There are hundreds of teams navigating this transition. The winning ones aren’t just using technology; they’re using it intentionally to solve the balancing act, freeing up internal teams’ time to focus on the work that truly matters: the candidate. Here are five practical, high-impact strategies to improve efficiency without losing the human connection in 2025 and beyond.

1. Intelligent automation

So many recruiters still lose hours to scheduling, note-taking, and follow-up emails.

The Fix: Use automation where it amplifies performance, not replaces it.

• Scheduling automation ensures fast turnaround without the back-and-forth, showing respect for the candidate’s time.
• Interview transcription tools (like those built into Equitas) remove the burden of manual note-taking, allowing recruiters to focus entirely on the conversation.

The result? Recruiters reclaim time to support hiring managers, nurture candidates, and manage pipelines proactively.

2. Standardise interviews for consistency

Bias, inconsistency, and vague evaluation criteria are still major causes of inefficiency. Structured interviewing combats this by creating clear, repeatable frameworks that scale, ensuring every candidate is evaluated fairly.

• Build a core question bank per job role, grounded in essential competencies.
• Use structured frameworks to assist fair discussions during live interviews.
• Train hiring managers on probing questions so they can stay consistent while still authentically engaging with candidates.
• Capture data from interviews to help with decision-making, and provide constructive candidate feedback.

Structured interviewing doesn’t limit recruiters; it empowers them with confidence to lead to more inclusive hiring decisions.

3. Build talent pipelines, not just job pipelines

The best recruiters in 2025 aren’t waiting for requisitions to open, they’re cultivating relationships before roles even exist. This is the ultimate act of proactive empathy.

• Maintain warm talent pools segmented by skill, location, and career stage.
• Run regular check-ins with high-potential candidates who weren’t quite right last time, showing you value their long-term potential.
• Partner with hiring managers quarterly to map upcoming needs and proactively source.
• Use CRM functionality to track candidate engagement and readiness over time.

This shift from reactive filling to proactive pipeline building dramatically reduces time-to-hire and improves quality of hire.

4. Turn data into foresight, not hindsight

In 2025, leading TA functions are acting like data strategists to the business. Instead of reporting on what happened, they predict what will happen.

Recruitment tech now captures everything, interview performance, candidate experience scores, bias metrics, and time-to-hire trends.

Use that data to:

• Identify interviewer bottlenecks that are causing candidate delays.
• Spot potential bias before it becomes systemic, protecting your brand reputation.
• Predict attrition risk based on candidate profiles and decision data.
• Benchmark hiring efficiency by function and location.

Data isn’t just for compliance, it’s your case for strategic influence and continuous improvement of the candidate journey.

5. Make genuine connection your competitive advantage

Automation can deliver speed; only people can deliver trust. In a world where candidates often feel like data points, the teams that win talent are the ones that show genuine care.

• Personalise every candidate communication beyond templates.
• Build human touchpoints, post-interview check-ins, feedback sessions, or hiring manager introductions.
• Ensure prompt communication and transparency throughout progress
• Train hiring managers to treat interviews as two-way evaluations, not interrogations.

When everything else is automated, the genuine human touch becomes the ultimate differentiator.

The recruiting teams succeeding this year are those building scalable, data-driven, candidate-centric hiring ecosystems. By weaving together automation, structured processes, and human empathy, you create a system that not only fills roles faster but builds your brand’s reputation as a place people want to join.

Platforms like Equitas make that balance possible, integrating seamlessly into your tech stack to streamline interviews, ensure fairness, and surface insights that promote better hiring decisions.

A quick, responsive process is what you need to attract and engage the best talent.

At Rectec we help organisations to find the best Applicant Tracking System, best Recruitment CRM, or best HRIS to suit your needs, accompanied by our unique complementary technology marketplace, to help you build the perfect recruitment tech stack for your business.

The post 5 hiring efficiency hacks for recruiting teams in 2025 appeared first on Rectec.

Branded hoodies aren’t the only theme of this episode. In the age of AI, chatbots are one of the quickest and easiest features to implement into your service, reducing the load on your team, while improving user experience. But it’s not without it’s pitfalls and in this episode of Rectec Reels, we chat to industry veterans over at Hireful. A must watch if you want to learn how to navigate some of these challenges.

The post Rectec Reels with Adrian McDonagh, Hireful. appeared first on Rectec.

We think it’s safe to say the whole recruitment industry is feeling the buzz around the match made companionship of AI and ATS. Both have become vital organs in many businesses in their own right, laying foundations in streamlining processes as well as offering invaluable operational and administrative support. But when these guys collaborate, doors that have been locked tight for years seem to be suddenly opening. 

Amongst many other things, leveraging AI in candidate sourcing in particular is acting as the key to achieving a longstanding mission of recruiters. It’s transforming job ads into exciting, energetic artforms, capable of speaking straight to candidates. Seemingly making them feel like a role has been carved out specifically for them and matching the perfect candidate to the role.

So how on earth is it managing this? We believe its main success lies in five of its capabilities. 

Efficient Candidate Screening: 

ATS automates the initial screening of resumes by cleverly categorising candidate information allowing recruiters to clearly see where the talent is. Additionally, AI algorithms help identify the most qualified candidates based on specific criteria, saving recruiters time and enabling you to focus on the most promising applicants. 

Keyword Optimisation for Reach: 

AI-driven tools assist recruiters in making job ad content speak clearly to candidates with relevant keywords. By strategically incorporating these, job ads become more searchable, improving visibility on job boards and attracting a larger pool of qualified candidates. 

Performance Analytics 

ATS provides invaluable insights on analytics of the performance of job ads, tracking metrics such as click-through rates, application rates, and time-to-fill. AI analysis compliments this by giving recruiters information into the effectiveness of different ad campaigns, in turn helping you refine your strategies for better results. 

Diversity and Inclusion Enhancement 

Making a positive, compassionate impression from the off is of utmost importance and AI can help identify potential bias in job ads, promoting the use of inclusive language and reducing unintentional discrimination. Recruiters can leverage AI tools

to ensure job ads are appealing to a diverse range of candidates, fostering a more inclusive hiring process which can perfectly echo the culture of your company.

Talent Pool Management 

ATS systems with AI capabilities can maintain a centralised talent pool by continuously updating candidate profiles based on new data. Recruiters can easily tap into this talent pool for future job openings, streamlining the talent sourcing process and guiding you seamlessly to the best candidates. 

For recruiters navigating the complex terrain of talent acquisition, ATS, with the trusty assistance of AI stands as a must-have tool, weaving together insights, strategies and analytics to transform job ad creation. 

With all of the above in mind, Our in-house software comparison tool, Rectec Compare, is reacting as the industry evolves. The need for a centralised hub linking you to the best software options is becoming paramount. Rectec Compare answers this call by offering a one-stop solution for evaluating, comparing, and implementing CRM, ATS, and the imminent integration of HRIS. 

Amongst many other things, Rectec Compare aims to revolutionise the way businesses approach talent acquisition. It’s not just a tool; it’s a strategic partner that simplifies the decision-making process, ensuring that businesses harness the full potential of cutting-edge technologies in their pursuit of top-tier talent.

A quick, responsive process is what you need to attract and engage the best talent.

At Rectec we help organisations to find the best Applicant Tracking System or best Recruitment CRM to suit your needs, accompanied by our unique complimentary tech marketplace, to help you build the perfect recruitment tech stack for your business.

You can click here to register for Rectec Compare – and best of all, it’s completely free of charge.

The post Using AI in candidate sourcing appeared first on Rectec.

The AI revolution is galloping along at a steady clip, and you’d be forgiven for thinking AI is on course for a complete HR industry takeover.

Advocates for HR AI dominance predict a world of work built around AI, supplemented by AI, and catered to and for AI across almost every sector, especially in workplaces. 

But AI is still formative, the platforms are still (in some cases) raw and unwieldy, and at the business end of the HR AI overhaul are people who are still learning how to utilise it without fear of losing their jobs.

The successful integration of new workplace processes and tools requires workers and leadership teams to be aligned – indeed if the history of the industrial revolution teaches us anything it’s that when change is only as effective as complete stakeholder, worker and beneficiary buy-in, ushered in by years of experience and decided through negotiation between worker and employer.

Will HR AI upset the status quo? Without a doubt. 

Effective change – the success of any HR AI product in the workplace – will require new, novel forms of management, teaching, support, welfare, and governmental oversight, not to mention new laws and regulations. This McKinsey piece does a good job of pulling apart hysteria from reality.

There is something AI practitioners and leaders are keen to overstate – unfettered, uncontrolled AI growth will make progress harder, will create insecurities where they don’t need to be any, and will upset a lot of people. 

With the right support, the right oversight and the right regulation, AI will change the world. Indeed, it already is, and that’s because the best and brightest in the industry understand that “Humanware” is central to the success of autonomous systems. 

What next for HR and recruitment AI?

Our partners at Onrec recently explored an eye-opening report from Totaljobs regarding AI and its use during the recruitment process, and we think some key points are worth diving into.

The 3 primary takeaways we want to focus on are:

• “Majority (88%) of UK workers are happy for Artificial Intelligence (AI) to be used in the hiring process but draw the line when it comes to replacing human decision-making.
• Almost three-quarters (72%) believe it should be mandatory for businesses to disclose when AI is used in the recruitment process.
• 44% of people are concerned AI will increase existing inequality and biases in the workplace with 46% believing AI will eventually make their roles ’obsolete’”.

Replacing the Human. 

As the Onrec/Totaljobs report states, the vast majority of workers are happy with AI input during the recruitment process. But understanding the practical uses of AI only goes so far. 

Recruitment is emotional, and so very, very human – the entire process of searching and finding a new job is an emotional one. The process of connecting with a new employer, learning new skills and understanding company and personal drivers is an emotional connection as much as it is professional. 

So much of our careers and time spent at work is tied to a sense of self, a sense of purpose and belonging. There is a very real fear that an AI isn’t qualified and indeed shouldn’t be trusted to make a call on something as emotionally driven as deciding whether someone has passed a job interview.

The key is linking HR AI data-crunching to human-centric decision-making. 

If HR leaders and TA progressions set the right expectations in regards to AI use – and communicate to applicants where and how AI is used to make better decisions – you’ll find an increase in positive AI sentiment…and, ideally, a more credible and successful hiring strategy.

Declare where HR AI is used.

This neatly rolls into the next point – mandatory admission of AI use. 

Rules are coming into play across a suite of AI-impacted creator sectors, especially in imaging: creators, and regulators, are mulling over how best to “watermark” AI-created images to reduce false advertisement and abuse, and maintain photographic and human-centric creative integrity.

Within recruitment, mandatory reporting of AI use adds to a sense of transparent recruitment – that of candidates in control of their destinies and recruiters in control of their hiring processes, and of every party being aware of where the automotive ends and the human begins. 

From reputation management to regulatory diligence to recruiting integrity, HR professionals need to be aware of the shifting sands of AI regulation and the reporting of AI use in the near future, if not for your own processes, then for the trust and buy-in of your candidate base. 

HR AI and a lesson in obsolescence and bias.

Predictions vary as to just how many jobs will be “lost” to AI. 

Most critics understand that AI-led change won’t be immediate, but a slow, steady, and (more than likely) inconsistent shift over years, and that virtually every sector will be impacted. But each sector will undergo a very particular change as a result of AI, some more pronounced and obvious than others.

The reasons are, of course, myriad – investment in some sectors will lead on others; regulation in some sectors may lag compared to others; some sectors may find AI is a fringe-use object of little impact, whereas others will be completely upended by it. 

But the very real fear of a great job displacement isn’t far-fetched, and one many workers are aware of. 

It’s worthwhile pointing out that we are not at the stage of AGI or super-intelligence (yet), and as such many of the data sets AI platforms are trained on are replete with inconsistencies and biases. 

AI will continue to hallucinate without oversight, and if half of your workforce are fearful of AI integration then it’s implicit that leaders teach their teams about how AI will affect their roles and what sort of L&D expectations are required of them in future. 

Give your teams the tools to improve. Don’t let them feel victimised without the ability to help themselves stay ahead of the technological curve!

At Rectec we help organisations to find the best recruitment and talent acquisition technologies to suit your needs. 

From Applicant Tracking System and Recruitment CRM comparison, to vendor snapshots, and technology showcases in our unique technology marketplace, we provide fee-free tools to help you build the perfect recruitment tech stack for your business!

The post Why “humanware” is the key to HR AI success. appeared first on Rectec.

There is a lot of noise about how AI – specifically generative AI and AI agents – is already halfway towards revolutionising how we work, how we create and how we collaborate.

From coding to customer service, from marketing to sales, NLP programmes are making immediate, critical inroads into previously human-centric operations. 

The possibilities beyond this explosion in generative AI (and the presumption that a working AGI is only around the corner) extend the horizon of what AI can do for more complex tasks, such as iterative problem solving and high-level reasoning.

So within this hysteria of disruption, where are the details around how AI will make workplaces better for everyone? 

After all, the main benefit of integrating AI into workplace processes is to reduce the mundane, automate the repetitive, and allow humans to do what humans do best – create, reason, collaborate, ideate, laterally generate ideas, build relationships and create genuine emotional connections between people, products, services and theories.

Amidst the contradictory thought pieces and think tank panics about AI, what seems to be somewhat lost in the mania is how AI can help build more equitable, fair workplaces for many millions of people who are forgotten or incapable of integrating into analogue workplaces. 

So can we create a future where AI is used for good, or are the tech naysayers right in assuming AI will only be used for illicit gains in easily manipulated industries, deep fakes, crypto-scams and hyper-capitalism?

Let’s dive into it.

Diversity, equity, and how AI can help.

According to author and Forbes contributor Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, AI will help diversity in two ways.

• “The first is to diagnose things better, telling us what truly goes on in a culture, revealing some of the hidden dynamics underlying many of the critical interactions between people at work”.
• “The second is being able to actually measure inclusion, in particular, whether someone’s demographic status or identity can predict their actual status at work”.

The analytical power of modern AI programmes “allows us to go beyond perceptions”, giving change makers and leaders insight into “biases in behaviour”. AI fills a gap between what we think is happening, and what really is happening, or what could happen, based on evidence. AI can supplement emotionally driven HR decision making with evidently based logic, which in the case of diversity hiring, network management and fair representation can only be a good thing.

Bridging this evidence/emotion gap is the only way to build HR functionality based on real, performance-driven equity, based on real-time data. That data, and the ability to parse it, is the real power behind how AI can assist in creating a representative workforce.

Of course, this doesn’t mean AI should be used on a whim – there is ample evidence that poor AI implementation can break laws and entrench biases, so oversight is key. 

It’s worth reading pieces, such as this article by Fast Company, on the pros and cons of using AI for diversity hiring practices.

Inclusivity, disability and how AI can help.

As this detailed report by Accenture titled AI for disability inclusion puts it, there are several things business leaders and AI developers both can do to help foster more inclusivity in workplaces, especially around disability access and using tech to help people work more productively.

At the very basic level it starts at the design phase. AI creators need to put “inclusive design principles in place to support “human + machine” collaboration (which is) essential to the development of fair and unbiased AI solutions”. Inclusive AI by design is the foundation of inclusive AI use. 

So what does this inclusive design look like in real life? Well, it can be a poisoned chalice but again with the right leadership and strategy AI can be a blessing. 

• “Biases often occur at the intersections of disability, race, gender, and other identities”, which means whatever and however AI is developed it has to be built around reducing bias between underrepresented and vulnerable groups, rather than exacerbating them.
• AI can help build more inclusive workplaces. For example AI platforms can provide better testing and pre-interview assessments, AI-based accessibility tools such as speech-to-text transcription and sign language into text systems, AI-driven employee feedback, AI-augmented accessible interview processes and AI-augmented language accessibility tools. 

The tools of the future can be implemented today to help those most in need of that extra layer of support.

Minority recruitment and AI. 

This piece by the Data Scientist neatly summarises how AI can help elevate minority hires in the recruitment funnel. 

But much of the theory behind diversity-focused hiring strategies – such as blind screenings and automated assessments – has been known for years. It’s how they’re evolving via AI that HR pros need to be aware of.

• The real power lies in how AI improves data-driven recruitment. AI can operate between a wide array of recruiting tools such as jobs boards, social media, applicant tracking systems and recruitment CRMs seamlessly, to better communicate in real-time with specific candidates on the nature of targeted jobs, or clients on the state of play with candidate funnels and minority talent availability. 

• AI can create more accurate predictions on candidate suitability and hiring success utilising data, and can better identify patterns in background, experience and assessment viability. 
• Coupled with in-house NLP (like ChatGPT plugins), AI becomes more than an automated extra – they become an assistant recruiter in all but name, able to seamlessly and immediately dive into entire recruiting networks to matchmake in real-time.

With the right sort of oversight (and a fixation on making sure bias-free searches are run), AI can be the diversity hiring partner every recruiter needs. 

At Rectec we help organisations to find the best recruitment and talent acquisition technologies to suit your needs. 

From Applicant Tracking System and Recruitment CRM comparison, to vendor snapshots, and technology showcases in our unique technology marketplace, we provide fee-free tools to help you build the perfect recruitment tech stack for your business!

The post How can AI be used to promote inclusive hiring practices? appeared first on Rectec.

So how can we make sure we all take full advantage of AI to better connect with talent, whilst retaining everything about effective human-centric recruitment that works?

Before we dive into some recruiting AI nitty-gritty, it’s worthwhile pointing out that without a strategy for AI implementation, and full awareness of the limitations (and incredible breadth) of AI, you’ll have no idea of how these amazing systems can help you.

Formative AI, and our horizon of change.

A strategy and creating a list of AI priorities are very, very important. AI, especially generative AI and AI Agents are in their adolescence. New products are being released almost weekly, but one rule stands out – the quality of what you feed into AI tools correlates directly to the quality that comes out.

So before you dive into any AI platform be aware of your priorities – the more specific the better.

• Where do you see AI helping your talent outreach and recruitment? For example, are you looking for employer brand support or more niche candidate-seeking tools? 
• Are you aware of budgetary restraints and can you afford more highly-priced tools? 
• Who is going to be using AI – consultants, BD professionals, sourcers or marketers, or all of the above?
• Have you discussed AI integration with your tech vendors – is, in fact, your recruitment ATS provider sitting on exactly the tool you already need, or do you need to reach further into the recruitment technology market?

Once you have the above in order, dig into the below and start your AI journey from a place of positivity and success. 

Here is the Rectec guide on how to avoid 7 common mistakes when recruiters use AI!

When your Data = Trash.

The cardinal rule of AI (right now) is that it is as only as good as the data sets they’re trained on. 

• “ChatGPT was trained on a massive corpus of text data, around 570GB of datasets, including web pages, books, and other sources”.
• Bard was trained on “public dialogue data and web text… totalling 1.56 trillion words”.

Using the most relevant, accurate, bias-free AI tool will take some research and a bit of A/B testing, but each tool comes with limits to its referenceable data, quality of data, transparency of data and size of data set. 

Remember – AI hallucinates, so test and perfect which tool works for you!

Not testing your AI tools.

Take a target candidate base, and test your AI plugins for accuracy and quality. 

Do not, and we cannot stress this enough, simply start building new workflows, recruiting funnels or employer branding campaigns without testing AI capability.

Most importantly, you need to have a path of accountability for when things do, inevitably, need changing or go wrong. Leadership and chain of command are vitally important in factoring in changes to AI use and further investment. 

Not being transparent with your primary service user – your candidate.

Disclaimers are essential to empowering your candidate. 

If you are using AI for assessments, let your candidate know. If automated outreach emails to cold candidates are being written and sent via AI, make it clear that’s the case. Most importantly, include a clear Call to Action for candidates that they can, at any time, speak to a HUMAN!

This not only engenders trust in your candidate base that you’re working with them in good faith, but it also gives them an out when and if AI tools don’t do their job or they misfire. Good for CX, good for comms, and good for legal accountability too.

If the AI boot doesn’t fit…

Recruitment should never, ever, lose the human-centric element of empathetic connectivity that makes a person trust another with their career.

In our view, recruiters who lean on AI to replace the human will find candidates simply switch off. Innovation in the AI space is incredible. The industry is developing at a freakishly fast pace, and we’ll hold our hands up if, in a year’s time, much of the “human” is indeed replaced by NLP-based tools. 

But we stand by our word – AI is fantastic for improving SEO ranking, automating repetitive tasks, analysing data sets, building marketing plans and perfecting recruitment strategies. But it is not, yet, human. 

Use AI to augment, not replace.

Not taking accountability.

Test, test, perfect, test again. 

Never rest on your laurels. Always be looking for drop-offs in AI accuracy, or prompt responses not working any more. Recruitment is and forever will be a results-based business, and any AI brought into that fold needs to create results, whilst maintaining fairness within the recruiting process, reducing discrimination and removing bias from the equation.

This means targeted analysis of AI use, usability, relevance, and delivery of results. This means someone, anyone, taking accountability for the systems in use.

Not training your tools.

Whilst we’re still sitting on the cusp of a true AGI, a fair proportion of AI tools require learning and training to become fully effective. 

This can perhaps be better explained by prompt analysis and development of more useful dialogues in tools like ChatGPT or Bard – practice makes perfect. 

Effective AI use takes prompt strategy and iterative learning techniques. Improvements don’t happen in a vacuum, and the real strength of AI is that it can reform and rejig output based on prompt tweaks and new data, over time.

Do not silo your AI tools.

Tech stack management 101 – never silo operations, and integrate where possible.

Using AI in conjunction with other recruiting tech tools like CRMs, CMS’, Applicant Tracking Tools, and performance management systems will improve hiring outcomes and retention rates, and build a more connected tech ecosystem for your people to work and thrive.

Most importantly, AI should never supersede human judgement or act independently of human oversight, especially in recruiting-critical touch points like initial outreach, interview aftercare or salary negotiation.

The bottom line. 

We must be prepared for change, or will be drowned in innovation and miss critical opportunities to improve recruitment and make our industry as effective and useful as possible.

A good place to start is by knowing where we mostly fall down on AI understandings!

At Rectec we help organisations to find the best recruitment and talent acquisition technologies to suit your needs. 

From Applicant Tracking System and Recruitment CRM comparison, to vendor snapshots, and technology showcases in our unique technology marketplace, we provide fee-free tools to help you build the perfect recruitment tech stack for your business!

The post Recruiting with AI? Here are 7 mistakes to avoid! appeared first on Rectec.

This past week we had the pleasure of being an exhibitor once again at the Recruitment Agency Expo, at London’s ExCel Arena.

The event was a huge success – to be witness to how the wider HR industry is transforming in the wake of COVID-19 and the drive toward digital transformation is awe-inspiring, plus we got to meet more of our newer clients, announce some deeper partnerships with some of our vendors and introduce our growing company to the recruitment tech great and the good.

What we’ve found is that, as the recruitment technology world’s most agnostic and objective hub of innovation, ideas and futurism, our stand at every event becomes a little hotbed of opinions.

So what are agency folks saying about the state of recruitment in 2023, and what were industry leaders discussing during the event?

Here is a brief breakdown of what we learned at the Recruitment Agency Expo 2023.

AI is here – but step cautiously.

Naturally, much of the tech chat revolved around AI, innovations in the chatbot and comms space, programmatic marketing and NLP.

Our future is, seemingly, being written as we speak – with OpenAI, Google and Microsoft all pitching into the NLP-led space and ChatGPT soaking up so much marketing, content, comms and CX oxygen of late, it was perhaps inevitable table-talk would revolve around how the recruitment marketplace specifically is evolving and how agencies are adapting to this rapidly approaching new tech horizon.

That said, NLP is in its relative adolescence and the tech world is furtively attempting to bring unalloyed AI growth to heel. Often, novel tech advancement moves quickly, and the “impact” is hard to judge, plus platform user base can spread unevenly, resulting in demographic and geographical inconsistencies in market effectiveness.

Genuine change is hard to qualify, and the benefits at this stage of AI are theoretical, rather than meaningful. But we’re on the precipice of material, total, and generationally defining change.

Much more qualified voices than ours have already highlighted where the pitfalls of relying on NLP lie, but in our view, all this shockingly incredible tech still hasn’t yet replaced the human element of effective recruitment – feedback from agencies on how AI will affect more intangible assets like Employer Brand and Referral Networks , for example, was muted and confused.

Tech Skills Shortages remain.

This is hardly groundbreaking recruitment or HR news but skills shortages – and getting tech to help do some more of the heavy lifting of sourcing niche talent and assessing them accurately and quickly – was a major pain point for our display visitors.

Because Rectec straddles the middle ground between emerging recruitment tech and agencies looking for a stack revamp, the question of “how does this vendor or that vendor help” is difficult to answer. But it’s clear as day that recruitment agencies of all sizes and stripes are in a positive frame of mind when it comes to utilising tech to attract passive candidates, candidates in niche sectors, or candidates looking to reskill and develop in a new market.

This, we found, is a hugely positive and exciting place for the industry to be in. Tech is not feared, nor misunderstood, and the agency sector seems less dubious than ever of tech and how it can help recruitment, CX, branding, payroll and more.

Despite our scale, we’re still new!

Rectec Compare has completed hundreds of thousands of comparison searches. Our recruitment technology Marketplace grows by the week. Our products have won awards and yet we are still relatively unknown!

Events like the Recruitment Agency Expo are as much brand awareness raising as they are vendor networking events – and, like every event we’ve attended, the response from agency owners and vendors to our services was wholly positive.

This, of course, is a good problem to have. We have cornered a clear niche in the market, and our Comparison service and Marketplace complement the other and provide two key solutions to a multi-faceted problem.

We know that, as a startup, we’re facing some rough headwinds – a fast-changing industry, inflation, high employment, skills shortages and a disrupted political environment, all of which impact everyone across the recruitment landscape from candidates to business owners.

But without a doubt the Recruitment Agency Expo provided us with confidence that what we do – and how we support the hard work of recruiters and providers – is more valuable than ever.

A quick, responsive process is what you need to attract and engage the best talent.

At Rectec we help organisations to find the best Applicant Tracking System or best Recruitment CRM to suit your needs, accompanied by our unique complementary technology marketplace, to help you build the perfect recruitment tech stack for your business.

The post Seeing the future of AI in Recruitment at RAE 2023 appeared first on Rectec.

Since the launch of ChatGPT in the latter half of 2022, natural language processing and our understandings of it have catapulted online social conversation from “how will this affect me?” to “when will this affect me?”.

From content creators to videographers, security experts to VC funders, AI is clipping along as the great business game changer of the near future – but how does this affect recruiters, job seekers, consultants, and employers?

Rather than offer only our opinion, we thought we’d compile a list of some of the leading opinions on AI in HR, recruitment and work, to give a general overview of the state of business play as it is today, and where experts in the field believe the most impact will be felt in 2023 and beyond.

AI and Data.

The primary focus of most automotive and AI-based advances in recruitment has been around building more data-driven decision-making in hiring.  

This includes AI innovations in everything from basic administration – form filling and chatbots for example – to more complex tasks like smart signatures, automated reference checking and more. But the reaches of AI and data collection, storage and analysis doesn’t stop there.

Some good reads about how AI is helping make data more visible and more usable include:

• AI Recruiting in 2023: The Definitive Guide – Phenom.
• The Benefits And Dangers Of Using AI In Recruitment – Forbes.
• The impact of AI on recruitment – AIHR.
• Stop Fearing AI and ‘Big Data’ in Recruiting – SHRM.
• How Artificial Intelligence is Impacting The Recruitment Sector – Hubert.

AI and HR.

AI, of course, isn’t just being used to leverage digital processing power over mundane tasks – it can also be used to improve HR cultures, staff development and HR functionality, from compensation strategy to due diligence and data security. 

Some good reads on AI and HR can be found:

• What is the Role of AI in Human Resource Management? – Analytics Steps.
• The Business Case for AI in HR – IBM.
• Possible Applications of AI in HR – Hppy.
• The significance of AI in HR – People Matters.

AI and employer branding. 

AI’s impact on the written word and data is one thing, but what about AI’s impact on less “tangible” assets, such as branding, visuals, marketing and the candidate experience?

How will perceptions of business and employer credibility, even the lengths to which candidates understand what is true and what isn’t, stand in the wake of AI growth?

The future is unknown, but some interesting reads on AI and EB include:

• Does Artificial Intelligence (AI) Enable Recruitment Improve Employer Branding? – IJBM.
• Artificial Intelligence & Employer Brand: The Possibilities Are Endless – The Martec. 
• Employer branding: Impact of disruptive technology on this industry – First Post.
• Future of HR Technology and Employer Branding post-Corona Era – Orai.

AI and candidate relationship/candidate experience. 

Will this new dawn of digital power overtake our long-standing analogue culture of relationship building between professionals, or will new tech simply augment the very human core of good recruitment practice?

Views on this are wide-ranging and very interesting:

• 10 Ways AI Improves Candidate Engagement During Recruiting – HolaSpirit.
• Candidate Experience in times of Artificial Intelligence – HubSpot.
• Using AI to enhance candidate experience in high volume hiring – via Research Gate.
• The Industrial Revolution for human intellect – Deloitte.

The Rectec View. 

Whether we like it or not, a future where media, marketing, adverts, content, social feeds and entertainment are either created by or augmented by AI is coming, probably quicker than we all thought. 

Entire industries – from programming to graphic design to copywriting – are changing as the sheer breadth of AI potential becomes known. 

AI will impact recruitment. But we believe there will be limits:

• We feel there will be barriers to entry within the SME sector due to cost, scale and relevance (e.g. automation is widely used in mass hiring strategies, not single one-off hires). 
• Only in very specific industries will candidates want to be vetted by AI – candidate comms, testing, initial communications, job marketing and even first-stage interviews are already largely remote and digital, and will increasingly be completed by AI. But the final call on whether one person will work for another will still be a human decision. Human oversight is essential for successful hiring.
• And, lastly, the lengths to which AI has access to open source information determines how effective it is. This will undoubtedly change in the future and AI will be given access to everything everywhere, but how will AI react to inherent biases in data sets, and how will it fix – rather than exacerbate – issues around bias, discrimination and lack of opportunity for workers? Can AI fix this long-standing critical issue with hiring, or should we be looking elsewhere?

In short, AI will transform the industry, but, at least initially, it won’t change people!

A quick, responsive process is what you need to attract and engage the best talent.

At Rectec we help organisations to find the best Applicant Tracking System or best Recruitment CRM to suit your needs, accompanied by our unique complementary technology marketplace, to help you build the perfect recruitment tech stack for your business.

The post AI and the future of recruitment, according to the experts. appeared first on Rectec.

AI is now a fairly convoluted and generalist term that incorporates a huge, fast-growing suite of tech tools, platforms and systems across almost every industry. Not all AI is made equal, and some sectors are, depending on how you look at it, benefiting from more AI integration than others. 

For the vast majority of the unknowing public, AI, machine learning and automation are one, and often do their work in the shadows. This is not to say everyone is in agreement about AI advancements or eschewing human labour for machine labour – the eternal debate still rages as to whether AI is either the great saviour of humanity and a driving force for societal good, or the precursor to Terminator.

So where will AI be in 1, 2 or 5 years, and how does it affect the general public in professional services industries like Recruitment?

Well, it’s hard to say exactly where we’ll be, but AI is slowly but surely integrating itself into hiring funnels, recruitment strategy and recruitment tech.

• For example, ATS and recruitment CRM platforms are already benefiting from data gathering and organisation via AI (see this piece on AI for Recruiting by Ideal) which clearly improves recruitment services. 
• But there are plenty of dissenting voices too, with the ethical component of relying on machines to do something humans had and should do being still up for debate (as per this piece, The Benefits And Dangers Of Using AI In Recruitment, in Forbes).

From a diligence and crisis management perspective, the courts are more recently stepping in. On the 1st of October 2022, a bill ran through EU courts that further protects customers, service users and clients from “rogue” AI companies and creators.

“The EU is creating new rules to make it easier to sue AI companies for harm. A bill unveiled this week, which is likely to become law in a couple of years, is part of Europe’s push to prevent AI developers from releasing dangerous systems.

“The new bill, called the AI Liability Directive, will add teeth to the EU’s AI Act, which is set to become EU law around the same time. The AI Act would require extra checks for “high-risk” uses of AI that have the most potential to harm people, including systems for policing, recruitment, or health care.

The new liability bill would give people and companies the right to sue for damages after being harmed by an AI system. The goal is to hold developers, producers, and users of the technologies accountable”.

Naturally, such oversight means backlash is all but guaranteed from tech companies. But, as multiple cases of hard-coded tech recruitment bias has shown, AI is not infallible, and accountability should be fairly borne by the human behind the tech.

For the humble recruitment consultant on the ground, talk of high-level civil lawsuits against AI companies is far removed from the reality of recruiting. But the impact of poorly formed AI is immediate. Workers are discriminated against, entire systems of candidate handling are broken, systems don’t work as they should, and the basic back-and-forth between client, consultant and candidate breaks down. 

So what should recruiters be on the lookout for when it comes to AI and recruitment?

Do not usurp employer branding for tech. 

Most importantly recruiters cannot forget what makes good recruitment – human connection, diligent advocacy, and client support that goes beyond the efficient sorting of resumes to add genuine value, and a visible and tangible employer brand. 

In short, our advice is don’t replace what feels right to a candidate with what looks good when administering to that candidate. As with anything recruitment tech-based, think like a candidate in how you engage and manage your people through their specific recruitment funnel. 

AI is a tool to this end, not the end in and of itself – the more recruiters rely on tech to do their job, the more that very recruitment tech erodes the things that make genuinely effective recruitment services. 

People don’t want to do business with a machine. 

This is appropriate across all tech that impacts professional services or businesses with a significant user/customer base – people don’t want to do business with machines. 

To lose the human in recruitment is to fail at recruitment. When you’re looking after people’s careers and businesses, tech needs to add value, not reduce the need for a bit of hands-on management. For example, digital onboarding is almost exclusively done via unique ATS platforms, but simply having the tech doesn’t make people feel welcomed or engaged with their new workplace. 

Over-reliance on platforms to do the heavy lifting of creating a genuine connection with a person’s labour results in alienated staff and poor staff morale.

Robots can’t be empathetic.

When the foundation of all good staff management strategies is built around an empathetic connection between leader and talent, tech has to sit within that framework. 

But, again, it’s worth reiterating that an effective ATS doesn’t create employer or recruiter empathy – it simply provides the channels and methods for creating more fruitful, more meaningful relationships between people, peers and leaders. 

The bottom line.

AI will continue to expand into our working lives, even if the breadth of integration will be limited by changes to the law. 

In that fragile gap between recruiter and candidate, AI can be friend or fo – it’s on the consultant at the heart of that relationship to guarantee all use of recruitment tech, including AI, is used for the benefit of those valuable human relationships that underpin good recruitment.

So if you haven’t seen our ATS and recruitment CRM comparison service yet, what are you waiting for? 

Rectec Compare is totally free to use, and you can input your requirements in under 20 minutes to see what ATS or recruitment CRM fits your needs. 

Get started!

The post AI and Recruitment – the good, the bad and the ugly. appeared first on Rectec.

But as we sit on the cusp of Web 3.0, and as companies continue to rapidly digitise in the wake of COVID-19 and our new normal of hybrid working patterns and new candidate expectations, how will our industry – replete with numerous ATS providers and recruitment tech – continue to evolve?

It’s worth noting how employers are factoring in tech, and specifically AI, into the future of work.

• Sodexo, for instance, noted in one a piece titled How To Plan a FutureProof Workplace the centrality of tech to building more resilient, “elastic” workplaces,
• Ideal, in their piece AI For Recruiting: A Definitive Guide For HR Professionals, noted how AI is creating efficiency beyond the scope of human ability, especially earlier in the recruitment funnel, and how AI can create insights into their candidate pools,
• Business Insider, in a broad and detailed piece on AI and hiring practice, notes how AI can help in everything from “removing bias from the hiring process, to recruiting top talent, to identifying problems and conditions that cause an existing employee to quit”.

It’s safe to say AI is an objectively “good” thing to have in a recruitment tech stack, and seeing as AI is so integral to improving recruiting processes, when it comes to choosing the right applicant tracking system or recruitment CRM for your enterprise, its wise to consider the reach and impact of AI within a vendors’ package.

So, how does AI fit into this mesh of tech, people and platforms, how will effective AI be used, and what sorts of skills will be needed within recruitment companies and agencies to make the most of AI recruitment tech?

AI and Recruitment

Let’s clear the air a little. There is a lot of doom-mongering around AI, and how it will eventually remove the human from the workplace. But within recruitment, AI is being used in more subtle ways.

Referring, again, to the Workable piece above, “The term ‘artificial intelligence’ is greatly exaggerated”.

While in some sectors the importance of robotics, machine learning, predictive analysis and natural language learning is carving a swathe through the human capital market, in recruitment AI can be neatly summarised thusly (homaging Matt Alder from the above Workable piece again):

• Al is algorithms to match the right people to the right jobs,
• AI is machine learning to improve forecasting,
• AI is smart automation to improve and personalise marketing, outreach, comms and connections.

In short, AI is being leveraged to create relevance, personalisation, and efficiency. Not to remove the human from HR.

AI and Matchmaking Candidates to Jobs

Algorithmic candidate sourcing can be an imperfect tool. The critical challenge hiring managers have to contend with is to what extent AI can handle biases within hiring, and what sort of datasets are useful for machine learning systems to use in creating frameworks of matching talent.

“Develop and modify the inputs fed into your hiring programs and algorithms. Are these inputs job-related? Do they promote or impede diversity objectives? Do the data outputs follow robust privacy and data governance? What standards does your organisation follow to ensure the algorithms are nearing bias neutral?”

Eric Reicin, Forbes Council Member – AI Can Be A Force For Good In Recruiting And Hiring New Employees

AI and how it improves forecasting

Companies like Loxo leverage AI in creating digital forecasting tools for recruiters to integrate into their recruitment tech stack. They include tools like an intelligent recruitment platform to better connect with candidates (their famed proprietary Talent Graph), integrate social channels via public domains, and perfect an automated outreach campaign, using AI to rank talent.

This focus on emboldening teams with information, and using simple programming to help teams hit targets, source efficiently and use actionable information, is game changing.

Smart Automation in Recruitment

Smart, or intelligent automation is defined as, “the use of automation technologies – artificial intelligence (AI), business process management (BPM), and robotic process automation (RPA) – to streamline and scale decision-making across organisations”.

In short, this means AI is one part of a collection of tools that can effectively analyse data – in this case of recruiters, it could be the ability of a recruitment tech tool to better match candidates’ skills with job demands. This information then feeds into a BPM channel (automated recruitment marketing, for example), and helps provide information for RPOs (IE bots, if relevant) to place information in the right place (pay data in payslips, or performance review data in HR staff management systems).

AI, of course, doesn’t work without people. While the tools and trends of AI in recruitment – and the changing nature of recruitment tech overall – continue to innovate, AI has to complement and fall within the undying rule of recruitment: recruitment doesn’t work without trusted relationships. If AI can help improve that trust, then we’re in for a vibrant and efficient future of HR.

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Rectec – and specifically our applicant tracking system and recruitment CRM comparison service Rectec Compare – was born from watching the industry evolve into a sprawling landscape of solutions focused on improving efficiencies, increased recruitment brand awareness, and improving recruitment processes from data handling to video interviewing.

With such a wide spread of solution options, and no dispassionate comparison service for employers seeking information on ATS systems and how to identify the right ATS or recruitment CRM for their company, Rectec was born.

Our own company has continued to grow amid this thriving digital landscape. We’ve recently launched the Rectec Marketplace, and we continue to support our ATS and recruitment CRM vendors and affiliate solutions providers with more access to our immense human capital market…and yes, there are tech tools in place within our very own Marketplace that match affiliate vendors with your needs, mirroring the systems above!

A quick, responsive process is what you need to attract and engage the best talent.

At Rectec we help organisations to find the best Applicant Tracking System or best Recruitment CRM to suit your needs, accompanied by our unique complimentary tech marketplace, to help you build the perfect recruitment tech stack for your business.

You can click here to register for Rectec Compare – and best of all, it’s completely free of charge.

The post How AI is helping recruitment in 2022. appeared first on Rectec.