One of the most important metrics staffing agencies track is job fill rates. Competition for talent is fierce and if one staffing agency cannot quickly fill an open position, there is always another one ready to jump in with their own candidate. Recruiters who rely on traditional manual sourcing processes often struggle to achieve a goal of 100% fill rates. They need to be able to search and process candidates with greater speed and efficiency. They need easily accessible data to help them make good hiring decisions. Advances in technology, such as artificial intelligence (AI), have emerged to add rocket fuel to recruitment processes, especially for a high-volume workforce. Using an AI-powered staffing platform, recruiters can eliminate some of the most time-consuming tasks in the recruitment process to source talent more effectively and fill jobs faster.
What Does AI Mean for Recruiting & Staffing?
Think of AI as your own personal recruiting assistant. It helps you connect with candidates, screens multiple resumes for you and tells you which candidates are the best fit for your open job. Your recruiting assistant arms you with sophisticated algorithms that make your recruiting and staffing job easier.
In the light industrial space, recruiting and staffing are all about the numbers. How many qualified candidates can you find and how quickly can you put them to work on behalf of a client? AI can optimize the recruitment process when it sifts through and analyzes huge amounts of candidate data to help recruiters make quicker hiring decisions. The more quickly this happens, the more likely it is that you will achieve 100% job fill rates.
Sourcing Candidates More Quickly… the Right Candidates
Although the ability to find candidates and fill more job orders may be the initial goal, identifying candidates who closely fit client needs is more critical to client satisfaction. Best-fit candidates are more likely to thrive in the client’s work environment, quickly acclimating to the job and the client’s worksite protocols and practices. They are more likely to complete their assignments and return for redeployment.
With a next-generation staffing and workforce management platform utilizing AI, recruiters can do more. They can source candidates from a large database, identifying high-potential fills, based on specific requirements, such as location, skills attained, experience, work habits, and more subjective characteristics, including cultural fit, behavior, and attitude.
The recruitment process has long been permeated by manual tasks, such as sifting through hundreds of resumes to cull a handful of possibilities. It can be a brain-numbing, time-consuming process, leaving little opportunity to really get to know candidates and develop relationships that will last beyond a single assignment. An AI-powered staffing module utilizes intelligent matching, which allows recruiters to find the most-qualified candidates as quickly as possible.
Creating Talent Pools
AI is often misunderstood. Sometimes seen as a threat to the art of recruiting, in actuality, this sophisticated technology is a means to greater success for recruiters. It automates traditional, time-bound methods, such as candidate sourcing and resume screening, allowing recruiters to spend more time evaluating different elements of the recruitment process. For example, an AI-powered platform utilizes technology to capture and analyze individual candidate data to measure their success in certain roles or with particular job orders. Having access to this data allows staffing agencies to consistently build their talent pool, based on job-specific data, such as skills and experience, ensuring they have a highly qualified talent pipeline at all times.
Re-Engaging Talent
The talent gap in today’s job market is very real. According to the latest figures from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are currently more than 10 million unfilled jobs in America. Staffing agencies spend a majority of their time looking for talent, trying to fill job orders as quickly as they can. When new job orders come in, recruiters can look to their currently employed base to see if any employees are available to take on a new assignment, but talent sourcing often entails another trip out to the job boards to post the latest slew of new openings. It’s a little like building sandcastles on the beach. As soon as they are finished, in comes another wave to wash them away, and you have to start all over again.
With an AI-powered staffing platform to support your recruiting efforts, you can keep those waves away. AI helps staffing agencies remain engaged with past candidates for redeployment, minimizing the need to continuously reconstruct that sandcastle. With AI, you don’t have to lose touch with candidates you have already vetted. AI analyzes large amounts of data relating to candidate experience, capabilities, and current status. While it’s easy to focus on active employees to fill current job orders, with the help of an AI-powered staffing platform, agencies can re-engage with candidates beyond their active talent pool. You likely have lots of inactive candidates who have not worked any hours or been assigned to any job recently. Those individuals are a great source to fill new job opportunities. Re-engaging with talent makes sure that no candidate pipeline will ever remain dormant.
Should Recruiters Worry About AI?
Not at all. AI can, in fact, be a huge help to recruiters. It eliminates time-consuming manual processes. It speeds up hiring and assists recruiters in filling more jobs with best-match candidates. It allows recruiters to tap into larger talent pools. Recruiting and staffing is and will always be a human-centric process. At WurkNow, we utilize powerful technologies, including AI, machine learning, and blockchain, to evolve our platform according to the growing needs of the staffing industry and the humans that help it thrive.
To learn more about how WurkNow can empower your recruiting process, request a demo today.
