Just like other industries, HR departments have been going crazy over the buzzword ’automation’. According to Willis Towers Watson, employers predict 17 percent of work will be automated by 2020, and an HR Technologist article back in 2017 already spoke about the importance of incorporating technology in HR processes and workflows.
While employers are still coming to terms with the roles automation is going to have in their companies, HR departments have been working on Recruitment Process Automation (RPA) technologies. RPA technologies include the automation of recruiting tasks and workflows to increase productivity and accelerate time-to-hire and improve other important HR metrics. In the last few years since RPA technologies have gotten popular, employers have used RPA to attempt to reduce the 46% turnover rate in Singapore, improve the candidate experience, and reduce human error in HR processes.
What’s next?
While you might think of robots and more AI-powered robot interviews, the biggest trend in RPA and hiring automation will actually focus on technologies that help employees and recruiters work intelligently with HR automation tools. As with other industries, there has been an understanding that the best tools and new technologies won’t work unless people are willing to use them.
Intelligent Automation in Hiring
The ‘human factor’ of HR technologies will always be important, so RPA has now turned its attention to the manual tasks that will benefit most from automation. The sourcing and screening processes, in particular, have been able to benefit immensely through tools such as multi-channel job posting, applicant tracking systems (ATS), and chatbots with candidate screening capabilities. The aim is to maximise the number of qualified job applicants for your roles while providing the opportunity to filter these candidates in terms of fit.
At the same time, since each company has different requirements for their job openings, there’s a need for customisability within the RPA tools. The RPA tools should allow for intelligent automation, where each recruiter will be able to send relevant messages to their target audiences. Basically, the RPA tool should be able to assist the recruiter in the tasks they need to do, while remaining easy to use.
A 2019 Human Resources Online interview with recruiters showed that automation can help companies increase hiring productivity by up to 75%, and that chatbots alone aren’t enough; customisation is still required in order for technologies to function with a level of warmth exhibited by humans.
As hiring automation increases in complexity, RPA tools that cater to the recruiter’s experience, as well as the candidate experience, are bound to become more popular. A platform that can incorporate an ATS, job posting and candidate screening capabilities, chatbot pre-interviews, and continue to develop user-friendly capabilities will make recruiters’ jobs easier, and hence, improve job productivity for HR departments.
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