4 insider secrets to find better candidates, faster

Read how AI for recruiting expands the talent pool of qualified, diverse applicants and improves communication for faster time to fill.

4 insider secrets to find better candidates, faster

5 min read

Job market whiplash is real. 

Some organizations continue to staff up post-Great Resignation to fill significant skills gaps. At the same time, many are slowing down hiring as a safety measure against a likely global recession. And others are taking advantage of hiring freezes at big firms to attract highly in-demand tech talent.

We’re sharing four insider secrets for recruiters to source and hire better talent faster and more effectively so they can make immediate changes today — or whenever they need to ramp up hiring again.

Related: Hear from LKQ Corporation, the leading alternative aftermarket auto parts provider, on how AI made sense of old data from its ATS in this keynote address at the HR Digital Summit.

Reach back out to prior applicants

It’s normal for recruiters to be tasked with filling an open role within a given timeframe. And many recruiters are likely to head straight to LinkedIn to search for new candidates that fit a hiring manager’s requirements. 

But recruiters already have access to a prebuilt, pre-verified pipeline of qualified candidates eager to join the organization. “Passive talent should be the first stop when a position opens,” said Michael Watson, a former power user of Eightfold AI, in an interview on the Recruiting Future podcast. “As a recruiter, it’s much easier to go to someone who knows who you are and what the company is about.”

Organizations like Activision Blizzard use talent rediscovery as a core recruitment tactic to hire more people faster. In 2021, 41 percent of all new hires at the gaming company resulted from talent rediscovery.

Talent rediscovery resurfaces qualified candidates in the talent network and establishes an instant connection by referencing prior interactions. Unfortunately, most applicant tracking systems (ATS) cannot distinguish qualified from unqualified candidates within the previous applicant pool — or even keep those resumes on file. 

With an AI solution, recruiters can see a dynamically updated list of candidates and their skills from the total talent pool, understand a candidate’s likelihood to respond, and instantly reach out to the top matches for a role.

Open up jobs to internal candidates

In a 2022 Pew Center Research survey, 63 percent of workers who left a job reported not having enough growth opportunities. 

It no longer makes sense for talent silos to exist between recruiting and management. Talent acquisition teams can significantly impact retention rates by informing upskilling and career pathway strategies to fill roles. But even if recruiters want to include employees in their candidate search, discovering internal candidates is nearly impossible without the right systems.

Organizations are increasingly looking for integrated solutions to create better employee experiences and solve skills gaps. With talent intelligence, they can track ever-developing skills and experiences in a dynamic ecosystem to support employee needs, both as a career planner and as a talent marketplace to connect employees with current and future jobs.

“If you know where an individual aspires to go, you can offer up job opportunities in a more proactive way,” said Stuart Logan, Managing Director of HR at BNY Mellon, in an online conversation with Eightfold. “So everything circles back to this skill and job taxonomy that has to be modernized to keep these jobs alive over time.”

4 Insider Secrets to Find Better Candidates, Faster

Stop ghosting candidates

According to a Robert Half survey, 62 percent of professionals said they lose interest in a job if they don’t hear back from the employer within two weeks. Intentional or not, this lack of communication could devastate employer branding and time-to-fill rates.

Recruiters manage upward of 40 requisitions at any given time, speaking with five or more candidates for each open position and collecting feedback from several internal stakeholders. So it’s safe to say that recruiters are overwhelmed in peak hiring seasons and slowed down by decision-makers. 

But with modern tools that consolidate candidate skills profiles and feedback into a single platform, recruiters can avoid inadvertently leaving a great candidate hanging and elongating the hiring process. While the traditional ATS may not natively integrate with other day-to-day solutions, AI-powered talent intelligence platforms work seamlessly with legacy systems to streamline every step of the talent lifecycle, including scheduling, sourcing, and screening.

Mask personal information to remove bias

It’s only human to gravitate toward people similar to us, and finding common interests helps build connections. However, that intrinsic search for sameness causes problems in the workplace, especially when hiring for culture-fit results in a lack of diversity and inclusion. 

To level the playing field for underrepresented groups, recruiters and hiring managers need to ditch outdated measures of organizational fit like shared alma maters, work experiences, or even hobbies. And reviewing resumes and looking through LinkedIn profiles just won’t cut it for organizations trying to attract and hire a more diverse group of people. 

“I would generally recommend profile masking so that when you make that selection of who to interview, you’re not making that decision in any way based on race, ethnicity, gender, disability status, or sexual orientation,” said Craig Leen, former Director of the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) at the U.S. Department of Labor, in a recent podcast interview.

Organizations can no longer rely on legacy systems to sort candidates based on surface-level filters. Instead, they need AI to identify candidates based on how their unique combination of skills and experiences predict success in a role.

Enter a new code for hiring talent

When a system of intelligence becomes your system of record, every part of your talent organization can benefit. The New Talent Code is a guiding principle for talent excellence that helps improve outcomes for candidates, employees, and recruiters using talent intelligence. 

4 Insider Secrets to Find Better Candidates, Faster

 

Here are five ways AI-powered talent intelligence platforms help recruiters hire great talent faster.

Career sites

Talent Intelligence Platforms can be implemented on your career site to match candidates to open roles based on their profiles and the company’s needs. This helps candidates feel confident when they apply because the AI has already identified them as a great fit, which boosts application rates.

Talent pipeline

Talent Intelligence Platforms surface top talent profiles based on current applicants, former applicants, employees, contingent workers, and even workforce alums, ranking strong matches first to save recruiters time and accelerate time to fill.

Campaigns

Recruiters can personalize content based on their audience and tailor their campaigns to find the perfect candidate.

Interviews

With a Talent Intelligence Platform, interviews can be more focused. AI can validate skills on candidates’ resumes. It can confirm a skill the AI indicated a candidate is likely to have but hasn’t listed. Recruiters can use the job interview to verify whether a candidate has the skills the AI said they did or decide if those missing skills are must-haves. 

DEI

AI can help reduce unconscious bias by anonymizing resumes, so candidates are evaluated solely on their skills, abilities, and potential.

Want to learn more about how to enhance every aspect of the talent lifecycle with AI? Check out The New Talent Code to make the most of your recruitment tools.

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