Increase Recruiting Productivity with Ideal.com

As a recruiting leader, I am obsessed with how to increase recruiting productivity. One of my fascinations lately is how we can leverage AI in Recruiting to increase productivity. I was fortunate enough to connect with Mark D’Angelo with Ideal.com recently to talk about their product. This is not an endorsement of Ideal.com but rather a sneak peek at the awesome opportunities we have ahead if we begin using AI in Recruiting to increase productivity.

About Ideal.com

Ideal is an AI-powered talent screening & matching system that helps enterprise teams make more accurate, fair, and efficient talent decisions. The firm’s goal is to allow recruiters to spend more time on the high-touch, high-impact parts of recruiting and less on the mundane, low-impact functions of the role. The product features include screening, matching, engagement, and automation. Ideal wants to be the data behind every talent decision to ensure accuracy, fairness, and efficiency.

I spent about an hour with Mark in a demo and was impressed by what I saw. Although I know we barely scratched the surface, I definitely think this is a viable product for those of us who are searching for ways to increase recruiter productivity and client value.

Ideal’s product works with your CRM, ATS and assessment platforms to gather data and help make your recruiting processes more efficient. It sits at the top of the candidate funnel and runs point for the process right up until the initial interviews. In my discussion with Mark, he indicated that this design enables Ideal to do the heavy lifting and stop where the high value touch of the recruiter is needed.

Screening

The traditional way of recruiting begins with recruiters reviewing candidates’ resumes one by one for hours on end. For high volume recruiting, this one step can take recruiters days to manually stack rank and interview candidates for the open positions. One of the pieces I had not considered in this loss of productivity was the impact on the candidate experience. There may be the perfect candidate who applied for the role behind 20 not so qualified candidates who does not get a call from the recruiter. This is not only an awful candidate experience but it’s also a detriment to the company since it would lose out on great talent.

Ideal’s AI would stack rank the applicants based on their grading system (A-F). Before you get too worried, the system does allow recruiters to look at the candidate’s report card to explain why the candidate received the grade. This allows recruiters to begin trusting the results and thus, spend less time manually reviewing candidates.

The report card shows why they were graded based on information including historical candidates hired, their match to the skills required and the fit to the job. I was really impressed with Ideal’s “inferred skills” feature which reviews the candidate’s information and goes deeper in the skill assessment of the candidate related to the job. Over time, the AI improves based on your hiring and selection process.

I was amazed by the seamlessness of the product. Others I’ve reviewed were clunky to say the least but Ideal’s presence was impressive. If you’d like to see this process in action, be sure to check out the firm’s YouTube channel. It showcases videos of Ideal working with various applicant tracking systems to give you a better idea of its power as well as the ease of use.

Engagement

I have a love-hate relationship with Chatbots. Sometimes they seem more like a pain in the ass than a help, especially when I’m trying to get information off of a website quickly. When Mark mentioned their chatbot, I have to admit I rolled my eyes until I saw it in action.

Once a candidate applies, the chatbot engages them. You can configure the chatbot to ask additional questions based on the role to further assess their fit for the job. The company uses texting to increase the chances of a candidate responding which I found to be helpful. The bot grades the candidate not only on what they answer, but also how they answer.

Based on the answers, Ideal will improve the ranking of the candidate without any work done by the recruiter. It also allows a firm to share employer branding content and other items as well.

Watch the chatbot in action here.

Matching

So the previous features impressed me, but this feature had me saying “Holy Shit”! I cannot tell you how many times I’ve paid a search fee for a candidate who had applied to another role or who had their resume in our applicant tracking system. The thought of how many perfect candidates are sitting in my ATS who get overlooked keeps me up at night. Well, Ideal has the perfect solution.

When a position is posted in your ATS, Ideal will go and review past candidates to source qualified candidates sitting right in your platform. It not only finds the candidates but also grades them against the current role.

This, for me, was a game changer. The amount of time saved by leveraging Ideal can not only increase the productivity of the recruiter but also maximize the candidate experience with this one awesome feature. Once the candidate is identified, Ideal’s chatbot engages the candidate to see if they’re interested in the new role and invite them to apply. Imagine the candidate’s view of your brand when receiving the invite to consider roles they may be qualified for!

My firm has a huge commitment to internal career pathing and hiring but my team and I struggle sourcing internal talent. Most do not have updated resumes in our system and trying to limit your sourcing to internal talent is clunky in most ATS I have worked with. Ideal has already worked with large firms to identify star internal talent using this feature by promoting internal talent to the top of the search results.

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I am excited by the evolution of the recruiting industry with all of the new technology out there. Ideal’s platform definitely perked my interest and excitement. In a recent article, it cited a survey showing 60% of a recruiter’s time is spent on low-impact, low-value tasks like screening, administration and other tasks. Imagine the increase in productivity of your recruiting team if it began using a product like Ideal’s to focus more on the high-value parts of the recruiting process.

It’s definitely something I will continue to research and I hope you will too! If you are interested in learning more about Ideal, connect with Mark D’Angelo on LinkedIn and ask for a demo.