Conversational bots will revolutionise frontline hiring: Here's why

Tech enabled Applicant Screening is critical for efficient Frontline Hiring 

Labour is a complicated factor of production in India, given how in India we are a labour surplus country and yet the one with potentially the highest skill gap. This skill problem manifests itself severely in India, because unlike countries like China, India skipped the manufacturing phase of economic growth and jumped straight into services led by the boom in IT services.

Put simply we have a lot of people, but not enough of those with the right skills - that can raise the floor of wages which remain stubbornly low.  In such a market, where you see a high number of applicants for a few open jobs, low skill walk-in job drives  sometimes can cause entire railings to fall off.

We need to be able to screen better, efficiently. 

That contrasts drastically with developed markets, the US for eg, has a dearth of candidates to do frontline roles. Here, sourcing would seem to be the bigger problem to tackle.

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It would make sense to have a perfect match - the candidate with the right skill matching the right job - for any sort of hiring. But for higher volume, frontline hiring,  two factors start playing a disproportionately important role : 

1. Turnaround Time (TAT) of the process

‍TAT for the frontline is probably the one variable which needs to be most optimised for. It is a well known heuristic that TAT is directly proportional to drop-off rates - i.e. the more time a process of hiring takes end to end the higher the probability of drop off in the funnel. This in turn increases the number of applicants that need to be sourced hence increasing cost per hire.

It is all well and good to take 6 months to hire a CEO. Afterall, there are huge ramifications to getting an incorrect hire. But in the frontline, you need to be done in 24 or in the worst case - 48 hours from Sourcing to Hiring.

2. Recruiter Productivity

‍It would make sense to be able to screen the 100s of applicants an employer gets for the ones with relevant skills, engage to schedule all of them for an interview, follow up to ensure they turn up etc - all in the same ideal TAT. Ie, doing a lot more in the lowest possible timeline. This would make all the difference especially during peak demand, or festive periods where lean teams need to effect superlative outcomes.

Technology, Chatbots to be particular, will make the difference

To get the twin tenets of high recruiter productivity at the lowest possible TAT, a technology play would become imperative for growth oriented employer brands. Currently, the process at most large workforce employers (most of these are well known brands) are beset by manual processes across the recruitment value chain. Make no mistake, most of these companies have best in class HR technology at their disposal - but most of the frontline processes are still “off system”. 

At the heart of all of this is that traditional HR tech was always designed for desk jobs, the so-called white-collared workforce. And hence most of these systems are email based and laptop optimised. They are English first and implicitly need the applicant to be conversant with  digital flows. 

India’s frontline however 1) is extremely busy and every day’s wage counts, 2) are desk less and hence they’re mobile first 3) are extremely comfortable with WhatsApp 4) are more comfortable in vernacular language.

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What are the advantages of having a Conversational Bot do the talking?

India’s frontline hiring works best (across TAT and Recruiter Productivity) when the recruiter engages with candidates in the language best suited for both of them. And for most frontline jobs vernacular conversation is the way to go. Specifically there are three distinct advantages of having a WhatsApp bot do the conversation : 

1. Funnel Management works best with Automation

The funnel for Indian frontline jobs looks like the below and suffers from the “Messy ToFu (Top of Funnel)” problem. There are applicants galore and a lot of casual interest in the system. Recruiters have the unenviable task of sifting through 100s of resumes, reaching out to all the candidates and engaging them all to get a 1% conversion at the end of it all. All of the engagement with candidates is mostly manually handled. We’ve written about the secret lives of recruiters here.All of this ought to get completely automated. Hunar’s customers have reported a 2- 3X increase in productivity with automation at a recruiter level.  

2. Candidate Trust

India’s frontline workforce ecosystem is fragmented for a reason. But characteristic of this is a distinct lack of trust across the players. Candidates don’t trust agents, agents distrust master vendors, there is information asymmetry in the vendor ecosystem and ultimately this results in a negative NPS across the system. Small things like a candidate never gets to hear that they’ve been rejected. There is no feedback given and no clarity on any timelines. This is the norm. But imagine an employer branded, WhatsApp verified bot that drives employer branding and candidate engagement at the same time. That would be a game changer‍

3. Data powering predictable outcomes 

Most of India’s frontline hiring happens on WhatsApp groups and referral conversations.  All of this is largely un-digitised though - employers have very less hold of what happens in the frontline. Who the interested candidates are, how many are scheduled to turn-up, what does a recruiter do all day?

Imagine if all frontline interactions are digitised - all leads are strategically imported, all insights are derived at a hyperlocal level to drive clear predictable outcomes. A conversational bot is able to record all conversations back and forth - with web hooks to digitise each interaction - so that clear candidate intent data is captured. Employers would be able to plan well in advance and keep seat-fill at an optimal level.

The time is ripe for progressive employers to relook at the way they deal with the men and women that toil for them in the frontline. And it all begins with a #Conversation. A conversation that conveys kindness, empathy and restores dignity and trust. A bot does not empathise, but it would certainly free-up enough time so that Humans can have the #conversations that matter. And that would make a huge difference in the frontline.