All these years, recruiters have wasted precious working hours juggling tons of resumes and manually sourcing candidates. Technological advancement is now helping ease that pressure with algorithms performing administrative tasks from sourcing to screening candidates. According to the talent acquisition leaders, the most challenging task is hiring the ideal candidate from a pool of applications. The currently used conventional interview techniques are still not entirely successful in achieving this goal.  

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the emphasis on remote recruitment has multiplied. Digital hiring and video interviews are being employed as prominent methods by HR, recruitment agencies and companies alike. However, remote interviewing has reduced the possibility for face-to-face contact and, consequently, the assessment of a candidate’s soft skills, which are the key aspects of their performance at work. 

Recruiters need a more sophisticated way of choosing the right candidate. An interviewer’s inability to effectively interpret the applicant's soft skills and personality traits, through non-verbal cues, body language, expressiveness, etc. can lead to poor hires. 

How Emotion AI is Transforming Recruitment

Previously, AI algorithms and deep learning systems were in use to source suitable candidates from job portals and recruitment platforms based on the parameters set for the role. Now, emotion recognition technologies are taking it to the next level by analysing how candidates feel as they give the virtual interview, allowing even better decision-making at the next stages of the recruitment process. 

Emotion AI can detect and derive insights from the facial expressions, gestures, and other non-verbal cues of a candidate. An Emotion-AI-backed hiring process can redefine how companies assess each candidate’s capability, and how potential candidates prove their worth to the hiring manager. For instance, a recruiter can ask tricky questions from the candidate and see how they react, especially under stress. Their expressions can be detected and analysed by Emotion AI. According to the Global Talent Trends report, over 68% of talent professionals evaluate soft skills by picking up on non-verbal cues and facial expressions during an interview. Clearly, gone are the days when a candidate could fake emotions to impress the interviewer since Emotion AI helps the interviewer to detect emotions such as nervousness, distraction, anger, happiness, excitement and more, based on micro-expressions that are not detectable by the naked eye but are highly indicative of the persons emotional state of mind.  

AI-enabled Video Interviews for Intelligent Recruiting

Live video helps to improve a company’s talent search in a more effective manner by saving time and utilisation of manpower. Therefore, several leading brands are switching to live video as a more efficient medium to conduct interviews. Using video, paired with Emotion AI, in recruitment is a low-cost, high reward tactic that recruiters can easily integrate into their existing strategies and routines.  

Here are some possible use cases, achievable using Emotion AI Video Interviews: 

• One-way Video Interviews– In this type of video interview, a recruiter can share an invitation link to candidates with a specified questionnaire, which can be chosen from a library of screening questions, uploaded on their own, or having the AI generate relevant questions. Candidates click on the link and record their responses through any video-enabled device like their phone or laptop. Recruiters can use the Emotion AI tool to judge the candidate’s performance more accurately and figure whether they’d be a good fit or not.  
• Assessment Screening with Live/Automated Video Proctoring– Many companies use tools to run assessment screening so they can predict on-the-job performance and retainability of a potential employee. Therefore, ensuring the credibility of assessment tests in virtual recruitment is a matter of paramount concern to them. From AI-proctoring to human-proctoring via video, Emotion AI-enabled video gives the ability to quickly point out identity mischief or any unusual activity and sends instant alerts. 
• Conduct Live Video Interviews– Video interviews offer recruiters the flexibility to perform real-time live video interviews from anywhere in the world. Paired with Emotion AI, the Live Video Interview feature lets recruiters know how candidates react in real-time. This carries high relevance in the interview process as it provides valuable inputs regarding the psyche of candidates. Another big plus of live video interview is that it broadens access to the global talent pool for organisations.

To deal with modern recruitment challenges such as high attrition rate, job seekers deluge, and constantly increasing cost of hiring, recruiters need to embrace AI-powered solutions at every step of the recruitment journey – from screening job applications, evaluating candidates, onboarding employees, and managing talent. At the same time, they should also look at adopting live video interviews as a significant part of their talent acquisition strategy to reduce time to hire, lower hiring costs, and broaden access to a global talent pool.