How to make the most of AI, today and in the future
These days, AI is just about everywhere you look – even if, at first glance, you might not notice it. From digital assistants to smart devices to tailored entertainment recommendations, AI is learning and adapting our behaviours. Ben Carter, Senior Director of Automation and AI at Bullhorn, says, “We are embracing AI because it’s making our lives easier.”
Like nearly every other industry, recruitment is ready to put AI to use. According to our latest GRID Industry Trends Report, 58% of UK recruitment agencies experimented with AI in 2023. What’s more, agencies with an AI policy were the most likely to report revenue growth in 2023, followed by those experimenting with generative AI. AI will elevate everyone’s game, but early adopters will rise above the rest.
When it comes to leveraging AI, the possibilities can seem endless. How can your agency take stock of the latest technologies, integrate AI into your daily operations, and capitalise on all that AI can do?
At Bullhorn’s recent Roadshow event series, Carter led a conversation about AI in recruitment, Bullhorn’s roadmap for AI, and how to turn hype into value. Below, check out the highlights from his session to learn how to get started with AI today and in the months and years to come.
The journey to AI
The agencies that will be best prepared to use AI will have already laid the groundwork. They’ll have digitised their data, ensuring their records are contained in a single source of truth. They’ve analysed their data so they can gain a better understanding of the data they have and how to improve their processes. And they’ll have applied automation across all of their processes, letting technology take the lead on rote tasks so they can focus on high-value actions. Said Carter, “They’re ready for AI because their data’s in a good place, their processes are in a good place, and their staff are ready for something new.”
The AI landscape
Although ChatGPT is in the spotlight right now, there’s much more to AI than just generative AI. Machine learning, natural language processing, discriminative models, and supervised learning all fall under the umbrella of AI. Many of these tools have already been part of recruitment technology; for example, CV parsing is just natural language processing that recognises keywords.
In 2024, Bullhorn is ready to build a more productive user experience by integrating AI in various ways throughout the recruitment workflow. Let’s take a look at the three types of AI that are poised to have the most significant impact on recruitment.
Generative AI
You’re probably the most familiar with generative AI. If you’ve used ChatGPT or Google’s Gemini (formerly Bard), you’ve used generative AI. It helps you write content and messages, and in a relationship-driven, communication-heavy industry like recruitment, it has a range of use cases:
- Summarising profiles
- Pitching candidates for jobs
- Generating interview questions
- Creating emails and text messages
- Formatting resumes
- Improving existing communications and job descriptions
The key to success when it comes to generative AI is prompting. A prompt is a command, like asking AI to write you an email. The more specific you are with your prompt, the more useful your output will be. If you ask for an email and provide only basic information, generative AI will give you a basic result. If you incorporate company-specific information or even data directly from Bullhorn, the more tailored – and engaging – your output will be.
There are clear privacy and security risks involved with inputting data into a free model like those provided by ChatGPT, Google, or Microsoft. Integrating a large language model directly within the Bullhorn platform not only provides you with better outcomes but also ensures your data is secure. (Read Bullhorn’s Responsible AI Statement for more information on data security.)
Plus, with pre-built prompts and options to define length and tone, Bullhorn is there to help you craft the perfect message in just a few clicks.
Source and match
Get ready for a new search experience. AI-powered source and match is ready to supercharge how you find candidates and jobs, allowing you to:
- Find the best candidates to fill a job (and vice versa)
- Automatically build a search for a new job
- What jobs your clients are posting that you don’t know about
- Highlight the best jobs for a candidate on your website
How does Bullhorn’s source and match approach work? It all starts with keyword synthesis, which takes information from a job posting and sends it through the LLM to expand upon every possible way to phrase those keywords. Then, with that query built, AI will dig into every corner of your database and find the best candidate to match that posting, considering contexts like their background, past placements, communications with the candidate, client preferences, and beyond.
Bullhorn’s AI-powered source and match offers all the power of traditional source and match, turbo-charged by generative AI auto-building and sourcing AI matching algorithms.
What does all of this mean? Simply put, faster and easier searching – not just in Bullhorn, but in external sources as well. Faster searching means finding the best candidates and beating the competition to new jobs, all while saving hours of work per week.
Directive AI
The goal of directive AI is to guide you toward what you need to focus on to succeed. By analysing user behaviour and leaning on the context of your database, directive AI can help by:
- Suggesting steps to take based on the open job
- Summarising key previous interactions
- Listing the next tasks you should work on today
- Flagging at-risk alerts and opportunities
- Giving you the best person to contact
Sound familiar? That’s because elements of directive AI already exist in Bullhorn. The Bullhorn Data Hub brings in external data that is relational to Bullhorn records to provide additional context to your decision making. Bullhorn Pulse analyses your interactions to provide relationship intelligence. And actionable insights from Bullhorn Analytics ensure you and your team spend your time on the most valuable tasks.
While Bullhorn’s full suite of directive AI capabilities is currently in development, our long-term goal is to build AI-powered solutions to guide you toward optimal outcomes, optimise your processes, and take the guesswork out of recruitment.
The path to success
How can you ensure your organisation is primed and ready to make the most of AI? We’ve covered it all in detail in our guide to AI adoption, but here are the key steps:
- Centralise and standardise your data. Continue on your digital transformation journey and ensure your database is accurate, clean, and leveraged throughout your business. The better your data, the more value you’ll get from AI.
- Unleash automation, self-service, and analytics. Becoming familiar with and making the most of these technologies will lay the groundwork for AI use and adoption.
- Set policies for security, compliance, and regulation. Responsible AI use requires policies around security, privacy, transparency, and accountability.
- Do your research and choose the right partners. One size doesn’t fit all! Make sure you’re choosing a partner that will continue to work with you and that meets the needs of your organisation.
- Test, train, and start using the technology. Test AI thoroughly, and make sure your team is ready to adopt AI into their workflows.
- Gather feedback, adapt, and retrain for greater adoption. Implementing AI isn’t the end of your journey. AI requires continuous training and testing to ensure you’re building best practices and evolving alongside it.
Whether your agency is just starting the digital transformation journey or already embracing AI, Bullhorn is here to support you every step of the way. Join us on this transformative journey, and together, let’s unlock the full potential of AI in recruitment.
Ready to hear more insights on the trends shaping recruitment in 2024? Join us at our Roadshows in Rotterdam and Germany!
