People people are people people. It’s a weird sentence, but anyone who has spent time in the HR space knows how much it rings true. HR pros are people people; learning specialists are people people; recruiters are people people.
Bringing HR pros back to the people is why product developers at LinkedIn worked to design an AI tool that helps LinkedIn Recruiter customers get back to the people work by aiding in the “tedious, repetitive tasks that end up not necessarily being that thing that leads to the hire.”
“It’s our first agent, and it’s designed to take on a recruiter’s most repetitive tasks so they can spend more time on the most impactful part of their jobs,” said LinkedIn’s VP of Product, Hari Srinivasan.
This week, from its Talent Connect event in Phoenix, Arizona, LinkedIn launched its first AI agent: Hiring Assistant. The new AI-powered assistant will take on mundane tasks associated with hiring, so recruiters can spend more time networking with candidates, advising hiring managers, and designing a better hiring process and candidate experience.
“Last year, we really started going after tasks. It’s hard to write a message, let’s go help you personalize. It’s hard to write a Boolean [search], let’s go help you write search,” he said of LInkedIn’s AI product development. “We started saying…Can I help someone do more work horizontally? Can I help you do more of the workflow so that you can spend more time on the stuff that matters?”
With LinkedIn’s Hiring Assistant, recruiters can assign tedious tasks to the AI bot inside the platform. The product can help design job postings, search for candidate matches, and review applicants. Recruiters can upload their job descriptions, intake notes, and job postings to the assistant and the tool will “translate that information into role qualifications and build a pipeline of qualified candidates,” according to Srinivasan.
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The product will be available this week for a select group of customers and the company’s internal recruiters, and the platform plans to roll out the feature more broadly later this year.
With the hiring assistant, LinkedIn is hoping Recruiter customers can transform a task that might have taken all day to complete—sifting through stacks of résumés to arrive at a shortlist of a dozen or two, for instance—and wrap up in just a few minutes.
“These aren’t just recommended matches. These are people who have actually gone through and been evaluated against that hiring criteria,” he said, pointing to a brief summary that explains why the candidate was selected for the shortlist, which a recruiter can accept or reject.
The assistant is always learning too, he said. As the recruiter makes notes or responses to the AI’s list, the tool will incorporate that feedback the next time it runs a search.
The assistant can also help craft bespoke outreach messages in bulk, and field after-hours queries from candidates. Recruiters can also direct applicants to Hiring Assistant for pre-screening, saving time for important communication with vetted candidates.
The product launch comes as recruiters and TA pros wade through changes and challenges in the hiring landscape, both as a wave of new AI tools flood the market and the labor market continues to fluctuate. According to Employ's Recruiter Nation report, released in October, 54% of recruiters find their job to be more stressful than the previous year, and more than half say that recruiting will be “very challenging or somewhat challenging” in the next year.
“I do hear a lot from customers that people are being asked to do more with less…And our hope is this is another tool that helps you solve that pain point,” Srinivasan said.