AI in Campus Recruitment: Shaping the Future of Young Talent

What began back in the 1950s as an attempt to mimic the problem-solving skills of a human, has evolved into the transformative technology we know as artificial intelligence. Or as it is more commonly referred to – AI. As AI technology has advanced, industries across the spectrum have found countless applications for using AI to streamline operations and improve productivity. One particular industry capitalizing on AI technology is the recruiting and staffing industry. With good reason considering the explosion of AI-powered sourcing platforms, and hiring tools designed to make the recruiting process easier and faster.

One area of recruiting that AI is becoming increasingly prevalent in, is college campus recruiting. Incorporating AI into your campus recruitment strategy has tangible benefits worth exploring. Let’s break it down. But first, let’s discuss some of the standard practices in campus recruitment and the challenges faced by recruiters in this niche space in the talent acquisition industry.

Traditional Campus Recruitment

In a typical campus recruitment scenario, corporate recruiters were physically sent to visit universities and colleges to search for potential employees. Working with college career services departments, campus recruiters would manually collect applications, screen potential candidates, and even conduct preliminary interviews in person during these visits. You can imagine the time-consuming, resource-intensive challenges this approach entails. Not to mention, the limitations on a campus recruiter’s overall talent pipeline when they could only target one university at a time. Fast forward to the present day where recruiting technology and AI provide a better, more efficient solution.

The Benefits of AI in Campus Recruitment

Any technology that streamlines tedious workflows and manual processes is bound to give efficiency a boost. But let’s get specific on the benefits of incorporating AI technology into your campus recruiting process.

• Candidate Screening: According to research, there are approximately 250 applicants for every corporate position out of which an average of four get selected for an interview. Imagine the laborious task of screening 250 resumes manually to find that perfect candidate. The right AI recruiting technology can automate and simplify candidate screening, significantly reducing the time it takes to shortlist the right candidates. For example, the AI sourcing platform – Arya, uses 300+ attributes, and seven multidimensional data points to assess candidate relevancy, and simultaneously sources, scores, and ranks candidates from multiple channels for 90% of jobs in less than five minutes, reducing shortlisting time by 50%.
• Eliminates Bias: Diversity, equity, and inclusion in campus recruiting is critical. But there are times when unconscious recruiter bias can make it difficult to achieve diversity hiring goals. An AI tool has the ability to screen candidates based only on relevant skills and qualifications. AI platforms such as Arya provide candidate masking features to ensure an unbiased approach while maintaining scoring and ranking integrity.
• Candidate Engagement: One of the biggest challenges for campus recruiters is having enough time to properly engage and reach out to potential candidates. It’s easy for candidates to slip into that black hole of non-communication when they don’t feel engaged. AI recruiting tools can automate communication and candidate reach-out, making it easier for recruiters to keep candidates in their pipeline. Arya features a multi-channel candidate communication dashboard with talk, text, email, and chatbot options for communication. Being able to engage with candidates in their preferred format is a huge benefit to recruiters.
• Data-Driven Decisions: AI recruiting tools that provide talent intelligence around key data points such as location potential, skill set distribution, salary projection, company mapping, and education, etc., help recruiters to establish more effective search parameters that not only lead you to the most compatible candidates faster, but also empower you to make better, data-driven decisions.

There’s no question the benefits of AI in campus recruiting are tangible. However, there are some considerations to be aware of to ensure you’re using AI responsibly and ethically.

• Privacy: One major concern regarding the use of AI for the recruitment process is the fundamental right to privacy. Recruiters and hiring teams should examine their security protocols to ensure all candidate data is protected.
• Human Oversight: Although AI has reached phenomenal stages of independence, it’s vital to stress the importance of human oversight in AI. Ultimately, it is a human who will be responsible for decisions influenced by AI tools. So, while AI is a wonderful tool for streamlining a myriad of recruitment processes, there should always be review and input from qualified recruiters or HR teams.
• Bias: Ensuring a bias-free system of recruitment is one of the key elements of an effective campus recruitment process. And while it’s true that AI has the potential to remove bias, the opposite can also occur. That brings us back to human oversight to eliminate the possibility of an AI tool inadvertently imposing some sort of bias into the process.

There are some people who, rather than embracing AI for the amazing tool it is, fear that AI will take over their jobs in the future. But the reality is that AI is meant to augment various aspects of human work – not take over human jobs. In fact, the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) 2020 Jobs Report shows that AI has the potential to create more than 97 million jobs in the coming years.

You could say the process of campus recruitment is similar to sculpting masses of clay into fine sculptures. It requires innovative thinking, dedication, and a little help from technology to do it right. AI is a powerful tool in the right hands and can be the difference between success and failure in reaching your recruiting goals.

It’s also critical to choose the right AI tool to maximize the benefits and elevate your recruitment process. The best option is one that delivers a solution for every sourcing challenge like Arya. With the largest talent database in the industry (850+ million candidates), scoring and ranking, and talent intelligence, Arya is a single-platform sourcing solution. If you’re ready to cut shortlisting time by 50% while you source the talent most likely to succeed in every open role, book a demo of Arya today.

Resources

• https://www.weforum.org/reports/the-future-of-jobs-report-2020
• https://www.glassdoor.com/employers/blog/50-hr-recruiting-stats-make-think/