The chatbot technology landscape isn’t nearly as overwhelming as you might think.
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Imagine having your candidates be given answers without you having to be online (or paying someone else to be!). Chatbots are very much the future of recruiting, but they can seem incredibly overwhelming.
Which technology should you use? How can they benefit your business? Is this form of recruiting automation too robotic?
Don’t be too overwhelmed, you can absolutely use chatbots in a way that benefits your company without losing that human feel. Chatbots can be as personalized as you want to make them with enough time, finances, and attention—in fact, because they bypass your candidates’ e-mail and go directly to them, they can, at times, feel more personalized than a simple e-mail message.
Here are three simple tips to get started with chatbots in a way that feels simple, not stressful.
Make Sure You’re at the Right Place for Chatbots
If you’re interested in starting to work with chatbots, your business needs to be at a level where you’re currently unable to handle the candidate inquiries yourself or you want to reach people on a whole new level.
If you’re still small and nimble, you may want to continue using humans only when it comes to communicating with candidates. But if you’re looking to grow rapidly or are already feeling overwhelmed with candidate inquiries, you may be at a good place for chatbots.
Go Short and Simple
One downside of e-mail is that in-boxes tend to feel incredibly busy. But chatbots can send short messages within Facebook messenger or another program that feel more personal and easier to handle.
There are some situations a chatbot will never be great for, like when a candidate has a very specific question. And let’s not forget that chatbots are programmed to ‘learn’ responses based on previous interactions, which naturally means that they are not capable of solving new problems as they arise.
Have Defined Goals
As with any other recruiting strategy, it’s important to put a goal in place before diving in. Are you looking to provide an exceptional candidate experience? Automate mundane task? Improve candidate communication by offering more timely feedback?
Make sure you have a focus for your bot so that when you start “teaching” it skills, you have a direction you’re walking in. On that note, make sure you’re regularly monitoring your chatbot and tracking its interactions with your candidates to continuously improve upon it. Like all forms of technology, it will need to be maintained and updated to be the most effective.