It’s a known fact that the modern workplace is becoming digitally transformed. Time-consuming HR tasks are being automated, allowing the recruiting team to focus on more important aspects of their jobs. Intelligent automation expands on this concept via artificial intelligence which simplifies processes, frees up resources, and improves operational efficiencies. Intelligent automation platforms provide many benefits across industries as a result of the use of large amounts of data, the precision of calculations, analysis, and resulting business implementation. But more on that later.
First, let’s understand IA a little better.
Understanding Intelligent Automation (IA)
Simply put, IA is an integration of artificial intelligence and automation. Combining Artificial Intelligence (AI) with automation, IA helps machines sense, understand, learn and act, either independently or with human assistance. This framework of IA is supported by four pillars- Business Process Management (BPM), Robotic Process Automation (RPA), Artificial Intelligence (AI), and Integration platforms. Each of these plays a critical role in achieving digital transformation success.
- BPM automates business processes at the corporate level by coordinating and connecting users, tasks, and systems.
- RPA eliminates the need for humans to do routine and monotonous jobs. It understands processes and variations and makes decisions based on this understanding.
- AI seeks to imitate human cognitive learning and reasoning in order to provide automated and intelligent insights. It’s interesting to note that Intelligent automation is not just another term for artificial intelligence (AI), although the two concepts do overlap. IA places humans at the core of the system and decision-making, whereas AI places technology at the core.
- Finally, integration platforms connect diverse systems and businesses to solve common problems and avoid data duplication. For this, companies typically provide an Application Programming Interface (API) for customers to connect with.
IA in hiring
When it comes to recruitment, IA has the potential to transform the HR function by boosting efficiency, improving productivity, and fostering innovation. It allows machines to process more than just data and helps companies to surpass traditional work functions.
Let’s took look at the key ways in which automation intelligence is making quite the impact:
1. Aids in the reduction of errors.
This improves your organization’s overall efficiency, and it’s especially useful in hiring because it reduces cost-per-hire and time-to-hire while improving hiring quality. In fact, even if the data is unstructured, IA can be used to decipher patterns, spot discrepancies, and check for accuracy.
2. Reduces costs by augmenting the workforce and improving productivity:
Automating systems & processes and leveraging data analytics accelerates productivity & reduces cost. IA provides the ability to scale quickly without increasing risk, compromising quality, or putting a strain on the existing workforce. Business leaders reap the benefits through higher production yields and improved ROI.
3. Enables constant improvement
Intelligent automation has the added bonus of being able to continually assess and incorporate changes into its process. Many platforms have built-in assessment tools that can help communicate the effectiveness of the company’s practices that can be implemented to improve the hiring processes.
4. Boosts candidate engagement. This is achieved via AI chatbots that can initiate conversations, schedule interviews, and answer candidate questions, anytime. This helps foster future and repeat applicants, and boost your company brand by presenting your organization favorably.
The future of IA hiring
In 2017, a survey by Avanade found that 86% of global business leaders believed they needed to leverage intelligent automation in the next five years to stay ahead in their industries- those five years are up. IA capabilities are now developing extremely quickly, and the IA and AI industry is experiencing explosive growth in businesses.
For example, a Singaporean Government Agency addressed the tedious challenge of manually screening 3000 applicants by automating the process and saving an incredible SGD$62,090 and 177.4 days of staff productivity! Credit goes to impress.ai who leveraged intelligent automation to streamline the entire recruitment process & ensured a superior candidate & recruiter experience.
Thus, it’s safe to conclude that IA is not meant to replace recruiters, but rather to free them from manual tasks and let them focus their attention on tasks that require human interaction. And while technology is the driving force behind IA, a proactive people-oriented strategy will define the success of any IA initiative.
