We're at the dawn of a new era of recruitment. The hiring landscape is evolving, and traditional talent acquisition methods are starting to show their age. More than ever, recruiting excellence is achieved by strategically identifying the right talent using more intelligent, more efficient techniques.
Not long ago, well-staffed HR teams competed fiercely to find and attract top talent, often going head-to-head with industry giants. Today, many departments find themselves with significantly reduced headcounts and intense levels of scrutiny. Despite facing an influx of inbound applications for limited roles, recruiters still need to proactively source candidates to meet diversity goals or fill senior positions, which remains mission-critical.
As recently as last year, recruiters reported talent shortages as their most significant hiring challenge (SHRM), while inbound applicants per position tripled in 2023 (Ashby) and continue to rise in 2024. Less budget, too many applicants, and a skills mismatch require a novel solution.
Shaking Up The ATS
When we strip the HR tech stack down to the essentials, the applicant tracking system (ATS) remains indispensable for recruiters, preventing the chaos of managing candidates in notepads and spreadsheets. As arguably the most valued tool in a recruiting team's toolbox, the ATS is necessary for an efficient and compliant recruitment program.
This will likely remain the case for the foreseeable future, and this is why many HR tech companies have begun evolving their products to include ATS features. At the same time, many current applicant tracking systems have been around for decades and are based on systems first created in the 1970s. In some cases, the legacy infrastructure and designs of these systems are built on predate the internet and are ripe for disruption.
Many current applicant tracking systems have been around for decades and are based on systems first created in the 1970s.
There's got to be a better way. Something built for the modern world and today's recruiter in mind. Well, imagine a new lightweight solution that combines the core function of an ATS with the sourcing capabilities of LinkedIn or even a full recruitment agency—at the same or lower cost than a standalone ATS today. With advancements in AI, this vision is closer to reality than it may seem.
At Fetcher, our vision for the future of HR tech is to create a seamlessly integrated recruitment workflow, offering solutions that enable far more operational agility than a traditional ATS while being as transformative for the industry as the ATS was when it launched.
Thoughtfully Embracing AI - The Fetcher Way Forward
AI is here and will only become more pervasive as models improve and access to it expands. While it may seem daunting or even a bit intimidating, its benefits, when appropriately utilized, are undeniable.
When properly used, AI is an incredible recruitment sidekick, giving you a competitive edge in today's turbulent talent market. Think of it as the Robin to your Batman. It can take care of various productivity-robbing functions and offers innovative, efficient, and strategic approaches to tackle many of today's hiring challenges.
At Fetcher, we're here to guide you through this transition in a thoughtful and minimally disruptive way. Our expertise and commitment to your success will ensure you can make the leap to AI recruiting while maintaining control over your existing process.
Core Principles to Consider
Enhance, Don't Overhaul
New recruitment technology should enhance your existing processes without disrupting your way of operating. Sticking to this principle will minimize downtime and provide immediate benefits, allowing you to quickly improve your recruiting without the career risk of leading a system overhaul or dealing with the headaches of a significant bleeding-edge technical implementation.
Look for technology that:
- Complements and enhances your existing workflows
- Improves your productivity
- Reduces manual effort and inputs
- Fills gaps in your existing tech stack
- Integrates with your most used software and tools
Find technology partners who listen to your needs and take the time to work with you directly to aid in the transition. Then, as you become more comfortable with the new system and AI, you can delegate more and more of your work to it.
Move Faster Without Redundancy
Speed is crucial in recruitment. Any new technology should be able to automate away repetitive manual tasks, providing you with a sense of relief. According to LinkedIn, around half of all recruiters surveyed cited the primary benefit of AI as automating away mundane tasks to focus on fulfilling work. Make a list of those time-consuming tasks and ensure any new technology can take them off your plate - either with technology or a dedicated support team.
Some examples of things to look for include:
- Communication scheduling
- Automatic calendar booking
- Data syncing between tools
- Templatized AI messaging
- Smart suggestions
- Auto-populating fields and forms
Moving faster without redundancy will help you be more productive and give you more time to spend with your best potential candidates, enhancing your efficiency.
Improve Situational Awareness & Act with Purpose
One of the most common areas of feedback we hear about the traditional ATS is that it's easy for the user to get lost due to the complexity and inflexibility of the platform. On the flip side, low-cost solutions don't offer enough insights to act with purpose. With the introduction of AI, you no longer need to settle for this paradigm.
Make sure any new AI tools help you:
- Gain visibility into your recruitment funnel
- Automate dashboards and offer robust analytics
- Better understand candidate progress
- Identify existing barriers to success
- Provide actionable insights in real-time
Situational awareness is essential for optimizing recruitment outcomes and ensuring no candidate falls through the cracks. From improving time-to-hire to increasing offer acceptance rates, actionable data helps you optimize your recruitment strategies.
How to maximize AI Recruiting
1. Unify Your Recruitment Funnel
As new technology has been bolted on to make recruitment easier, we've reached a point where technology bloat is creating as many headaches as it claims to solve. Does this sound familiar: job applications in several systems, multiple inboxes, and sourcing candidates across disparate systems and platforms?
With the right AI-powered tools, the days of managing inbound, outbound, referrals, and agencies in disparate systems are over. Fetcher, for example, allows you to consolidate all talent sourcing into a cohesive view. This unified approach lets you seamlessly compare candidate quality and select the best people for the job, regardless of your talent-sourcing method.
If you are flooded with inbound candidates, use AI to surface the most relevant fits for the role. When you're struggling to fill a role, simply turn on passive sourcing and let the tool/service actively find great candidates while you sleep.
Having the ability to swiftly adjust your talent acquisition strategy in a single platform while consistently evaluating talent regardless of the source can significantly enhance your organization's recruitment efforts and decrease time-to-hire.
2. Expand Your Searches to Find The Best Candidates
Let's face it, places like LinkedIn are great, but they aren't flawless. Some fantastic talent spends zero time updating their public profiles. Similarly, not all picture-perfect candidates will be interested in your open roles or are being honest about their skill sets. This is where AI tools will soon be able to ensure no qualified candidate unintentionally gets rejected due to a mismatch of keywords in their application or skills listed on their LinkedIn profile.
Imagine you have a hard-to-fill role in a less populated region of the world. You find a few candidates who may be a good fit, but it's unclear if they have all the skills you're looking for. Rather than instantly rejecting them because you don't have the bandwidth to dig deeper, an AI recruiting tool can ask qualifying questions before you need to lift a finger.
Through AI, you will soon be able to dig beneath the surface and beyond basic keywords to find that top-tier team member who can help elevate your business.
3. Automate Outbound Messaging
According to LinkedIn, communication is the most important skill a recruiter can have. Because of this, using AI for communication can feel daunting. But don't worry—AI can help with repetitive tasks and even translate messages for you, freeing up your mental energy for building real relationships.
By streamlining these frequent top-of-the-funnel engagements with AI, you can spend more time and effort on genuinely interested candidates.
A great place to start is by automating your initial candidate outreach. For example, when a candidate meets your criteria, you can send a personalized email that uses tokens to populate common fields like name, title, and company, while providing them with key information about the job. It can be something as simple as:
Hi [Candidate Name],
We came across your profile and think you could be a great fit for our [Job Title] position at [Company]. The role involves [brief job description]. If you're interested in learning more, let us know!
These emails make it easy for candidates to decide if they're interested in an interview. AI can then read their responses and sort them into “interested” and “not interested” groups, allowing you to quickly book meetings with those who are keen.
By streamlining these frequent top-of-the-funnel engagements with AI, you can spend more time and effort on genuinely interested candidates and less time on routine tasks and going through the motions with the masses.
4. Maximize Data and Analytics
There is no shortage of hiring metrics to track within the traditional ATS, but surfacing that data at the right time and place to drive strategic decisions can be challenging. This is where the next generation of AI recruiting will significantly enhance your situational awareness.
Imagine having common goals across teams for vetting candidates, response rates, and responsiveness. While these metrics are fairly standard, an AI can analyze them daily and suggest adjustments to recruiters.
Instead of creating dozens of reports and running them when time permits, you can have an AI helper keeping you aware of vital metrics and helping you self-correct before issues arise. You can set your goals and have AI by your side to ensure you are tracking to these benchmarks.
For example, many companies working towards DE&I goals can use AI to track candidate demographics throughout the recruiting process. This helps teams understand if they're over or under-indexing on a particular gender or demographic, allowing them to course correct. Real-time notifications about these metrics enable continuous improvement without lengthy data audits.
AI-assisted analytics provide comprehensive situational awareness, enabling recruiters to pinpoint candidates' positions within the hiring funnel, identify bottlenecks, and leverage data-driven strategies for better decision-making.
Conclusion: Embrace the Future of Recruitment with Fetcher
The landscape of recruitment is undergoing a profound transformation. With the integration of AI, identifying, attracting, and retaining top talent is becoming more streamlined, efficient, and effective. While still valuable, traditional methods are being augmented and, in some cases, replaced by technologies that promise to revolutionize how we approach hiring.
In a world where recruiter demands are higher than ever, Fetcher helps you navigate these challenges confidently.
By adopting the Fetcher way, you are positioning your organization at the forefront of this revolution. Embracing AI-driven solutions means enhancing your current processes and preparing for a future where speed, efficiency, and strategic decision-making are paramount. The principles outlined in this guide—enhancing rather than overhauling existing processes, moving faster without redundancy, and improving situational awareness—provide a roadmap for a seamless transition to AI-powered recruitment.
The practical steps to unifying assessment methods, automating communications, and maximizing data and analytics with AI are designed to ensure that your recruitment strategies are comprehensive and adaptable. These steps help you manage the increasing volume of applications, meet diversity goals, and fill critical senior positions quickly and precisely.
In a world where recruiter demands are higher than ever, Fetcher helps you navigate these challenges confidently. Leveraging AI allows you to focus on building relationships, making informed decisions, and hiring the best candidates. With Fetcher, you are not just keeping pace, you are leading the way.
