Luc Dudler July 10, 2018
When it comes to chatbots there are two groups: some people absolutely love them and believe this technology can solve almost any problem and experience, while others believe the exact opposite. There are hundreds, if not thousands of different areas and use cases where chatbots are currently applied to -- we zoom into the phase before and during a job application in which a chatbot can automatically answer questions from candidates and jobseekers about an employer brand, specific jobs and help them during the entire application process.
Automating the handling of frequently-asked questions means that applicants receive prompt, accurate information that assists their consideration and application process in real-time. Receiving instant answers is a great candidate experience and increases the likelihood that the candidate will complete their application, instead of becoming distracted or applying elsewhere due to delays getting answers.
Jobseekers want immediate information and feedback
We live in a world of immediacy in which you can find information about unique products, companies and services within seconds and of course people expect this as well when looking for a new challenge. Jobseekers want to have an intuitive and seamless experience and as they turned to their mobile to find out about jobs in the next step they want to find out as quickly as possible, whether they really like the company, job, and team. Jobseekers also want to look beyond the shiny facade and get real facts. In an age of conversational interfaces like chat, it feels logical and natural to help jobseekers out through the help of chatbots. Employers like KellyOCG, innogy, T-Systems and many others already rely on them.
Companies invest significant resources in creating a simple, fun and equally trustworthy candidate experience, but you can level up your game significantly by implementing a career assistant that can automatically answer questions jobseekers have before, during and after the application. We’ll talk later about the acceptance of chatbots by candidates.
While we see both young and older audiences equally using chatbots this is something especially appealing to younger audiences and a technical innovation employers need to understand for future working generations.
Another significant advantage is that jobseekers ‘meet’ chatbots on platforms like Facebook (Messenger), Instagram and WhatsApp -- platforms where they spend a lot of their digital time already. Messaging apps account for 91% of all time spent on mobiles and desktops.
65% of interactions with career-related chatbots happen outside of business hours
Some companies have an FAQ page for jobseekers, but what we see is that these are often outdated and not longer than 10 to max. 30 questions. Chatbots can easily answer hundreds of questions, sometimes thousands and also answer questions to specific roles or job families in different ways (ie. giving a somewhat ambiguous answer to a question about the salary of a marketing role, but a competitive salary range of a cybersecurity role).
While chatbots are available 24/7 we found out that 65% of jobseekers interact with our chatbots from our clients outside of business hours. For passive candidates this number will be even higher. Answering their questions when they consider applying is priceless.
While a lot of the advantages of an FAQ chatbot for candidates is around improving the candidate experience it also saves companies money and time. Without a chatbot, well educated and trained recruiters have to stop what they’re doing to answer a phone call or email while the questions are often very repetitive. Our clients have a break-even point of their investment after 2 - 4 months in all implementations we have done so far.
On top, FAQ automation is a great first use case to try out a chatbot, but of course you can build on top of this and release new functionalities of the chatbot to your talent audience, which help them to apply for a job easier and quicker, improve overall conversion rates, qualify candidates, schedule interviews and even help during on-boarding.
Taking over the repetitive work aka. the non-value adding tasks
At jobpal we differentiate between value-add and non value-add tasks of a recruiting team. There are so many important tasks a recruiting team has to do: thinking about which career events to attend, which campaigns to run, which channels, platforms and job boards to be present on and then more importantly meeting candidates, getting to know them and trying to find out, whether a candidate could be a good fit for their company and team. It’s a lot of creative work, selling and knowing people. And then there is the piece of information that’s always missing, but has to be collected, the same question being asked the 10th time in a single week, the reminder emails, etc., etc.
The recruiting team should take care of the creative part, the selling and finding the best talent from relevant applications -- the chatbot should do all the rest.
To come back to FAQ: Your team has the knowledge, stories and winning arguments - you just have to make them available to your talent audience 24/7 and a chatbot can help you making this happen.
“Excellent. Thank you!”
The candidate doesn’t care how she applies, but she wants an intuitive, frictionless experience and wants to be asked for information about herself when it feels right!
The jobseekers interested in our clients as potential employers give them fantastic feedback after using a chatbot ranging from “Excellent. Thank you!” and “I really love the concept!” to “This was a really awesome and an interesting experience!”.
In the end, employer brands want to make the job application process as simple as possible and chatbots simply help to do that while approaching jobseekers on the platforms they spend most of their time anyway.
