Top 6 AI Use Cases in Volume Hiring

High-volume recruiting intensifies a lot of the core recruitment challenges we all face daily: processing applications, repetitive admin tasks, maintaining a good candidate experience, and ensuring you’re always running a fair process. And when you’re dealing with everything in large numbers, doing things manually isn’t just inefficient — it becomes virtually impossible.

For years now, organizations have been using automation to handle their volume hiring process; that’s nothing new. But what is new is how recruitment teams are now using artificial intelligence to level things up a few notches.

Using AI-powered tools, you can now massively streamline the high-volume recruitment process, source hidden top talent and engage with your candidates more frequently and efficiently than ever before.

But what does using AI in a high volume recruitment process actually look like in practice? Let’s take a look at a few familiar use cases and how AI technology is transforming how we get things done.

1. Automating candidate sourcing and matching

Sourcing candidates is one of the most time-consuming stages of any recruitment process. So of course, sourcing in volume hiring - where you have multiple candidates to hire for multiple roles simultaneously - can be a total minefield.  

Until now, volume hiring recruiters have been able to create candidate shortlists using automation tools that match up job applicants to open roles using resume keywords and the job requirements.

But now, AI has really ramped things up. Rather than waiting for candidates to come to you, AI can proactively source candidates from your talent pools. There are AI recruiting tools out there that can scan resumes on job boards and LinkedIn profiles to match candidates to your vacancies based on their skills, experience, and qualifications — without any manual work from a recruiter.

You feed the AI the job description and an AI algorithm will analyze and match it to candidates on various different platforms, including job boards, social media platforms and your existing ATS database.

Benefits of AI-powered sourcing:

• Massively reduces resume screening time as the AI generates shortlists of candidates that already fit the bill.
• Ensures qualified candidates are prioritized.
• Uncovers hidden talent by focusing on skills, not just keywords.

2. Using AI-powered screening assistants

It’s virtually impossible to handle the initial screening process manually when you’re running a high-volume hiring process.

Before you can even think about considering candidates for skills assessments or interviews, you need AI to do the hard work and provide you with a shortlist for your consideration.

And the really great thing about AI-powered screening assistants is that they can handle all different types of initial screening: text, voice, and even video.

Here’s roughly how it works for each different type of AI screening tool:

• Text assistants: Chatbots prescreen candidates, asking a series of questions through platforms like WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger or SMS.
• Voice assistants: AI tools conduct phone interviews, primarily to assess a candidate’s communication skills.
• Video assistants: AI tools analyze candidates’ video responses to a set of screening questions and auto-generate structured feedback, including feedback on non-verbal cues.

Benefits of AI screening assistants:

• Allows you to screen hundreds of candidates simultaneously.
• Ensures all candidates are evaluated using the same criteria to keep your screening process fair.
• Speeds up the initial screening process so you can engage with the right candidates fast.

3. Automating interview scheduling

When you’ve got multiple roles to fill - and sometimes more than one recruiting team considering the same candidates for an organization at the same time - scheduling interviews with hiring managers can be a full-time job in itself.

Even when you have a decent calendar tool to simplify the process, high-volume recruitment is a situation where this technology simply doesn’t go far enough.

Nowadays, you can use an AI-powered tool to streamline the whole interview-scheduling process so you don’t even have to discuss suitable times with candidates or even look at anyone’s diaries.

All you need to do is sync the scheduling tool up with recruiters’ and hiring manager’s calendars and it will suggest and confirm times, allowing the candidates to easily select the slot that best suits them. The technology can even manage time zone differences and last-minute rescheduling, so there’s zero back-and-forth communication to deal with.

Benefits of an AI scheduling tool:

• Saves recruiters a lot of time scheduling and planning out interview slots
• Reduces scheduling errors and eliminates back-and-forth communication
• Creates a seamless scheduling experience for candidates.

4. Adding AI-powered admin support

Any recruitment process comes with more admin nowadays than most recruiters can realistically cope with handling manually. So I’m sure I don’t need to tell you that the level of admin that comes with volume recruiting is totally unmanageable without some sort of automation support.

But the great news is, there are AI-driven tools around nowadays that can automate almost every recruitment administrative task you can think of - even ones that seem like they can’t be done without human input.

For example, AI tools can manage all note-taking during interviews. They can then use these notes to create follow-up actions in real-time, and handle a whole load of post-interview admin too; generating standardized post-interview summaries, debriefs and candidate profiles to help hiring managers with decision-making.

Repetitive admin tasks constantly get in the way of recruiters doing the important parts of the job. Having an AI assistant to take over administrative tasks means you can focus on the areas that really do require the human touch, like working out your next recruitment strategies, engaging with candidates and hiring managers and conducting interviews.

Benefits of use of AI for admin:

• Saves recruiters a lot of time and effort spent on low-value tasks
• Ensures documentation is always accurate and human error-free
• Standardizes documentation and reporting across large hiring campaigns.

5. Using predictive analytics for hiring decisions

Using AI in volume hiring gives you a huge competitive advantage in that you accumulate vast amounts of hiring data over time. This data can provide hiring teams with invaluable insights that can predict a candidate’s job performance and cultural fit.

AI uses historical data, candidate assessments, and role requirements to rank candidates by their suitability for a role. This gives you a clear, statistical indication of a candidate’s suitability for a role so you don’t have to rely on your gut-feel about them.

Your hiring data can also be used to inform future talent acquisition too. I’m sure there have been plenty of times when you’ve been interviewing a great candidate, thinking “they’re not right for this role, but I know another vacancy they’d be absolutely perfect for.”

Well, AI can basically function as an always-on version of you in this scenario. Using machine learning, the AI can identify patterns that indicate success in similar roles, or even in other departments, and flag any predictions it finds to you.

That way, if a candidate applies for one role but their prescreening and assessment results suggest they’re not suitable, the AI can automatically match them up with a different, more suitable role within the company. It’s the kind of talent acquisition strategy that’s always ‘thinking’ 3 steps ahead to ensure no good candidate goes to waste.

Benefits of using AI in decision making:

• Enables hiring teams to make data-driven hiring decisions
• Ensures no good candidate goes to waste
• Reduces reliance on intuition, promoting objectivity and eliminating unconscious biases.

6. Improving candidate engagement at scale

You might think that replacing a human with artificial intelligence to improve candidate engagement sounds like a complete contradiction — and I get that.

But if the technology is up to scratch, potential candidates won’t even think about whether they’re speaking directly with a recruiter or not. AI tools can provide ongoing communication, feedback and progress updates to candidates throughout the whole hiring process, using conversational AI that’s barely detectable.

These communication touch points ensure candidates stay engaged and don’t drop out of the process or accept another job offer because they think you’ve forgotten all about them.

Here are a few different ways you can use AI to keep candidates engaged:

• Use automated email workflows to keep candidates informed about their progress as they move along the recruitment funnel
• Use AI chatbots to answer common questions, like asking about their application status or for more role details
• Engage passive candidates already in the applicant tracking system by sending automated communications to specific talent pools to keep them warm.

Benefits of using AI for candidate engagement:

• Enhances the candidate experience by keeping in constant contact with applicants so they never feel forgotten about - even if they’re not hired
• Maintains a positive employer brand during high-volume campaigns.

Over to you

Automation technology is what’s allowed high-volume recruitment to exist, and now AI technology is taking things up a few notches.

With AI there to support, this means recruitment teams don’t need to worry about sacrificing quality of hire in favour of automation. AI technology ensures you’re not just hiring multiple candidates into roles quickly, but ensuring every new hire is the best candidate available for the job.

AI recruitment technology is so invaluable to any volume hiring process that once you start using it, it will be hard to imagine how you coped without it!