IPA is knocking at the doors of the recruitment world
Recruitment automation will allow talent acquisition teams to automate their recruitment workflows, right from candidate sourcing to resume screening to interview scheduling to automated data entry, thereby benefiting recruiters by increasing their efficiency at work.
The digital era has enabled the merging of sci-fi fantasies and sophisticated technologies. While commoners are enjoying the readily available tech-powered services that allow them to perform just about any task in a few clicks, this has also opened up new challenges for organizations, regardless of their domain, to stay ahead of the market trends. To be able to follow the ever-changing digital trend, it is essential that companies leverage new-age technologies, as per the requirement. However, adopting modern technologies is easier said than done. To make technological implementation a success, companies need to have a high-impact, skillful, and experienced workforce. As the war for talented candidates intensifies, hiring managers are moving to recruitment automation with the hope to match the right kind of talent to the right jobs.
From classifieds to job boards to mass recruitment campaigns to social recruiting, to now, recruitment automation, recruitment as a process has indeed come a long way, modernizing and streamlining the hiring efforts. Recruitment automation is meant to eliminate the pain points that prick recruiters. Taking away the cumbersome tasks, recruitment automation will improve the ratio of high-performing talent in organizations. Intelligent Process Automation (IPA) is one such recruitment automation tool that can prove its effectiveness at par with human intelligence , or perhaps even beyond. The definition of IPA Automation lies at the heart of almost every organization today. To take advantage of double or triple-digit returns, companies are already striving to automate and replace repetitive manual jobs that are highly prone to mistakes. Understanding and realizing the importance of automation in the recruitment landscape, companies are now making a seismic shift towards recruitment automation.
While we have already introduced one of the incredible recruitment automation tools, IPA, it’s now time to understand what exactly it means and its impact on companies trying to achieve digital transformation. Before IPA, the one tool that had assisted organizations in their digital transformation journey was robotic process automation (RPA). RPA, also referred to as software robots, is a technology-powered application that intends to perform rule-based mundane and time-intensive tasks. Offering dramatic changes and disruptions in terms of accuracy, productivity, optimization, and efficiency, RPA soon established a place in majority of the companies. But just like any other sophisticated technology, RPA had its own set of flaws too. RPA lacked the ability to sense, analyze, and take decisions on its own. For RPA to deliver accurate results, the tool had to be fed with inputs that were in an understandable format. The tool drastically failed to analyze and understand unstructured data, which was majority of the data that organizations would collect. To address this problem, experts carried out their study, research, analysis, and experimentation. Coming up with probably the best fix to the flaw, the automation tool was powered by AI and ML so that it not only intelligently handles all business activities but also learns and takes decisions on its own. That’s where the concept of IPA came out. Augmented with sophisticated technologies like AI, big data analytics, smart workflow management, and natural language generation, RPA turned to IPA, which was able to comprehend a given situation and also act suitably. It wouldn’t be wrong to say that IPA is an enhancement to RPA in terms of comprehension, sophistication, and intelligence. The role of IPA in recruitment automation
To begin with, IPA is an incredible tool that can help the new-age HRs bring down functional costs, get leisure time, and focus on strategic roles. Here are a few use cases for IPA in recruitment automation:
Candidate sourcing
One of the initial yet important steps to staying ahead in this hyper-competitive market is proactively searching for talented candidates to fill both, the current and the future open positions. While there will be dozens of candidates interested for an opening, engaging with every candidate is neither desirable nor effective. IPA can not only track the online world for gathering details on potential active and passive candidates, but also augment outreach to candidates by sending them automated emails. Once the interested candidates send their resume, IPA can sense, scan, and understand the details provided. If the details match the job criteria, IPA will check the recruiter’s schedule by accessing her calendar details. Accordingly, IPA will draft another email regarding the interview date and time.
Resume screening
Manually screening a resume is one of the most repetitive, time-consuming, and dull tasks for recruiters. Hundreds of job applications pile up on recruiter’s inbox every minute, leaving them with hardly any time to read every detail on the resume. Left with no other option, these recruiters took an average of 5-7 seconds to go through the data in the resume. And this indicates that there are high chances of them missing out on potential candidates. Well today, the case isn’t the same. With IPA, manual resume screening goes out of the picture, which leaves recruiters with spare time to strategize for enabling business growth. By reading and comprehending the candidate’s experience, skills, and qualifications, IPA takes its own decision whether the applicant is fit for the vacant position or not. The tool will automatically send an email to the potential candidates, notifying them about any further rounds for the selection process. Not only the shortlisted candidates, but also the candidates who didn’t match the profile will be sent a rejection letter via an email.
Interviews
Once done with the resume screening, IPA will schedule interviews for the shortlisted candidates. Recruiters can use video-interviewing platforms to take up interviews. Recording the digital interviews, IPA can help recruiters to make decisions on whether candidates are a perfect fit or not. The technology will analyze, gauge, and assess the candidate’s speech, choice of words, behavioral patterns, and body language. Indeed, IPA is a revolutionary technology that will not only enhance the quality of hire, but also enable recruiters to take less time to fill the open positions.
Right from candidate sourcing to outreach to resume screening to interviews, IPA’s promise to automate the recruiting workflow is truly promising. However, organizations must implement IPA after considering their existing infrastructure, the changes that will be required, and the elements of IPA that are beneficial to their business. To get the most out of IPA, it is best if companies build a well-crafted and holistic strategies, covering the points that are required to embrace innovation and change. Having a comprehensive strategy in-place will be the first and foremost step in the digitalization journey of recruitment, giving recruiters the right path to achieving success in recruitment.