AI Hiring Tools: Covering The Pros and Cons

AI is revolutionising recruitment, but are the many available tools worthwhile? Let’s go over some of the pros and cons.

If you’re a recruiter looking to incorporate AI into your workflow, you’re not alone. The number of employers making use of AI tools to hire tripled from 2022 to 2023, and uptake of the technology is still growing. If you’re dipping your toes into the world of artificial intelligence, you should probably start by thinking about which tools to use.

Popular AI Recruiting Tools

AI is becoming more and more common throughout the business world. In the UK, 25 percent of businesses with 250 or more employees currently use some form of the technology, and recruitment is an area in which AI can have a huge impact. Here are some of these AI Recruiting tools:

• PitchMe delivers data intelligence for hiring teams, streamlining talent discovery with efficient tools. Their end-to-end AI-driven automated hiring solutions cut time and effort, empowering recruiters to prioritize strategic tasks.
• Bullhorn’s Woo Smart Search technology updates and organizes the candidate database to allow the recruiting team to source and engage with relevant candidates efficiently, using AI technology that creates an average of 2000 smart tags for every resume. The Bullhorn AI Auto Match tool matches the best talent in Bullhorn ATS (Applicant Tracking System) to assigned jobs. It helps recruiters save time and money by maximizing talent within the ATS, freeing up time to focus on exceptional candidate experiences.
• Apriora’s AI interviewer – Alex – conducts real-time video interviews with candidates, including technical screens, phone screens, system design, coding or behavioural.

These are not your only options of course; there are hundreds of tools out there that could potentially help your business. But is AI the right option for you and your organisation?

Advantages Of Using AI Tools In Recruitment

When people think of the benefits of AI, one of the first things that comes to mind is speed.

This is certainly the case in recruitment. One study found that nearly 90 percent of employers found AI sped up the hiring process, with nearly half saying it had made their recruitment “significantly” quicker.

This speed makes recruitment more efficient, and efficiency usually leads to cost savings. The above study also found that integrating AI had led to moderate cost savings for around 45 percent of employers, and significant savings for around 33 percent.

This changes depending on the industry; for example, almost half of all construction employers saw significant savings.

One of the things we have found at Allen Embedded is that AI helps us cut out bias from recruitment.

We use our AI-powered search engine to source candidates from all over the globe, and because it focuses on skills and qualifications rather than names, ethnicities, genders or any other common targets of bias, we know we’re accessing the best candidates and not losing out because of unconscious prejudice.

It’s not just us; 68 percent of recruiters agree that AI cuts down on bias.

An underrated benefit of AI is improving your candidate experience.

Studies show that timeliness is the most important factor for candidates, so if they are waiting weeks to be contacted they will likely have a poor opinion of your organisation. AI tools that can automate this will speed up the process and ensure your potential hires aren’t waiting around.

Disadvantages Of AI Hiring Tools

Of course, AI isn’t always the best option, and using AI tools might not work for your organisation. One thing to watch out for is relying too much on the technology.

Around 72 percent of recruiters still ensure that a human has control over at least the final hiring decision, and at this stage of AI that is the right way to go. The technology is not yet at a point where hiring decisions can be completely handed over.

There are other issues that need to be considered. While bias can be reduced with careful AI use, over-reliance can lead to bias being reintegrated into recruitment, and even reinforced.

A BBC report found that some AI models, if left to their own devices, were prioritising candidates based on age, or having stereotypically male hobbies, leading to recruitment bias and companies missing out on the best candidates.

The experience of talking to AI chatbots – and even being interviewed by automated processes – is often one that prospective hires dislike.

Candidates have talked about feeling interrupted, distracted or dehumanised by AI recruitment tools, leaving them with a negative experience and a poor opinion of the company to which they were applying.

This all has some serious ethical ramifications; if your company’s use of AI is cutting out qualified candidates due to biased algorithms and not offering applicants fair interviews, you should be asking whether this is genuinely an improvement over your current system.

Balancing The Pros And Cons Of AI Recruitment

There’s no need to panic; you can have the pros of AI recruiting tools while managing the cons, as long as you are careful and sensible. For example, our embedded recruitment service – Allen Embedded – makes extensive use of AI without giving up control and leaving us open to its pitfalls.

The service involves a team of our recruiters embedding within a client’s business to help manage their recruitment, and we bring our technology with us. That means using our AI-powered search engine to scour all our available databases for candidates. However, we don’t leave the AI in control; it’s operated by a team of search specialists that tightly control its parameters.

This ensures we are able to quickly access the best passive candidates while also being able to intervene if we spot bias in the algorithm. Similarly, we use AI tools to automate contacting candidates, but always ensure that they have a human to talk to when it’s important.

If you’d like to see how Allen Embedded can help your business embrace AI, get in touch with us here.

About Allen Recruitment

We are a team of expert recruitment consultants with offices in Ireland, the UK, the Netherlands, Spain, France, Sweden, Belgium and Poland, providing recruitment solutions and job opportunities all over Europe.

We offer temporary, permanent, contract and contingency roles in a variety of industries such as IT, Tech, Finance, Telecom, E-commerce, Engineering and more.