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Robotic Process Automation vs. Artificial Intelligence

November 6, 2018
 
iCIMS Staff
3 min read

It’s time for your team to fill an open position and with that, comes a ton of paperwork, repetitive administrative tasks and a time-consuming process that can become stressful and aggravating to both your employee and the new hire.

To ease the pressure and instill trust between the recruiter and the candidate, automation is the key driver to a streamlined, stress-free hiring process that will enable your team to focus on what truly matters – hiring quality candidates to support business growth.

With the introduction of new recruitment technologies, it might be difficult to find one that best fits your team. To clear the waters, the information below will help you determine how to make the best choice.

What is Robotic Process Automation?

Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is a software robot that supports high-volume recruitment by preforming clerical tasks that can improve accuracy and accelerate data processing, such as payroll, benefits enrollment, onboarding and compliance reporting – tasks that can take your team loads of time to complete due to manual, repetitive labor. To do this, RPA technology is rule-based and follows a specific set of instructions set by the user.

What is Artificial Intelligence?

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a computer system that had the ability to imitate a human’s responses and makes deductions through machine learning. AI goes far beyond performing clerical tasks – it can adapt to a new environment while learning new outcomes to improve. Not only can AI handle operational tasks, but it can support complex stages within the recruitment lifecycle – such as, sourcing, interviews and onboarding.

In fact, according to a recent Korn Ferry global survey, 63 percent of 800 HR professionals surveyed said that AI has already changed the way they recruit by automating tasks such as candidate sourcing, applicant screening and interview scheduling.

Simply, both RPA and AI will help your HR team trim down their recruitment checklist to accelerate the hiring process. However, depending on your organization’s use case, one might be better than the other.

How Are Robotic Process Automation and AI Different?

Both RPA and AI are great tools that can support your hiring efforts, however, choosing the right one that best fits your needs might be a little tricky for first-timers.

RPA is process driven and caters to organizations that lean on disparate systems and a disjointed hiring processes to hire talent. Companies who chose to implement RPA into their current recruitment platform, are looking for a quick implementation (weeks or months) and low costs. In other words, some see this as a quick fix to hit the ground running with recruitment.

On the other hand, AI is data-centric. For instance, RPA can input information into an offer letter based on the data that has been inserted into the system, whereas AI, will intelligently scan the offer letter and pull out important information (salary, role description, etc.) to deliver or track based on the user’s needs.

Think of this way – AI is seen as the thinker, whereas RPA is the doer. Many organizations use RPA technology as the digital stairway to the automation world, however, once they’ve kicked off, they’ll turn to AI to elevate and improve their automation efforts through quality data and an improved HR workflow.

Using AI and Robotic Process Automation to Solve Complex Business Challenges

Organizations are using AI to improve their candidate’s job search experience with Google-optimized job postings and with TextRecruit’s  AI-powered customizable recruiting chatbot, ARI, organizations can engage and convert passive candidates to active job seekers, faster.

Machine learning capabilities allow Google to identify and showcase available jobs the minute they’re posted on your career site – allowing employers to cut the middle men and unwanted recruitment advertising costs.

In terms of prioritizing compliancy and preventing data processing errors, RPA technology can automate recruitment tasks, remove process delays and cleanse data to ensure consistency across multiple systems.

Overall, new technologies will continue to impact what recruiting looks like and a recruiter’s role will not be obsolete. However, your organization’s leadership team will need to stay up-to-date on recruiting technology to identify what aligns with their organization’s business objectives to drive expansion and growth.

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