Webinar Highlight: Thought-Provoking Questions on Recruitment Chatbots
In this article, we will dig deeper into three thought-provoking questions sent by attendees during our recent recruitment chatbot webinar.
If you'd like to catch up, you can request the recording here: Recruitment Chatbots: Q&A with our Implementation Strategist
These questions were particularly interesting because they:
- gave actionable insights on businesses investing in this technology and why,
- revealed unexpected advantages of chatbots in recruitment, based on our client's experience, and,
- dug deeper into the impact of audience and platform research.
If you work in HR or recruitment, I strongly suggest you grab the recording. It is chockfull of valuable information on revolutionising your recruitment process.
Which type of companies can benefit from a recruitment chatbot?
Our attendee's question:
What minimum requirements do you need to really benefit from a recruitment chatbot? Company size, number of CVs, etc.
Brad's response:
Brad is right, this is a difficult question. I'd like to dig deeper into both his points.
Recruitment chatbots as an awareness tool
What's interesting with recruiting, in particular, is that there are no 'minimum requirements'. To some businesses, a recruitment chatbot is essentially a brand play.
Raising awareness towards your business, the opportunities your company presents to potential candidates, and standing out in the environment -- those are all very valid reasons to implement a chatbot.
I always like to bring up ubisend's own experience here. Our main office is in Norwich, UK. Attracting tech talent has notoriously been tough for businesses on the outskirts of London (we're about 2hrs away). Most companies would struggle to find even five candidates.
When we released our recruitment chatbot, we saw nearly 400 applicants within a matter of weeks.
Tackling inefficiencies
Of course, for most of our clients, getting CVs is hardly the problem. Finding the time to sift through and prioritising them all is a much more frequent issue, for example.
Interestingly, again, there are no minimum requirements here. Inefficiencies are what drives the business towards artificial intelligence and chatbots.
Measuring the return on investment of a recruitment chatbot is easy. Brad gives the example of sifting through CVs. To some of our clients, it would take weeks to go through all the CVs in their inbox. A recruitment chatbot can take that pain away, prioritise them and tee up the right people for the next stages of the recruitment process.
In summary, there are no 'minimum requirements' or set company characteristics to benefit from a recruitment chatbot. If there are inefficiencies in your recruitment process and they cost you money, there is a use case for a chatbot.
What are the hidden benefits of a recruitment chatbot?
Our attendee's question:
Beyond the conversation & collecting data, what is the advantage of a chatbot in this situation?
Our answer:
I'm glad I handed over the toughest question to Brad :)
Brad essentially reaffirms the point above: recruitment chatbots are there to squash inefficiencies.
We always say that chatbots put the human back into HR.
It is unfortunate that so much of the HR (or recruitment) team's time is spent on mundane tasks. By handing those over to a machine, they can now focus on the work that makes them amazing.
The benefits are well beyond conversational data and candidate insights (though they are really, really nice to have). The core benefit is time.
Qualitative candidate data
In my short ramble towards the end of the clip, I mention qualitative data. This is something I am quite passionate about.
Chatbots can take natural conversations and turn them into data. This is something your recruitment team probably never has had before. It gives them incredible insights into the ways candidates talk about your brand, talk about the jobs you offer, the questions they ask, the key information that's missing.
I dug deeper into extracting qualitative data from chatbots in a recent podcast. Listen here.
Where should your recruitment chatbot live?
Our attendee's question:
Can I make a recruitment chatbot on Facebook Messenger? Is it worth it?
My answer:
I really like this question because it brings up the important aspect of user expectations, and what to do when this fails.
Most businesses would agree that having a recruitment chatbot on Facebook would be a bad idea. Specifically, it would be a bad idea to have a Facebook Messenger chatbot that only handles recruiting.
It goes against this platform's user expectations.
67% of consumers have used a company's social media page with customer service purposes (source). I should have rocked up with that statistic during the webinar because it affirms my point: your customers don't expect to be talking about recruitment on Facebook.
Handling recruitment questions on social platforms
However, keeping an eye on your customers' interactions with your Facebook Messenger chatbot will remain valuable. Assume your brand, like the one who asked the question, is very active on Facebook, you might find users actively seeking recruitment information.
This is where conversational triggers come in handy.
Conversational triggers will spot specific words or questions and hand the conversation over to a more relevant channel. This ensures you do not leave your potential candidates hanging.
I hope you found these questions and answers insightful. Be sure to visit our webinars page to see all our upcoming and on-demand webinars.
