Only Empathetic AI Technology Can Become A Recruiter’s True Friend

But let's go back to the world of recruitment. We believe that for all recruiters out there struggling to find an excellent Senior Software Engineer currently available at the market while meeting other KPIs makes dreaming about these future assistants abstract and, quite frankly - irrelevant. 

That's precisely why we decided to write this article in which we'll give you a good idea of what empathetic technology is and, more importantly, how you can have great use of it. So, yeah, you'll find that excellent Senior Software Developer easier and with less stress, thanks to it. Therefore, make sure to read the following paragraphs! 

What is empathetic technology? 

Empathetic technology or empathetic AI is something that Google has been experimenting with for a long time. The idea behind it is to create technology that will be so seamless that you won't even realize it's there - it is your personal assistant that is there just when you need it! For example, look at the Google Search engine. We are talking about a search engine - that's it. Whenever you want to find something, you type it down, and you can learn everything from what are good restaurants near you to researching some complex studies regarding AI. 

And more importantly, Google is there to help you figure out what you want. It guides you without you even knowing it! See, that's exactly what empathetic technology is. And as you're reading this paragraph, you probably just realized, for the first time, that over time, this powerful search engine has become our personal assistant without us even being aware of it. 

But, what if Google wasn't the only tool doing it on such a large scale? What if you could log in to your recruitment tool in the morning and feel as comfortable with it as you do when googling anything. More specifically, not even googling it, but having served all answers to you intuitively and helpfully. 

And, even though we said in our latest article that most recruitment tools are designed in a dehumanizing way, some are doing it right. So, here are all the ways in which empathetic technology can help you recruit top talent and the ways it could keep doing it in the future! 

Smart technology entering recruitment

For this smart and empathetic technology based on AI, we'll have an umbrella term: smart digital assistants - covering everything from chatbots, job recommendations, and any other data-driven, intuitive assistance you could get from your recruitment tool.

There are many areas in which smart digital assistants can be a helping hand during the creation and execution of a recruitment process. Still, for explaining purposes, we decided to categorize it into two main categories:

1. Assist you in becoming better at structuring, setting up, and conducting your recruitment process from start to finish

2. Help you nurture great talent 

Your digital mentor for all questions

Just imagine you had a digital mentor helping you out in whichever area of recruitment you needed help. For instance, so many recruiters are unfamiliar with how recruitment marketing works. Nowadays, their job requires more and more knowledge in the area, but surprise, surprise - recruiters don't have enough time to dive into the topic. 

This causes a loop that is hard to get out of - on the one hand, you struggle to find and attract relevant talent, which takes a lot of time, and on the other, this doesn't leave enough time to spend on learning new practices. 

That is where smart technology can step in as a true savior. Having access to all relevant data and making conclusions about it can be helpful in creating more resonating job posts, publishing them on relevant sites, and ultimately generating more qualified candidates. Smart and empathetic technology  can both assist you with valuable information to make decisions yourself while performing manual work for you. It truly means having a digital mentor and an assistant by your side!

Artificial intelligence meets emotional intelligence

Nurturing talent is one of the toughest and potentially most time-consuming jobs recruiters and HR professionals need to do. At the same time, it is one of the essential jobs every recruiter should focus a lot of its effort on. Once again, smart technology can jump in like a true hero in this situation. But before we do any jumping, we need to develop emotionally intelligent tools that will be understanding of our needs and practices to be able to work side by side with us. It's pretty simple, as we see it, without empathy, there is no way you can build a brilliant assistant bringing any value.

In a recent interview that Google Empathy Lab had with an American journalist, author, and entrepreneur, Krista Trippet, on the importance of genuinely listening, there was one quote that couldn't get out of our heads. A section that perfectly describes our thought process when considering our readers, users, or anything else related to building our product: 

"I think there's a real need in the physical world as much as in the online world, to create alternative spaces where it would be reasonable to ask any of us to walk in and bring our best selves and be looking for the good in the other and be willing to surprise ourselves and be truly inviting other people to surprise us… My goal in preparing (for her interviews) is not that I know what they think as much as how they think."

For recruiters, this means having assistants recognize their needs and jumping in when needed (we're big on jumping in this article). But, let's elaborate it in more specific recruitment-related examples.

You all know that there are some positions for which candidates become unavailable on the market in a matter of days after you first contact them. And, missing out on an opportunity is truly costly. However, it's not always easy to maintain relationships when other positions need to be filled or other tasks that have to be done. On the other hand, there are still positions for which you make your candidates wait for you a little - it may sound harsh, but let's face it, it's the truth. 

Having an assistant created on the basis of empathetic technology that recognizes such differences and simplifies prioritization can go a long way in mentioned cases. For example, if you have 5 or 10 positions open at any moment, it's not realistic that you will be able to dedicate your focus and attention to all of them at any given moment. Therefore, no matter how much you try and are willing to sacrifice your wellbeing, the results won't be great. But, having an intelligent and empathetic (!) digital assistant that understands the implicit patterns of communication and guides you through your relationships with candidates is an incredible asset. 

Where there's empathy, there's a relationship 

… Where there's a relationship, there's success! 

Living in a world interconnected with the technology we use daily, logically, we reach a point where we want to use it for our success. But success is never disconnected from the relationships we build along the way. For us, at TalentLyft, the relationships we build are between our users and us and, even more importantly, between our users and our tool. 

And if we manage to create technology that helps our users to build good relationships with the candidates and help them reach success, our mission is done. That is why, in the upcoming period, the primary focus of our Compassion AI Lab will be working on building a tool designed to guide recruiters in real-time and providing them relevant assistance for their own and candidates' wellbeing!