3 Ways AI Is Transforming Sourcing Today

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From streamlining recruiting tasks to collecting relevant jobs data for better hiring decisions, artificial intelligence (AI) is making major waves in the talent acquisition industry. Those companies that have adopted AI are already seeing results. According to one study, these organizations experience 18 percent higher revenue and 30 percent higher profitability than companies that have not yet adopted these tools.

How, exactly, does AI lead to such results? Here are just three of the biggest ways AI is transforming the sourcing landscape:

1. AI Creates a More Accurate Picture of Your Talent Pools

Seventy-three percent of employers report  skills shortages in their industries. AI resolves this issue with algorithms that help identify potential candidates, especially for hard-to-fill jobs in niche industries requiring specific skill sets. The key concept here is that AI changes hiring from a reactive process to a proactive one. Instead of waiting for dream employees to come to you, AI tools like Karen.ai use candidate ranking to find those candidates first. These tools assess candidate fit based on experience, personality, and other relevant data, thereby automating the sourcing process and surfacing candidates who have exactly what your company is looking for.

2. AI Improves Job Descriptions

Candidates hate complex job posts with confusing requirements sections. AI tools like Textio use proprietary data sets to analyze your job descriptions, suggesting tweaks and adjustments that can help you write an ad that attracts top-tier applicants rather than driving them away. On top of predicting how candidates will respond to job posting content, it also helps to eliminate bias by identifying words or phrases that can be perceived as subtly “masculine” or “feminine,” which can rub candidates the wrong way.

3. AI Sources Passive Candidates

With the unemployment rate sitting at a historic low, it’s no wonder 63 percent of recruiters  report finding suitable candidates to be a major barrier to hiring success.

The solution to the lack of available talent? Source passive candidates — that is, candidates who are already employed but open to other opportunities. Statistics suggest there are many passive candidates out there, with as many as 72 percent of adults keeping track of open jobs in the market regardless of their employment status.

Passive candidates exist. Finding them is the real challenge.

That’s where AI comes in. AI can help find passive candidates through predictive analytics. By analyzing important factors such as how long employees usually stay in a given job and environmental influences like whether a company is downsizing, AI can pinpoint candidates who are most likely to be open to a new job. All a recruiter has to do is reach out.

AI cuts many of the menial recruiting tasks that complicate the sourcing process, and machine learning algorithms allow this technology to improve its own performance over time. Could this be the beginning of self-aware technology? Will robots soon handle all our sourcing needs for us?

Who knows. But in the meantime, AI is helping us solve our recruitment dilemmas — and that’s clearly a good thing.

A version of this article originally appeared on IQTalent Partners.  

Chris Murdock is the cofounder and senior partner of IQTalent Partners.

By Chris Murdock