If you think that we are years off before robots will play a major role in recruiting, rethink that notion.
Despite all the recent coverage on the broad future potential of chatbots in recruiting, you might not be aware of the fact that “chatbots” (automated conversation agents) have been successfully used for over a decade in one narrow area of recruiting. That area is answering potential applicant questions on career pages.
The most successful example of that Q&A capability is the U.S. Army’s automated Sgt. Star, who literally “does the work of 55 human recruiters” and has answered over 11 million questions. But despite the track record and powerful capabilities, Q&A chatbots have until now been extremely rare in the corporate world of recruiting. And that’s a huge mistake because they can make an important contribution by instantly, accurately, and inexpensively providing personalized job-related answers to those considering applying for a job. In fact, research reveals that 73 percent of potential applicants want to “ask specific questions about the position” (i.e. Potentialpark). But in most cases under the existing process, they are blocked from the opportunity to ask and get answers to their job-related questions.
The attention span of even the most active job seeker is rather short. So what do you think happens when a potential applicant can’t get an immediate answer to an important question about the job and the company? Well, in most cases, that impatient potential applicant abandons that job and they will likely move on to another firm. And for individuals who are not actively seeking a job (that have even more questions) they will be less tolerant and drop off even earlier if they don’t get the answers they expect.
If you don’t want to lose those potential applicants who are especially valuable (because they have shown a direct interest in your firm), you need to consider a Q&A chatbot. And fortunately because of recent advances in technology and widespread use on the business side, these chatbots are more effective than ever.
Q&A chatbots provide enormous benefits and they have few downsides. Thirteen of those benefits include:
Corporations have in the past made some basic attempts to provide answers with limited success. The most frequently used approach is when the corporate web or social media sites provide a written list of “frequently asked questions with answers; however, those answers are generic, and they obviously can’t be personalized to a particular job. A few corporate websites have actually answered questions using a live recruiter or a live chat room during regular working hours, but this approach is extremely expensive and it can only operate during limited hours. Other recruiting functions provide “delayed answers” a day or so later when an available recruiter has time to answer.
Most would agree that all of these three options are inferior to having a Q&A chatbot. And the fourth option of letting individuals search and seek out answers to their questions on their own almost always leads to frustration, even on the best designed corporate web or social media sites.
It’s also worth noting that chatbots have had a few problems. Microsoft did have some issues with chatbot manipulation by users, but that involved a chatbot that provided a much broader range of answers. Even Sgt. Star had one controversy when an individual asked it a Freedom Of Information Act question, which was outside of its range of acceptable topics. With so few issues, recruiting Q&A chatbots are a low-risk option.
It’s time for the corporate world to learn a valuable lesson from the U.S. Army, one of the top five strongest recruiting functions on the planet. And that is that Q&A chatbots proved over a decade that they can successfully and inexpensively answer literally thousands of conversational questions a week. And any corporation that matched the Sgt. Star Q&A chatbot capability of the Army, I estimate could reduce their potential applicant drop-off rate by as much as 50 percent.
Currently, more generic chatbots can be found on Facebook and CNN. And in recruiting, yes, eventually chatbots will be used for interviewing, recruiter training, reference checking, and initial sourcing. But the focus of this article is narrow, on whether they can successfully answer job-related questions from potential applicants. And in this limited area, they are ready for usage today, because they can clearly increase your recruiting capabilities beyond what any group of human recruiters can do. And because the costs can be relatively low, and the benefits are numerous, this investment is guaranteed to result in an extremely high ROI. And in addition, it has a “WOW factor” that might help build your employer brand.
