Artificial intelligence (AI) is an emerging technology that has capabilities for handling many recruiting tasks without direct involvement from recruiters and with minimal oversight. Although executive search is very hands-on in its approach to recruiting and relies heavily on the human touch, there are some ways in which AI can increase the productivity and effectiveness of an executive search, while retaining its hands-on nature.

What Can AI Do for Executive Search?

AI can take much of the drudgery out of the executive search process by finding qualified candidates and moving them into the hiring process. Executive recruiters often have to spend dozens or even hundreds of hours sourcing prospective candidates, interviewing them, and maintaining contact with them until the company makes a decision. AI can take over some of these tasks by responding to feedback and changing algorithms along the way, becoming even more efficient over time.

For instance, a new AI assistant called Mya has been developed to chat online with job applicants, answering questions about a particular position and helping them determine whether they meet the requirements. Mya can integrate with ATS systems to help highlight the most qualified resumes that best match the job description, handling one of the most time-consuming and cumbersome parts of a recruiter’s job.

Even if an executive recruiter prefers to answer candidates’ questions personally, other AI tools can schedule appointments automatically to streamline another mundane task that takes up a big chunk of a recruiter’s time. Recruiters can also set up AI tools to send updates to executives once they are identified as prospective candidates and all throughout the interview process. Continued communication and frequent updates help prevent candidates from losing interest as the interview process goes on.

The Future of AI

There are many other AI tools out there that are still in early development but show great promise for use in recruiting. Video interviewing tools that can identify facial expressions to analyze truthfulness and emotional responses, use tone of voice to make assessments, and infer feelings toward various people and statements during interviews are already available. While executive search is too hands-on to switch to video interviews, AI insights might be used to supplement and inform the in-person interview experience, weeding out biases that could exist.

Other AI tools can use algorithms to predict how likely passive candidates are to be interested in a position, which can cut down greatly on executive recruiters’ efforts to woo passive candidates that ultimately result in dead ends. AI tools like these will continue to make executive recruiting more effective, even without delegating the essential “human touch” tasks to machines.

Talent management software like Thrive TRM not only automates tasks like some AI tools, but it can also integrate with many tools to increase productivity, speed, and effectiveness even more. Thrive TRM can let your executive search team see the status of their searches at a glance, including results and data from AI tools that have been integrated. Contact us for more information on how Thrive TRM can help.

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