Over the past few years, artificial intelligence has slowly trickled into domains which once were considered solely driven by humans. One such area in an organisational set up is the Human Resources and Recruitment department. This is a unit where AI can potentially be used to accelerate and assist human effort.

From candidate acquisition to scanning resumes, to improving employee engagement and answering real-time questions at large, AI has the potential to revolutionise HR Industry. Today, employers like Google, Cisco, PepsiCo, Amazon along with major staffing agencies or TechHR startups are testing and adopting data-driven, predictive tools for better the hiring process.

Recruiting is rarely a single decision as it is a series of smaller, sequential decisions. Recruiting has slowly become a digitised experience as candidates are connected through mobile platforms. AI-powered technologies are highly helpful at reducing the time spent on repetitive tasks and finding multiple patterns in large sets of data.

Major Drawbacks In AI-Based Recruitment Till Now:

• Availability of data and a vast amount of data that is extremely essential for any AI software to mimic human intelligence. So, ensuring there is a vast database of resumes and other related sets of information readily available is quite difficult to manage.
• Unconscious biases can be learnt by the software. Therefore, a basic understanding of the way the technology works, and awareness is important.
• A good example of this is an e-commerce giant that ditched its AI tool, which preferred males for Tech positions. The MNC put AI hiring companies on notice and a few are acknowledging the risk of algorithmic bias.

• A study done by ProPublica in 2016 found that software used to predict an arrestee’s likelihood of recidivism was biased against black defendants. Without active measures to mitigate algorithm errors, biases will arise in predictive hiring tools by default.
• While predictive hiring tools rarely make affirmative hiring decisions, they often automate rejections. There is a need that designers need to be careful in how they select input data and how they craft the underlying algorithms.

Major Areas Where AI Is Contributing Recruiting Process:

• Attracting talent and screening a number of resumes
• Reduction of bias and promotion of diversity
• Responding to applications and answering candidate queries
• Detect attrition patterns
• Schedule management

Varied Applications Of AI Used In HR Process :

• Using Intelligent screening software and recruiter chatbots/assistants
• Conducting digitised interviews and programmatic advertising for more effective targeting
• Using the employee value proposition (EVP) personalised for candidate outreach
• The democratisation of resumes and AI evaluating candidates in the interview process
• Candidate engagement and Upskilling for job-seekers
• Automation of high-volume tasks like Contract Management

Many Indian companies, especially large corporates in the technology, banking and ITeS sectors, have started using AI-based chatbots to screen candidates and manage talent. Human error in the hiring process can inhibit diversity on teams, and as companies shift towards using artificial intelligence in hiring, algorithmic bias can as well. So, here we list some international and Indian companies using AI in their recruitment and how startups are helping them to use AI.

How MNCs and startups Are Using AI To Speed Up Hiring Process –

1| LinkedIn – The professional social media site has been tracking what happens in the hiring process with regards to gender, showing companies reports and insights about how their job postings and InMail are performing on this.

• LinkedIn has been re-ranking the top search results in LinkedIn to be more representative
• LinkedIn had also launched new features within its new Talent Insights product
• LinkedIn also acquired Glint, an employee surveying startup insight will also improve how customer attracts, develop and retain talent
• They can also have better insight into the talent landscape, such as how skill sets change over time and finding talent pools.
• LinkedIn also announced new artificial intelligence features to help recruiters hire more diverse candidates.

2| Deloitte – MNCs like Deloitte ’s are using AI-enabled Contract Management Solution.

• HR teams, recruiters, and staffing managers are using AI technology and AI-based products to improve hiring.

3| L’Oréal – The MNC adopted AI and Machine Learning to avoid the non-value adding tasks and focuses on more value-added tasks in recruitment.

• For the screening process, L’Oréal adopted Chabot, Mya which helped job seekers like a human recruiter, screens potential candidates for the company.

• Mya works on artificial intelligence and natural language processing asking questions, verifying qualifications, and answer questions from job applicants about things like company culture, policy, and benefits.
• After Mya finishes asking questions and screening for qualifications, it delivers updates to the recruiters letting them know about the best-fit candidates for the job role.

4| Bajaj Allianz– Bajaj Allianz General Insurance Company uses automated video interviewing solution, developed by Microsoft in partnership with Talview, to hire employees from multiple cities across the country.

• It also uses Talview Behavioural Insights (TBI) a job competency tool that leverages psycholinguistics to analyse candidate response to build behavioural profiles of candidates.
• These profiles enable hiring managers to find the right person for a job backed by data-driven insights.

5| Tech Mahindra – Tech Mahindra’s the focus is on automating mundane tasks, so that HR can ‘value-add’ in roles that are more complex.

• According to Harshvendra Soin, chief people officer, Tech Mahindra, to find suitable candidate’s profile from a large resume database, they are using an AI-led system that helps in filtering the right profile as per the job description,”
• Basic employee queries, which were earlier handled by the HR team, are now tackled by a chatbot called UVO, which also assists employees in applying and getting leave approvals, handles requests for cash advance, travel and so on.
• UVO also helps in automating employee ID creation, data administration and in other areas as well, like job matching, predicting employee learning and wellness.
• Using AI, they are able to increase employee satisfaction and also reduce attrition in the HR team as the monotonous work has been reduced to a large extent.

6| Mindtree – Bengaluru-based IT firm Mindtree, has been using AI applications extensively in all its verticals, especially HR. AI plays a very important role in our selection process.

• According to Parthasarathy NS, executive vice-chairman and COO, Mindtree, They have been using AI not just for processing large data, but also about finding correct resumes, eliminating bias and discovering fraudulent resumes.
• AI has dramatically changed the way they do things, from the selection process and screening of resumes to answering employee questions in real time.

7| Unilever- Unilever uses HireVue for its video interviewing platform, which digitally assesses and ranks the video interviews to determine candidate fit.

• The best candidates then were moved on to the fourth step, when they are invited to a Discovery Centre for an in-person “day in the life at Unilever” simulation.
• Unilever has digitised its recruitment process. Unilever recruiters have registered significant improvements in the hiring process. Under the earlier system, recruiters screened six candidates to put one through the process now recruiters are screening two candidates to put one through all the four steps.
• Unilever screens all entry-level candidates first with Pymetrics, then HireVue. HireVue reported that Unilever saw a 16 per cent increase in hires that added gender and ethnic diversity to the company.

Startups in AI :HR Business

• Param.ai is a Hyderabad-based hiring startup that uses AI, which automatically pre-screens resume for companies and tells them if the candidate is good, bad or average, depending on past hiring patterns. Right from sourcing resumes, screening, scheduling meetings and interviews to candidate engagement, employee development and employee services, AI covers all these aspects.
• HireVue’s, a platform that uses artificial intelligence to help companies improve hiring, analyses tens of thousands of factors from video interviews to determine which applicants make it to the next round in the hiring process.
• Pymetrics builds a custom algorithm for every client company by running at least 50 of their top performers through multiple games aimed at measuring cognitive, social, and emotional traits to generate a profile of the dream employee for a role. The main idea is that by using objective, data-based recruiting, while also at the same time removing bias, the ranks will diversify organically.
• HiringSolved is an AI-powered recruitment tool that enables diversity during the selection process. While it has varied features, its experimental Rai chatbot tool can be considered as a highlight. It uses hundreds of data points to spot diverse candidates. It then applies an in-house statistical model that permits users to boost search relevance through the platform’s ethnic and gender diversity models.
• Hiretual is a startup that has created an AI virtual assistant for recruiters that augments a recruiter’s reach which enables recruiters to find and engage the right people with the right skill sets up to 10 times faster because its sources across more than 30 platforms like LinkedIn, GitHub, Quora, Facebook, Twitter, AngelList and Reddit as well as 700 million professional public profiles on the internet.
• Other startups like Textio uses AI to help recruiting teams write attractive and compelling job postings. Whereas platforms like, Koru leverages AI to effectively match candidates against open positions.

Outlook

In the future, AI will be able to find great candidates for a position before a recruiter even starts doing a search. Existing human resource systems will transform from data-driven to AI-driven in the coming years. As of 2019 is concerned, AI will be personalised and uniquely aligned to each of these sectors with respect to the MNC’s unique business requirements.