“As the first technology company to deploy an AI-driven ATS solution, CEIPAL has enjoyed a front row seat to the disruption that’s happening in this industry by way of artificial intelligence, which provides us a unique opportunity to establish industry benchmarks,” said Sameer Penakalapati, founder of CEIPAL. “Now that the reality of AI technology in our industry has actually caught up to its buzz, we want to quantify the sea change it’s causing and share that data with our customers and the rest of the staffing world in preparation for the coming new year.”
Other key findings and data points include the following:
- Large Staffing Firms Are Lagging: Large-sized staffing firms (50-100 recruiters) showed relatively low awareness of AI-enabled ATS technology even when compared to their smaller mid-sized (25-50 recruiters) counterparts. While enterprise-sized firms are unsurprisingly leading the adoption curve, 43 percent of large-sized staffing firms have no plan to adopt AI.
- Consensus on AI’s Future and Benefits: All respondents either agreed or strongly agreed that AI is the future of recruitment and that its adoption will enable recruiters to build better relationships with candidates.
- Most Say AI Helps to Eliminate Human Bias: The majority of respondents (71 percent) believe that AI will eliminate human bias from the recruitment process. However, there were 29 percent who strongly disagreed with that sentiment.
- AI-enabled Chatbots Are Critical for Reaching Gen-Z and Millennial Recruits: More than half of today’s recruits span a generation that has famously shunned email and phone calls in favor of texting. Unsurprisingly, 52 percent of respondents strongly agreed that AI-enabled Chatbots will improve productivity and the recruitment experience of those candidates.
- Drivers for Adopting Artificial Intelligence: Respondents indicated “marketing requirements” are the biggest driver toward AI adoption along with productivity, quality and reporting needs. Respondents who reported marketing requirements as a pain point were 23 percent more inclined to adopt AI in their recruitment practices (80 percent said they were likely to adopt) than those who did not report marketing as a pain point (65 percent said they were likely to adopt).
- AI Adoption Trends by Geography: Southeast Asia leads the pack in AI adoption for recruitment. This trend is likely to continue, as firms in that region often work on transactional placements with smaller margins and strict requirements for operational excellence. Firms in the U.K. followed closely behind with U.S. firms technologically lagging behind both those regions. However, 60 percent of U.S. firms intend to catch up within the year by incorporating AI technologies into their current practices.
Key AI-driven capabilities that are changing the landscape for staffing firms include ideal candidate “cloning” to identify similarly qualified candidates at the click of a button, management of resume harvesting that leverages unused daily credits to augment a firm’s internal database of candidates to fill future openings, and intelligent chatbots that improve and streamline communication channels, particularly for “Gen Z” and “Millennial” candidates. CEIPAL will continue monitoring AI adoption trends and data across the recruiting industry and deliver updated industry benchmarks on an ongoing basis.
A complete copy of the report can be found here.