Effective hiring of resources
Combining AI and RPA to manage applicant tracking and enhance the hiring experience for applicants
Process
The client is a Fortune 1000, US based firm with its offshoring center in India and Philippines. One of the tasks being performed from the India Shared Services center was recruitment coordination for hiring in the US. There is a large number of new hires for the firm with a conversion ratio of employee-to-hire at less than 5%. Hence, there was a need to have an efficient Applicant Tracking process. The legacy system being used for tracking was manual in nature and left little option for customizations according to position and priority. Also, cumbersome data entry was required at each stage from the time applications were received for an open position to the time the employee was hired.
Solution
Intelligent Automation solution was built to automate the process, where Robotic Process Automation (RPA) was used for manual repetitive tasks, and Artificial Intelligence (AI) was used for un-structured data. The AI solution was built to do resume parsing of applicants, this reduced data entry requirement by about 75% as most of the information was captured by the AI tool. The remaining 25% was data entered manually. After completion of a new applicant, RPA bots were responsible for scheduling, blocking calendars, and sending reminders for interviews. The feedback of interviews was also collected by bots via email. The applicants were moved to next stage or rejected depending on the feedback. Finally selected candidates were sent offers after getting required approvals for salary.
Challenges Addressed
High recruitment costs and Turnaround Time
Manual process resulted in high costs and high turnaround time.
Manual errors and omissions
Human errors used to creep since the process required coordination between multiple people.
Time management issues
Blocking time manually and communicating to participants resulted in misses at times.
Manually intensive recruitment process with repetitive administration tasks
The process was low on automation and required manual intervention in most stages hence growth in business was depended on hiring more resources.
Applicant experience was substandard
Lack of proper follow up and updates resulted in applicants feeling the interaction was not a pleasant experience for them.
Outcome
- Reduced Time to Hire by over 30%.
- Joining rate post offers saw and increase of 7%, which was attributed to the streamlined hiring process.