7 Amazing Ways Companies Use AI to Recruit Employees

AI is set to revolutionize many industries in the future and recruitment is no exception.

Artificial intelligence has set its sights on the recruitment industry. More and more companies are beginning to use AI-solutions to help speed up the process and make it less hit or miss. 

Here we highlight 7 areas of recruitment where AI might be used to lighten the load for recruiters and find better candidates for their organization and positions. 


What is artificial intelligence in recruitment?

Artificial intelligence is finding many applications in various industries, and recruitment is no different. AI can be employed to help the recruitment process for companies by employing machine-learning and problem-solving to help find the best candidate(s) for a position. 


For example, software that applies machine learning to resumes to auto-screen candidates or software that conducts sentiment analysis on job descriptions to identify [any] potentially-biased language." - ideal.com.

Will AI replace human recruiters?

With the rapid pace of development and deployment in many industries, especially recruitment, you might wonder if it will ever replace human recruiters?

While AI can be a lot more efficient at "cold" sorting candidates based on criteria set by the potential employer and available data, it is probably unlikely that AI will completely replace all human recruiters.

The human touch will likely always be a necessary component of the recruitment process in the future. It can be thought of as more of an advanced labor-saving aid rather than something that will completely replace all human recruiters in the future.

"How do you replace empathy or contextual understanding with AI? Seems like a stretch to me. AI can do the mundane and boring work most people don’t like so they can focus on more interesting tasks, like building relationships with hiring managers over good coffee and helping them solve big problems." explained Ben Martinez at Fistful of Talent to yello.co. 


What is Paradox's Olivia?

"Paradox" is an AI development company based in Scottsdale Arizona. Their flagship product is an AI recruitment tool called Olivia. 

"Olivia helps companies capture and screen candidates, improve conversions, and answer all candidate questions. She delivers one-to-one candidate experience at scale and even handles interview scheduling.

At Paradox, we see a future where humans do the things they’re best at, and AI technology handles the mundane and simple tasks for us. Technology is a tool for us and should be used as such.

We never want to remove humans from the recruiting process. We just want to make it better.


Our dream is a better candidate and recruiter experience for everyone." - Paradox. 

What are some examples of AI being used in recruitment?

Here are 7 examples of how AI is being employed to help revolutionize the recruitment process for many companies around the world. 

1. AI is helping improve online applications

One of the ways that AI is helping companies with recruitment is through online application management. Applicant tracking from recruiter databases tends to use a lot of keywords, word flows, and other data points that AI can sort, search and analyze with ease.

AI is helping recruiters prioritize thousands of resumes to help speed up candidate selection. They, in effect, are acting like digital recruitment consultants.


In the future, it is not inconceivable that companies will use them to actively help job hunters to make job application more effective using predictive analytics.

2. They are being used to find the best-fit candidates

AI can be used by companies to help find the best-fit candidates for the position and their organization. It can be employed to fill in the gaps that employers might not be able to glean from a resume.

For example, it can analyze a candidate's online presence and discover that they are very active in social causes. Alternatively, a candidate would also be able to use AI to find the best fit for them by creating a profile for their values, goals and career aspirations. 


3. AI is helping speed up shortlisting of applicants

AI can be used to save recruiters a ton of time by preselecting the best candidates for a given position. Instead of humans having to skim through hundreds or thousands of resumes, an AI could be unleashed to sort the wheat from the chaff.

"AI can search to find matching candidates, make contact, conduct preliminary interviews, assess resumes, and present the best for an interview. " - Forbes.com

4. It is being used to provide a level playing field

AI can also be used to help level the playing field for candidates. No longer will the chances of getting an interview be underpinned by their ability to be 'liberal with the truth' on their resumes.

ai recruitment is the future
Source: Massimiliano/Flickr

This will probably require candidates to network a lot more than was necessary before.

"Building and maintaining authentic, professional relationships will help people stand out and land the interview." - Forbes.com.  

5. AI is being used to vet characters

As remote working is becoming ever more popular, AI can be used to help vet candidates to ensure they are trustable. There are already some AI tools being employed for this purpose to help identify potential threats when hiring someone to work remotely.

Such tools can help assess potential employees' honesty and ethics and help determine whether they would be a good representative for the organization. This will not only help vet good candidates but will enable the organization to distribute its workforce more widely.


This will probably prove invaluable for service companies like Lyft, Airbnb and Uber.

6. Artificial intelligence is also being used during interviews

Artificial intelligence, like Paradox's Olivia, is being used to help with the interview process. It can help deal with some of the basic questions saving the real guts of the interview process human recruiters.

"AI is already replacing portions of the interviewing process. I’ve had clients who were surprised to show up for a Skype interview and were asked questions via AI.

This interview format results in a new set of challenges because applicants no longer benefit from social and visual cues. It becomes more critical to have a robust preparation to convey essential information and set themselves apart." - Jean Ali Muhlbauer told Forbes.com


7. AI is helping to provide recruitment automation and advanced data analytics

More traditional recruitment tended to rely on luck and intuition rather than taking a more scientific approach. This older model is very time consuming and can be a little scattershot in its results.

But with the wealth of data we have today a more data-driven recruitment process is being opened up, especially when AI is employed. Data-driven recruiting not only helps in improving the quality of hire but also in several different areas.

These include better allocation of funds for recruitment. For example, targeting candidates using social media, etc. 

It can also be used to help build "hiring funnels". AI can, for example, be used to analyze why certain conversion rates from applications are less, or more, effective than others.