and managed recruiting teams for 25 years, and the best recruiters were always the ones with the best follow-up. That one trait never fails to elevate a recruiter in the eyes of both candidates and hiring managers. With conversational AI and its ability to automate candidate comms over text instantly, this is an area that you simply have to be elite at this point, or else you’re going to fall behind.
3. Give the perception that you are always working and available when needed.
The best recruiters keenly understand that candidates and hiring managers don’t work a 9 to 5 weekday work schedule. So, they make themselves available when they are needed, and it makes them seem like they are always working. This is one reason I love recruiting. You can have great balance and also give this perception that you are always working. But also … AI can also help automate certain tasks, like screening and scheduling, 24/7. This is another area where finding the right balance between direct human-to-human interactions and AI support will equal the best results.
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4. Be compliant without burdening candidates.
Yes, we are aware you must dot i’s and cross t’s. No, you actually don’t have to make every single candidate do that the moment they find your job! The best recruiters get all the information they need to be compliant, but they do it in a way where the candidate is happy to do it. That means you can gather pieces along the process as the candidate becomes more invested in you, your company, and the job.
5. Get the heck out of the way!
First, I honestly don’t understand why recruiters continue to jam themselves into the middle of a relationship they don’t need to be in. A candidate wants a job. The hiring manager decides who will get hired. The faster we can get those two parties together and get the heck out of the way, the better we are doing our job. Embrace things like automated interview scheduling. Allow candidates and managers to message back and forth. Have managers make immediate offers. Yes, recruiters directly building trust with candidates is vital, but they also need to know when to just get out of the way and let the magic happen.
Here’s the interesting thing about all of this: in all five areas, the best results will come from a combination of AI and people. There are some things that AI does better than a human being (simple, fact-based decision making and automation at scale), and then there’s plenty of stuff that humans do better than AI (building trust, making critical judgements, etc.)
So how do you become a better recruiter?
Understand those differences and find the right balance that works for you and your candidates. What do you bring to the table that is uniquely human and how do you utilize AI to support and elevate that, not replace it or replicate that?
That combination will be where the recruiting magic happens.
