Using Voice AI Agents in Volume Hiring: A Practical Guide

When you’ve got hundreds of job applicants to speak to, all of the traditional recruitment methods we know — like manual candidate screening, scanning resumes to qualify candidates and taking phone interviews — simply don’t work.

While automation technology has certainly improved how we deal with huge volumes of job applicants, conversational AI is taking things to the next level: You can now ‘talk’ with hundreds — or even thousands — of candidates at any one time through a voice AI agent that sounds just like a human recruiter.

Let’s take a look at how voice AI technology works in recruitment and how to start using such tools to automate repetitive tasks and massively reduce time-to-hire.

What are voice AI agents?

AI voice agents are an advanced conversational AI solution that uses Natural Language Processing (NLP) and speech recognition to hold conversations with candidates just like a human.

They’re similar to other conversational AI assistants like chatbots, except that they communicate through voice interactions rather than text.

These AI-powered virtual assistants can have voice interactions with candidates in a way that’s so natural and spontaneous that the fact they’re not human practically goes unnoticed.

The bot does this by asking a pre-determined flow of questions. Then, using speech recognition, it analyzes candidate responses in real-time, processes the conversation context, and generates natural-sounding replies.

You can use voice AI to take over different stages of the recruitment process, including candidates screening, interview scheduling, answering FAQs, and collecting feedback. But the most common use case for voice AI in volume hiring is pre-screening candidates.

All right, now let’s take a look at how voice AI agents work in practice.

How does voice-based conversational AI work?

Conversational AI refers to any system where an AI communicates with a human - whether through text, phone calls, or even video. As said, voice AI is one type of conversational AI, so the functioning principles are the same for any of these types of technology.

Regardless of the type of conversational AI used, there are typically three key stages involved. To make things more tangible, we’ll use the Carv platform as example for the steps below.

Stage 1: Candidate application capture

You send out a job alert or post a job on your careers page, job board, or social media. Then, in your ATS or within the Carv platform, you select your desired vacancy and attach an AI chatbot to it.

Once this link is done, the conversational AI technology will generate a conversation flow that’s personalized to fit the open role. The questions can be adjusted before launching the flow, and you can select the type of AI agent to use: text or voice.

If you opt for text, for example, the AI assistant will do the pre-screening via WhatsApp or SMS, while for voice AI agents, the conversation will happen via phone call.

So once the conversation flow is launched, all you have to do is wait for a candidate to apply to the published vacancy. There’s no need to ask for a CV, all the AI needs is the applicant’s contact details - email address and phone number.

Stage 2: Outreach and pre-screening

Once the candidate applies and leaves their details, confirming their preferred contact method - in this case, we’ll assume phone call - the AI agent will automatically call them and begin the conversation.

This type of approach is especially suitable to high-volume hiring, where you want to keep the barrier to application really low, and you don’t want to lose speed in the process as you’re likely to need hundreds of applicants to fill all your roles.

When the AI agent reaches out, it will have a pre-determined set of screening questions that it will ask the candidate — usually beginning with initial knock-out questions like availability, certificates or skill set, and so on.

The AI uses natural language processing to sound exactly like a human recruiter, and can even improvise the conversation based on the candidate’s answers. If the conversation goes off piste, the AI agent can handle this, bringing it back to the screening questions until the bot has collected all the information it needs.

In the Carv platform, you can instruct the AI agent to be more casual or more professional, to not engage in certain types of questions, and so on. Also, a human recruiter can always step in and take over the conversation, if something goes wrong or the candidate says they want to be transferred to a human.

As the mass screening process continues, the AI agent will put candidates into different buckets in your ATS: For example, qualified (interested), qualified (not interested), qualified (not available) and not qualified.

This setup depends entirely on your ATS configuration, but in principle anything is possible, once you connect Carv to your applicant tracking system. That way, you’re not letting any qualified candidates who just don’t meet the exact criteria for this role go to waste, as they could be a perfect fit for another role you’re recruiting for.

Stage 3: Interview scheduling or rejection

At the end of the conversation flow, if the chatbot has deemed the candidate successful, it will automatically schedule in an interview. This reduces the back-and-forth that human recruiters typically engage in when scheduling interviews.

If you have a larger TA team, all their calendars will be connected to the Carv platform, so the AI assistant will check everyone’s availability before giving the candidate some potential time slots.

The voice AI will schedule the interview first by informally asking the candidate something along the lines of “When would you be free next week to speak with one of my colleagues?”.  

Based on the candidate’s answer, and what slots the AI can see are available in the recruiter’s calendar (which it’s already synced up to) it will find an interview slot that works for everyone without having to send out any emails to confirm who’s free and when.  

If the candidate is qualified out, the AI will clarify this there and then so there’s no waiting around for feedback.

You can also customize the flow to end these conversations by asking if the candidate is happy to have their contact details kept on file in case another role comes up. If the candidate agrees, their details will automatically be sent to the CRM and stored for future reference without any manual work from a recruiter.

Why use voice AI in high-volume hiring?

At this stage, you might be wondering: What is it about voice AI in particular that makes it so popular in volume hiring? Here are just a few things adding voice AI to your recruitment workflow allows you to do:

Engage with candidates 24/7 in any language

Voice AI agents are multilingual. They can talk to your candidates in any language without ever getting tired. This means they can engage with candidates anywhere in the world in their own language, across time zone, and can be available to answer questions 24/7.

This is seriously game-changing for any multinational company that’s had to have a large international recruitment team to keep up with candidate engagement.

Automate candidate screening without sacrificing candidate experience

Volume hiring naturally involves speaking to a lot of candidates at one time. So many, in fact, that it’s impossible to handle screenings manually. The way volume hiring works, you might start off with hundreds of applicants, but you’re likely to only take 10% of those through to the next stage.

Over the last few years, AI technology has been automating screenings a few different ways: through asynchronous video screenings, conversational AI text screenings through WhatsApp and other messaging programs, and now through voice AI.

The AI agent can autonomously hold screening calls with hundreds of candidates and slowly filter qualified candidates through to the next stage of the hiring process without you even having to look at a resume.

Schedule interviews automatically

Arranging interviews is a time-consuming task that can take a lot of back-and-forth communication to get right. AI voice agents are sophisticated enough that they can discuss dates and times with the candidate and match these times up to open slots in your calendar without having to waste time asking you when you’re free.

Speed up response times and reduce candidate drop-off

By having a round-the-clock AI recruiter to handle any candidate interactions in between interviews, this massively speeds up time-to-hire. And an important byproduct of this is that you get less candidates dropping out the interview process because it’s taken too long or they’ve had no feedback.

Free up time for high-value tasks

With AI voice agents handling so much of the time-consuming parts of volume hiring — like screening job applicants and answering FAQs — this gives recruiters and hiring managers the time and space to focus on high-value tasks, like holding interviews and making hiring decisions.

How to get started with voice AI for volume hiring

With all the above in mind, it would be hard not to be convinced by the benefits of using voice AI in your hiring process.

But how do you get started using the technology to screen candidates?

Step 1: Map out your process

Before you can let any tool solve your hiring challenges, you need to work out exactly what your current volume hiring process looks like, and what the bottlenecks are.

Based on that, you will be able to decide where in the process to add AI - for example, will AI take over only the pre-screening process, or do you want it to handle the entire application flow, from pre-screening to interview scheduling?  

Take a close look at your current recruitment process and hiring needs to identify which stages would benefit from this sort of AI-powered automation.

Candidate pre-screening is the most common stage that recruiters use voice AI for, but you might also want to let voice AI agents handle your follow-up calls, candidate support, and talent pool engagement.

Step 2: Choose the right AI solution

There are a few different AI recruitment solutions out there, so taking time to find the right tool that fits your needs is a process that shouldn’t be rushed.

For the purpose of this article, we’ll refer to voice AI only, but of course, this step could expand to include conversational AI tooling in general, or more broadly, an end-to-end AI recruitment platform.

Some key voice AI tooling features to look out for include:

Personalization

The best voice AI tools will have a personalized chat flow feature that means you have the option to use pre-made screening question templates or customize the flow with your own. You also need to be able to adapt the voice assistant to suit your company’s tone.

Whether you prefer to keep things professional or use a more friendly, conversational voice, you can teach the AI to speak to candidates however you want it to.

And because you can’t predict where a conversation is going to go, you need a voice AI that’s sophisticated enough that it can adapt the conversation to suit the candidate as it goes along.

Integrations

In order to be super efficient with your conversational AI strategy, you need a tool that has a seamless integration with the recruiting tools you already use.

For example, the technology needs to sync tightly with your ATS or CRM, your calendar, email, and any messaging apps you’re using (Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, SMS).

Multilingual support

If you’re a company that recruits internationally, you’ll want to onboard a tool that can adapt to all different languages and operate on different world clocks too. The best voice AI tools can even switch languages mid-conversation to suit the candidate’s preferences.

In terms of pricing, it’s worth noting that conversational AI tools tend to charge differently from other types of solutions. Rather than charging per user, these tools tend to charge per number of candidates the voice AI screens per month.

Step 3: Integrate the AI software into your stack

The first thing you need to do before you can use your voice AI recruitment solution is to integrate it with the tools you already use every day - applicant tracking system or CRM, calendars, assessment and interviewing tools, and so on.

New users to Carv, for example, would start by integrating the AI with their ATS and calendar. That way, they can automate any initial conversation flows and give the AI the ability to schedule in interviews with any candidates who qualify once they’ve worked their way through the conversation flow.

Step 4: Customize the AI for your process

Once you have the basic conversation flow set up, you can start customizing the AI and response logic.

Even from the start, the voice AI agent will sound human, but that’s not always enough. You need it to talk in your brand tone, to know details about your company, to know what to say, as well as the type of conversations not to engage in, so you don’t waste any time on people who aren’t actually potential candidates.

Spending some time customizing your AI to sound and function like a member of your hiring team is a step that will take your voice AI strategy from good to incredible.

You’ll need to create a new bot flow for every vacancy you have. The system does create a flow autonomously using the job description and job requirements, but you can adapt it to suit particular needs e.g. change languages.

At this stage, you also want to chose your knockout questions and highlight them to the bot so it knows which questions are dealbreakers.

Step 5: Test and optimize

In any situation where you start automating a process that’s usually handled by a human recruiter, you need to thoroughly test it. And this is definitely the case when using voice AI.

So put yourself in the candidate’s shoes and apply to any roles you put live with a voice AI conversation flow.

Test it by asking different questions - even ones not related to the role like “can you wait two seconds? My pizza’s just arrived” - to see how the bot responds, and look closely at how it qualifies you in the system based on your answers.

If there’s something you don’t think is right, tweak to optimize it before you put it live to candidates.

Some companies will choose to run pilot recruiting programs when first starting out with the technology so they can refine the AI interactions based on what they know.

Step 6: Scale and measure success

Once you have your voice AI flows up and running, you can start thinking about how to scale with it. You could expand voice AI to take over other areas of the business, like handling candidate FAQs or onboarding new remote workers.

The most important thing is to track your metrics, monitor efficiency and keep an eye on the impact it’s all having on your key recruitment metrics and candidate experience too.

The business impact of voice AI in hiring

The impact that voice AI can have on the day-to-day job a volume hiring recruiter is pretty clear. But what about the wider business impact of implementing a tool like this?

The knock-on effect of using voice AI for talent acquisition at your business can be ten-fold.

For example, with faster hiring cycles, the company will function better as it has less open vacancies and you’ll reduce the chances of losing candidates due to a slow process.

You also can’t deny the huge impact reducing recruiter workload can have on a business.

DHL reported that using Carv’s conversational AI for hiring is saving their recruiters 26 hours per week despite making 3x more hires. With all this extra productivity time saved from screening candidates, DHL’s recruitment team can focus on more high-value talent acquisition tasks and strategies.

Staffing agency ORANJEGROEP were able to use conversational AI via WhatsApp to screen 15,000 job applicants worldwide with only three recruiters. This resulted in 3x more hires and 3.1 FTE in monthly savings for the company (500+ hours saved per month).

And retail leader Carrefour Belgium cut their time to hire by 50% through Carv’s pre-screening solution, while increasing the candidate satisfaction from 67% to 82%. Given that in retail applicants are often customers too, this has a huge impact on employer branding!  

Automating everyday candidate interactions also improves candidate experience, which is great for the company employer brand. Over time, you’ll earn a reputation as business that never leaves candidates hanging and replies instantly to any any feeback requests or job-related questions.

Over to you

The idea of using voice AI agents for hiring candidates may have seemed far fetched a few years ago, but already it’s totally transforming how large organizations manage staffing.

By letting voice AI screen candidates and handle interactions 24/7 in multiple languages, these tools dramatically reduce time-to-hire, minimize candidate drop-off, and free recruiters to focus on high-value activities.

Any company that embraces voice AI-driven hiring will gain a serious competitive edge — request a demo of Carv’s conversational AI module today to see what it can do for your business.