Imagine if someone walked into your office today and told you they could make it 2x more likely you’d fill positions within two weeks, 3x more likely candidates would actually enjoy your hiring experience (yep, we used “enjoy” and “hiring experience” in the same sentence), and 2x more likely you’d improve first-year retention.
You’d be skeptical. But you’d listen, right?
That was Aptitude Research founder Madeline Laurano’s reaction. As one of the most respected talent acquisition analysts in the industry, she’d heard anecdotes and stories from senior talent leaders about companies seeing exceptional results from a new category of technology: Conversational AI. These were large global brands that had always struggled to speed up the hiring process and create better experiences for candidates or employees. Yet, they were suddenly shaving weeks off time-to-hire and delivering experiences that were seeing positive candidate and employee feedback skyrocket.
So, Laurano decided to dig in deeper.
She spent months polling, interviewing, and researching global talent acquisition and HR teams that had invested in Conversational AI. The goal was simple: Validate whether the stories she’d heard were isolated examples of success, or signs of a fundamental hiring transformation.
Today, she’s sharing her findings with the world. In Aptitude Research’s full report, “Conversational AI and the Future of Hiring: Humans, Technology and How They Work Together,” Laurano and her team explore the real, tangible impact that this new category of technology is having on how the world’s largest employers attract and retain talent — even during a global pandemic.
Here are just a few of the big takeaways from the report:
- Conversational AI is helping companies do more with less. 40% of companies that have invested in Conversational AI see the biggest benefits from improved efficiency in their hiring process. Organizations using Conversational AI are saving individual recruiters or recruiting coordinators an average of 20 hours per week on scheduling and 9 hours per week on screening — freeing up time for higher value work.
- It’s not just about speed and efficiency — it’s about experience, too. 39% of companies cite a far better candidate experience as the primary driver of the value they see from Conversational AI.
- The results speak for themselves. McDonald’s — one of the company’s featured in the research — shortened their application process from 10 minutes to an average of 2 minutes, and reduced time-to-hire from an average of 10-14 days to less than 2.
That’s real value. And the technology is just scratching the surface of where it can go, Laurano says.
“When most companies think about Conversational AI, they think chatbots — but Conversational AI is a much more advanced technology,” Laurano says. “It enhances the personal, human side of talent acquisition. In the past, it’s been an all or nothing approach between technology and a high-touch approach in hiring. But with conversational AI, companies aren’t picking between humans and technology. They get both.”
To download the full Aptitude Research report, including the McDonald’s case study, click here.
