4 Chatbot Recruitment Myths, Debunked

Aida Fazylova
Nov 4, 2019 9:18:17 AM

In recent years, chatbots have had an outsized effect on recruiting, with 69 percent of surveyed recruiters stating that AI has earned them higher-quality candidates. Yet many hiring managers — perhaps the remaining 31% —  are still reticent to take full advantage of the latest tech. The reasons vary from company to company, but are generally based on a misunderstanding or confusion regarding AI.

More often than not, these fears are unfounded. Let’s take a look at four of the biggest myths you may hear regarding chatbots — and how the reality offers huge benefits to companies like yours.

Chatbots are going to replace recruiters

The idea that chatbots can completely do the job of a recruiter is pure science fiction. While AI can eliminate much of the time and repetitive tasks associated with recruitment, a human-guided process will always allow AI to thrive.

Chatbots can conduct preliminary interviews, screen candidates, and provide FAQ information to curious prospects. They can do much more, in fact, but at the end of the day, it’s up to the recruiter’s discretion as to who to hire.

When artificial and human intelligence are combined, the recruitment process becomes more effective. It also reduces the time to interview by up to 79% — leaving recruiters with more time to focus on their most essential tasks.

Chatbots can handle the entire recruitment process

Similar to the previous point is the assumption that chatbots can handle everything. While it’s true that chatbots can guide a prospective employee from initial screening to onboarding, hiring managers will keep abreast of every major decision. Nothing leaves the recruiter’s hands unless they want the chatbot to take charge.

The real advantage in having a chatbot is in seeing how it can augment (not upend) existing recruitment methods. For example, a manual hiring process often excludes top-quality candidates who speak one language more fluently than their second or third. XOR’s chatbots are fluent in over 100 languages, which brings more candidates to the table.

This kind of increased screening would be worrying for a hiring manager without an AI process for screening. Luckily, chatbots do that as well. It’s the difference between creating a new system and improving the one already in place via AI.

People are uncomfortable talking to chatbots

Some of the earliest online chatbots were curiosities like Cleverbot, a chatbot first developed in the 1980s that entertained thousands of early web users.

While there was some powerful code behind the program, the often perplexing and downright humorous responses from Cleverbot colored people’s perception of the technology as an intriguing yet ultimately trivial novelty.

Yet Cleverbot debuted in 1997. A Web 1.0 chatbot built for general conversations is hardly comparable to an AI-driven chatbot built and optimized for a company’s hiring process.

Today’s chatbots are powerful enough to not only take care of a recruiter’s drudge work, but also leave candidates with an enthusiastic view of their potential employer. That’s why 99.3% of the candidates we surveyed reported an excellent chatbot experience.

Perceptions change over time — just like tech, in fact!

Chatbots are hard to set up

It’s a truism in the world of recruiting: if something can make your job easier, the process of implementing it must be difficult. Recruiters — who rarely have a spare moment in their schedules — can’t sacrifice much time to adopt new technology.

Luckily, our chatbots are easy to deploy. With customer support and free product demos, XOR makes sure every hiring team is fully equipped to start using AI for their hiring process. 

While any change to the hiring process requires some adaptation, the time and money saved with chatbots is so substantial that companies can’t afford not to implement their use. With 80% of companies using or planning to use chatbots by 2020, organizations that delay implementing their own AI-driven chatbot are falling behind.

Rumors and misinformation abound with any new technology. What’s important is seeing for yourself just what a chatbot can do for your company — and how it can make your job faster, easier, and more stress-free. And that’s a fact!

Photo by Alex Knight on Unsplash

Tags: AI, Automation, recruitment trends