In today’s competitive labour market, where candidates’ use technology daily, candidate experience is an essential consideration, not a ‘nice to have’.
We recently ran a webinar about the types of Candidate Experience Chatbots that can be deployed to help you with your recruitment activities.
Following our poll during the webinar, more than 80% of the attendees expressed their interest in having a Candidate Experience Chatbot in their recruitment process. Chatbots that gained most interest were:
Match Me Bot – typically this Bot would sit on a careers site and help candidates to find the right role for them
Screening Bot – replacing a telephone screen and enabling candidates to move through a process at a time to suit them
Keep Warm Bot – Ongoing post-offer engagement to support onboarding
Candidate Experience Data Capture Bot – sending a Bot to your offered candidates / rejected candidates to canvass feedback about their experience
Based on our webinar, here are 5 reasons why you should use Chatbots to deliver a great candidate experience.
1. 24/7 Support
Recruitment is like a service in which your candidates become your customers – and as customers, expect to have 5 star service.
This also means being able to move through an application at a time to suit them. It’s about working around your candidate needs and not yours.
We work with parcel delivery firm Yodel, who use our Chatbots to support and screen Drivers.
One month after launching their Candidate Experience Chatbots, the Yodel data told us more than 350 candidates completed their screen after 9pm.
A Candidate Experience Chatbot on your careers website can operate as a 24/7 support tool.
Candidates can be provided with FAQ information about the application process, be encouraged to be self-selected and signposted to relevant roles. All of this can be delivered with employer brand content, video clips, images etc.
2. Save Time and Add Value
Whether you’re a volume, graduate or experienced hire recruiter, using Candidate Experience Chatbots can reduce transactional emails and phone calls.
In turn, this gives you time to add value to other parts of your recruitment process.
The Yodel Resourcing team recruit over 6,000 drivers annually and receive over 1,200 applications per week. As Ben Gledhill, Head of Resourcing said:
“We needed to do two important things; find a way to cope with the sheer volume of applications but also put ourselves in the shoes of our candidates”
In the first 3 months of deploying their Bots in November 2018, the Yodel Screen Me Bot has screened over 12,000 Driver candidates and has reduced the time to hire by 38%. Check out our Yodel Case Study if you’d like to learn more.
3. Keep Your Candidates Warm-Post Offer/Onboarding
Candidate experience absolutely extends to the post-offer stage. It is a crucial stage of the recruitment process and a Candidate Experience Keep Warm Chatbot can be used as a concierge.
You need your hires to turn up on day one feeling motivated, informed and work ready and the keep warm chatbot can continually support your hires by providing the information they need.
Our Chatbots can neatly pair with the Meet & Engage live chat platform – if desired, the chatbot can hand over to a human. Examples would be handing the candidate over to relevant hiring manager for a quick call, or someone in a payroll team etc.
4. Gather Candidate Experience Data Easily
Using a chatbot makes gathering data simple. For Yodel, both their Match Me and Screen Me chatbots are programmed to capture feedback as part of every interaction.
The Yodel Candidate experience score stands at an impressive 97% satisfaction.
You could also consider sending a Chatbot to your offered candidates / rejected candidates to canvass feedback about their experience.
These chatbots could be deployed via a simple link in an email from your ATS.
5. Easy Integration / No integration
Thinking about the problems you’re trying to solve – are candidates applying for roles they don’t have the experience for?
Are your apprentices dropping out mid-process? Do you need to eliminate your telephone interview stage?
Depending on the challenge, we can customise our solution to best suit your candidates – and you.
If you’d like to learn more about our candidate experience chatbots and how we can support your recruitment process, feel free to contact me at marius.pugaciauskas@meetandengage.com or book a demo via our website.
