ChatBot vs VoiceBot in Recruitment

In the recent times, virtual assistants have been talked about a lot to help professionals become more efficient, effective and fast. Virtual assistants are thus getting manifested in a Chatbot type implementation and in few cases VoiceBots.

Chatbots have been very readily adopted in the Customer Care and Support domains. Interestingly however, when one deeply studies the effectiveness of Chatbot specific to recruitment, the outlook is not very encouraging. On the other side, VoiceBots in recruitment seem to have delivered significantly higher throughputs for the recruiters. On detailed study, below are the findings:

Why ChatBots have not been effective in recruitment?

1. They have to be conversational AI driven. This also means the AI has to be very matured and robust and has to deliver accurate responses to candidates’ queries. This means a lot of data has to be existing before an accurate conversational AI can be deployed. Due to lack of large sized-data, most ChatBots are erratic and causing low-trust amongst candidates on its usage.
2. Since candidates know that the entire interaction is non-human driven, they don’t seem to have the emotional connect with the interaction and rather prefer to speak to some human being.
3. Many a times, the candidates are unable to type their queries accurately causing the AI responses also to be inaccurate; further frustrating the candidates
4. ChatBot interaction initiation is via an Email, SMS or a mobile App. Email & SMS open rates are very very low (about 8-15%), hence majority of candidates don’t even initiate a ChatBot interaction, resulting in very low response rate for the recruiters.

Why VoiceBots are gaining trust with candidates?

1. VoiceBots with or without AI, deliver the message in the recruiter’s own voice. This build instant credibility and high emotional connect with the interaction in the candidate’s mind; since they know that an acutal recruiter has made an effort in creating the interaction.
2. VoiceBots solicits responses from candidates over a phone and it becomes easier and quicker for the candidate to respond or ask questions. Using phone does not require an behavioral change for candidates compared to typing job related interaction.
3. VoiceBots are delivered via a phone, similar to a Mobile Phone call. The response rate of candidates responding to calls is significantly higher (75 to 80%)!

Reality however is that ChatBots are available in abundant in the market and companies have a lot to choose from; but VoiceBots are gaining more trust and credibility with recruiters at progressive enterprises, purely due to higher response rate; without compromising candidate experience.