From Process Admin to Strategist: Transforming the Recruiter Experience with AI

Don't get me wrong, those are important! Of course you want your candidates to have a good experience, and you should definitely care about your hiring efficiency.

But in all this focus on numbers and speed, recruiters - the people actually doing the work - often get burned out. No wonder there’s constant talk about leaving the industry for something that feels less robotic and more valued.

The recruiter experience is heavily overlooked by recruitment tools.

Most platforms are built around processes and workflows, and most reporting dashboards focus on CX and efficiency metrics.

Here at Carv, we think there's a better way.

Imagine having an AI teammate - a super assistant who works with you and for you, the recruiter, 24/7.

This AI recruiter colleague takes care of all the boring parts of a recruiter job, so you can do the cool stuff - like finding the perfect person for the role.

If it sounds interesting, keep reading. I’ll show you how AI is reshaping the recruiter experience and how you can start experiencing this new reality right away.

The current recruiter experience: Focus on admin and processes

If you're a recruiter, in-house or staffing agency, you know the struggle is real. Forget the strategic talent acquisition vision you started with - your reality is probably a relentless focus on process:

• Filling candidates pipelines,
• Obsessing over conversion rates, and
• Automating everything to squeeze out a few more seconds.

Workflow automation was supposed to make your life easier, but you find yourself bogged down in tasks that shouldn’t even be there, like transferring meeting notes to ATS fields.

The reality is that the tools you use were not designed with recruiter experience in mind.

Repetitive tasks like screening resumes or scheduling interviews eat up your hours, and the monotony of such work is mentally draining. Nobody can blame you for feeling dissatisfied - even the most successful recruiters would feel overwhelmed and devoid of joy after hours of admin.

Recruiters in both recruitment agencies and in-house teams frequently juggle dozens of open positions simultaneously, each with its own unique requirements and stakeholders.

The pressure to meet hiring quotas and deadlines is constant, creating a high-stress environment and company culture where quality can sometimes take a backseat to quantity.

Next to these, the toll of constant context-switching cannot be overstated. Recruitment consultants manage multiple clients and job openings, having to keep both candidates and hiring managers happy and engaged.

In a single day, a recruiter might bounce between screening entry-level job seekers for a marketing role, coordinating final interviews for a senior engineer, crafting job descriptions for upcoming positions, or searching through talent pools to find suitable passive candidates.

This mental whiplash makes it difficult to maintain focus and give each task the attention it deserves.

Metrics and speed dominate the hiring process. KPIs often prioritize quantity over quality, the emphasis on pipeline volume often overshadowing the importance of candidate experience and long-term fit.

The time crunch is real and relentless. The constant pressure to fill positions quickly often translates to long hours, superficial candidate assessments, and a lack of work-life balance.

As a result, the recruiter experience is one of constant firefighting and administrative overload.

Technology promises to alleviate some of these challenges, but often introduces new ones.

While the core goal of connecting talent with opportunities and building candidate relationships remains, the day-to-day reality of the recruitment process can be far removed from this ideal.

A call for recruiter-centric innovation

For too long, the focus of recruitment technology has been solely on candidate experience and hiring efficiency, neglecting the needs of the professionals who make it all happen.

Happy, engaged recruiters are the backbone of successful talent acquisition. When recruiters are empowered and satisfied in their roles, they're better equipped to build meaningful relationships with the best talent, understand the nuances of each position, and make thoughtful matches that benefit both job seekers and employers.

Moreover, experienced recruiters bring invaluable knowledge and intuition to the hiring process. By freeing them from mundane tasks, we allow them to leverage their expertise more effectively, leading to higher quality hires and improved long-term outcomes for organizations.

Recruiters who feel valued and supported are more likely to go the extra mile in sourcing top talent, providing a positive candidate experience, and making well-informed hiring decisions. This, in turn, leads to better hires, improved employee retention, and stronger company performance.

It’s thus obvious that we need to rethink the way recruitment is done.

But to truly revolutionize recruitment, we need tools and technologies that enhance the recruiter's capabilities, not work against them.

AI built for recruiters, not processes

The goal of AI-led recruitment is to empower recruiters by letting them focus on what they do best and unburdening them of all the repetitive tasks that AI can and should handle.

However, there's a crucial pitfall to avoid – a mistake most recruitment tools make.

The impact of AI in recruitment will be insignificant if we stick to a process-focused approach. Simply "adding AI" to existing workflows without rethinking the recruiter experience itself is a missed opportunity.

Our belief is that instead of adding AI capabilities to existing software, we aim for fundamental innovation. We should reimagine a recruiter's day-to-day reality and build AI technology that seamlessly integrates into it.

This is where AI recruiting platforms like Carv come in.

Carv provides AI workmates or assistants that work alongside human recruiters, in perfect synergy. They interact when needed or prompted, offering support and streamlining tasks.

• For example, the human resources team in a retail organization could adopt an AI recruiter for high-volume, low-impact tasks like sourcing candidates, screening candidates through instant messaging, or preparing interview questions for specific positions.
• Agency recruiters on the other hand could use Carv to delegate the candidate matching process or manage administrative tasks related to interviews and intake calls. This could include writing follow-up emails, transferring notes to the client's ATS, creating candidate profiles and write-ups, or posting job descriptions.

The level of customization is flexible; teams can choose how extensively they want to use AI workmates.

Some may prefer a full-service approach, delegating everything from engaging qualified candidates in talent pools to conducting screening calls with human-like AI recruiters. Others might prioritize maintaining control, delegating only tasks involving written data like updating ATS fields, writing reports, taking notes, or posting jobs.

A recruiter’s new reality: Real-time collaboration with AI

Integrating an AI workmate can completely transform your day-to-day routine, shifting the focus from administrative tasks to what matters most.

• Gone are the hours spent on sourcing, screening, scheduling, crafting communications, following up, and data entry. All these process steps become seamlessly handled by your AI teammate.
• AI technology's ability to work with unstructured data allows your AI workmate to effortlessly translate a candidate interview into a comprehensive profile. This profile includes skillsets, experience, preferences, and more, all automatically populated into your ATS.
• While human interaction remains crucial for interviews and intake calls, AI agents with human-like voices and communication ability can take over the initial screening or pre-screening steps, freeing up your valuable time.

In terms of day-to-day workflows, instead of starting your day with 1-2 hours of admin, you can simply log into the Carv platform, and see what your AI assistant worked on overnight, what tasks are in progress, and where your attention is needed.

You review a shortlist of candidates for open positions, complete with AI-generated profiles and write-ups ready to be sent to hiring managers. The day's interview schedule is already organized, with AI-prepared question sets for each candidate.

You spend most of your day conducting in-depth interviews, strategizing with hiring managers, and focusing on building relationships with promising candidates. The AI workmate can update you on the status of different clients, vacancies, or candidates, and can proactively take on new assignments, based on your recruitment strategy.

Finally, when it comes to candidate management, an AI recruiter can drastically simplify things by creating a full picture of each job seeker.

For example, with Carv, recruiters have all the information about a candidate in one central view - all the screening calls, interviews, and documents. Not just the CV and cover letter, but also the candidate profile and write-up for the hiring manager, phone messages, and so on.

This is a significant change from a typical ATS candidate profile, where data is limited both in terms of quality and of quantity.

Next to these, in Carv, you can quickly see the conversations with hiring managers and ask the AI workmate for clarification as needed. All the interactions happen in the platform, in real-time, and they’re similar to any interaction with AI chatbots.

This type of approach, where the recruiter experience becomes central, will benefit the candidate experience too, as the recruiter can dedicate their full attention and time to building candidate relationships.

Learning curve and adoption challenges

While the impact of AI on the recruitment industry is significant, and the benefits are obvious, there's undoubtedly a learning curve that might slow down the adoption of such technology.

First of all, companies need to decide whether they want to build their own internal tools and experiment with generic AI solutions like Chat GPT, or if they'll go for a dedicated AI recruitment solution like Carv.

Regardless of the route, recruiters will need to adapt to working alongside an AI assistant. This requires trust, a willingness to delegate, and adopting a more strategic mindset.

Some challenges include:

• Getting buy-in and building the ROI case for AI in recruitment.
• Choosing an AI recruitment platform built for recruiters, not around processes. Carv can support you here, as our vision is to build AI for recruiters - to unburden and empower them.
• Implementing AI into their daily workflows and rethinking the recruitment process to fit this new way of working.
• Learning to effectively communicate with and direct the AI assistant. Some talent acquisition professionals may not feel comfortable initially.
• The initial setup and customization of the AI to align with specific company needs and processes.
• Overcoming potential skepticism or resistance from team members who fear job displacement.

To address these challenges, Carv offers an intuitive interface and a comprehensive onboarding program that covers the customization and initial setup, as well as ongoing support to ensure smooth adoption and maximum benefit realization.

Over to you

Deeply ingrained recruitment processes can feel like the only way. But we believe that once staffing and recruitment teams experience the power of true human-AI synergy, it will become their new standard.

This will usher in a wave of AI-empowered recruiters who excel at delegating tasks to AI, freeing themselves to focus on strategic initiatives.

If you’re curious to experience this new reality of AI-led recruitment, you can book a demo below and see Carv in action.