Automation affects more new spheres of life and changes many professions. At what point does the idea of automation usually arise? When employees (for example, HR specialists) perform the same routine actions over and over again instead of engaging in more strategic tasks. The HR market is transforming - specialists come to the conclusion that their methods of hiring, adapting and training are no longer as effective as the speed of the modern business world requires them to be. Excel spreadsheets, phone calls, survey questionnaires - all this is a thing of the past.

In today’s fast-moving recruitment industry, your business’ hiring process can make or break your bottom line. However, because recruitment is usually left to an internal HR team or third-party staffing firm, it’s not usually high-up on the list of priorities for CEOs to think about — but recruiting impacts a business’ profits more than most C-Suite executives may realize. 

Recruitment has become more and more inextricable from marketing practices as employers continue to compete with each other over attracting the best talent. The overarching mindset is that companies have to market themselves to candidates in order to encourage them to apply, which is why you’ll see companies promoting their job and internship openings (as well as the perks that come with their company) not just on LinkedIn and industry sites, but even on social media. 

As such, the trends in marketing are starting to reflect those in recruitment. Maryville University note that the digital marketing industry is expected to grow to a whopping $335 billion by 2020, which means that the race for the best digital marketing strategies are on. One of its manifestations is in new technology, as employers are investing in Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology to create a more tailored and marketed reach when it comes to recruitment efforts. Here's how:

Tailoring your ads 
Audience segmentation has been one of AI's most important developments. As people continue to use their phones and laptops to shop, connect with friends, and even apply for jobs, Adweek states that all of this data can be pooled to create demographic groups that can help recruiters pick out those most likely to click on their ads. Coupled with machine learning capabilities, AI can profile people in terms of job sites that they visit, other ads that they’ve opened, and even their most used search terms. You should consider tailoring your segmentation to find candidates according to experience, industry, or skills required by the position. In fact, you can even segment your search by competitor to find candidates who fit the position perfectly but are looking for opportunities elsewhere. 

Personalizing your reach 
Once you’ve narrowed down your applicant pool, the next step is to personalize how you reach out to candidates. It’s not just a smaller applicant pool that comes from tailored ads; you can also use the info collected on your applicants to improve how you reach out to them. Business News Daily sees candidate personalization as a crucial aspect of the hiring process, as it requires crafting an online persona of your ideal candidate and pitching a compelling narrative that will appeal to applicants. You can also use this data to improve your company’s overall communication system and craft your social media presence, recruitment ads, and even website copy to create a stronger brand. 

Making the recruitment process fairer
The hiring process is subject to selective and often unconscious bias, which can hamper productivity at best and garner your company a bad reputation at the very worst. Our CEO Aida Fazylova emphasizes the role that AI can play in removing bias from recruitment. AI does this by creating a data pool of all the applicant’s qualifications while simultaneously filtering out any demographic information, such as sex or race that could easily lead to bias in the recruitment process. The AI can also scan skills and qualifications (minus unconscious biases) in order to match applicants to different jobs available, further personalizing your marketing and recruitment efforts.

Indeed, industries across the globe are pushing for diversity thanks to consumers and applicants fighting for their seat at the table — and rightly so. Today’s competitive job market shows that we have to rethink the criteria of what makes a suitable candidate, especially as our previous filters and biases are continuously being proven wrong. 

As every healthcare recruiter is already well-aware, the industry is facing a major labor shortage — and this issue isn’t likely to go away anytime soon. The Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) released a report which projects a shortage of nearly 105,000 physicians by 2030, including a shortage of between 7,300 and 43,100 for primary care physicians and a shortage of 33,500 to 61,800 for non-primary care specialties. These numbers aren’t exactly promising, especially for healthcare staffing firms that may already be having trouble with their recruitment efforts.

The healthcare industry has been booming in recent years — which, while great for healthcare professionals, isn’t as great for the hospitals and clinics who are in desperate need of more nurses and other crucial roles. 

For many recruiters, it can be difficult to know when, and how, to implement new AI technology into their outreach and hiring processes. After all, many recruiters are simply used to dealing with the high stress levels and multitasking that comes along with high-volume recruiting.