How to accelerate your hiring with a smart chatbot

Conversational chatbots bring massive value to your careers page—but what if they can’t quite understand your candidates? Your chatbot should be able to do more than just answer with (or understand) a simple yes or no.

Incorporating a chatbot that goes beyond simply answering yes or no questions is key to truly unburdening your hiring team—saving their time and your company’s resources. 

Below are 3 tips to help accelerate your hiring with a smart(er) chatbot that can handle a large volume of candidates.

1. Ensure your chatbot can determine skill and qualification needs

Many roles include job titles that aren’t what are typically considered “normal” (think outside the realm of marketing manager, cashier, etc). For roles that may be titled a little differently, like “crew member,” candidates may need help determining how to search for them. 

If your chatbot can help candidates based on their skills, it can then give them access to all the roles available. 

For example, if your candidate searches for “cashier” but your company calls it “crew member,” most candidates won’t know to search for that. Therefore, they’re left with no results.

However, a smart chatbot can search based on the skills needed for a cashier and see that they match with the crew member position—therefore providing that as an available option to the candidate. 

2. Chatbots should show more than one role.

While a candidate may be searching for a specific role, there could also be other options they’re a fit for—options they may not even know exist. 

For TA teams hiring at large volumes, they need to fill many jobs fast. If your chatbot can “think” outside the box of just showing one role, it’s better primed for scaling your hiring by providing all candidates with all the options.

If your candidate searches for “hostess,” a smart chatbot can match those skills, titles, job descriptions, and more to fully search and present all the open roles at your company and present them to the candidate. 

3. Chatbots aren’t people but should be able to have conversations.

We’ve all been on hold with an automated system only to end up yelling, “Speak to a representative!”

Well, your chatbot shouldn’t be a frustration! It should have Natural Language Processing (NLP) capability and maintain a conversational cadence. While it’s important to communicate with candidates that your chatbot isn’t a real human (a helpful point for many neurodivergent candidates), it should also be able to keep up with the normal flow of conversations. 

If your candidate types in a location with a typo or even a common city like Springfield, your conversational chatbot should be able to use machine learning to present the candidate with the likely correction or options to keep the conversation moving. 

HireVue’s conversational AI widens the recruiting funnel with smart, chat-based job matching. We get it—there are more jobs than people right now, and quality candidates are hard to find. Ensure your candidate experience is primed for success, so you don’t lose out on top candidates. If your job matching only relies on keyword searches, you’ll limit your pool of talent. With HireVue, candidates simply chat to find the best-fit job using our O*NET job matching. Then, we’ll send them a text or WhatsApp with the next steps within minutes of applying. 

Ready to take your job searching to the next level? Request a demo and learn about our Structured Interviewing, Assessments, and Scheduling Automation.