How to Streamline Hiring with Artificial Intelligence
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is everywhere these days—and for good reason. Many believe it to be the future of all technology-based operations and activities.
For nonprofits, this is great news. Many such organizations struggle with managing workflow and allocating resources efficiently, especially when it comes to recruiting new talent (which is already an overshadowed area of nonprofit management).
Leveraged correctly, however, hiring software with AI-powered features can change your hiring process for the better. In this guide, we’ll review different ways to integrate AI into your workflows so you can secure the right talent to achieve your mission.
1. Automate routine tasks.
Perhaps the greatest use of AI for nonprofits is to streamline or eliminate mundane tasks entirely. According to Jobvite, here are some areas of hiring that AI can take care of:
- Candidate communication. Individually notifying each applicant that their application was submitted successfully, they advanced to the next phase, or you made a hiring decision can be cumbersome. However, AI can send out messages when certain conditions are met or triggered so nothing ever slips through the cracks.
- Interview scheduling. Between your programs and your applicants’ busy schedules, it can be challenging to find a mutually beneficial time for you both to meet. However, AI can instantly find the best open slots for both applicants and your hiring team—simply ask your applicants to provide their availability and it’ll fill in the gaps.
- Manage candidate profiles. AI can quickly and easily organize important candidate data, such as demographics and certifications, into digital profiles in your database. This way, you can easily access the information you need without manually creating and updating each profile.
These are just a few of the possible ways AI can help your organization advance your hiring process. To learn even more about functionalities for specific software solutions, schedule demos, reach out to product experts, and read unbiased third-party reviews.
2. Enhance resume screening.
A foundational part of the hiring process is reviewing each candidate’s resume. This helps you make educated decisions about who might be a good fit and who likely isn’t. However, poring over resumes, while important, can be time-consuming and inaccurate—but AI can streamline and improve the process. It can do this by:
- Blocking hiring bias. Companies are increasingly prioritizing hiring people of diverse backgrounds to improve innovation and unlock new perspectives. However, identifying factors can trigger hiring professionals’ implicit biases and prevent diverse hiring decisions. AI can remove these identifying factors for you so your team is presented with what matters most: a candidate’s skills, experiences, and ideas.
- Creating talent pools. Your hiring team might be faced with a tough decision to let a qualified candidate go because they aren’t the right fit for your needs at this time. However, AI can help you maintain that connection in case they become a better fit down the line with talent pools. These are databases of candidates that you can filter by qualifications, experience, and other categories—and when the time comes, AI can pinpoint the best people to engage with.
- Eliminating unqualified candidates. If there are any must-have qualifications for your role posting, AI can identify exactly which candidates can be in the running. For instance, let’s say you’re a nonprofit professional looking for a new fundraising coordinator with at least five years of experience. AI can comb through all resumes provided and present you with only the most qualified options.
For resume screening to function at its full potential, you’ll need to ensure your AI-powered software is fed the right data. NXUnite suggests incorporating various data hygiene standards into your workflow, such as standardizing data entry and disregarding irrelevant data that can bog down your software.
3. Matching candidates.
A challenge talent acquisition specialists might face is ensuring candidates are the best match for certain roles. After all, matching the right applicants with the right roles is key for reducing turnover rates and the cost of hiring.
AI can help by providing razor-sharp insights about who would be best suited for each open role based on qualitative and quantitative data. If you have multiple roles open, AI can suggest moving candidates to different talent pools that are more relevant to their traits. Let’s look at a hypothetical example from the perspective of a nonprofit hiring professional:
- The hypothetical nonprofit is looking for a new fundraising manager with at least five years of experience in the nonprofit world and two years of experience fundraising.
- Down the line, the nonprofit wants to hire an in-house marketing coordinator for its fundraising initiatives.
- An applicant with a degree in marketing applies for the fundraising role. Their experience is tangentially related to fundraising via creating fundraising campaign marketing materials.
- AI reads this candidate’s resume and automatically determines that they’d be a better fit for the marketing role, not the fundraising role.
It’s important to remember that this process still requires human oversight in case there are further nuances to your hiring approach that AI doesn’t know. However, AI can at least provide suggestions for which people to move to different talent pools.
4. Scoring candidates at the end of the process
Remember, talent acquisition is never black and white—rather, it’s a strategic process that requires long-term planning and relationship building. However, using an objective scoring system at the end of your hiring process can give you quantitative data to rely on. You might include the following qualifications in your scoring rubric:
- Does the candidate have certain qualifications?
- Does the candidate have the relevant type and extent of experience?
- Has the candidate performed well in interviews?
- Does the candidate have any recommendations from respected industry professionals?
- Does this candidate mesh well with other employees, and do we expect them to contribute to our employee engagement initiatives?
AI can help come up with the credentials and score candidates accordingly. All you need to do is configure your hiring software appropriately, work with your team to pinpoint the most relevant criteria, and stay on top of updating the information.
Paying attention to these essentials early in the hiring cycle helps you find the best candidates for your organization, improving long-term employee retention in stride. Ensure that you’re keeping tabs on AI advancements throughout this process—there are new updates to consider every day.
