Intelligent Hiring: Leveraging AI Across the Full Recruiting Lifecycle

speak easy. — My name is Jeff Deana. I am the VP of recruiting services at Extensus HR. Uh we are a PEO uh which is a professional employer organization based out of New Jersey. Uh where we have uh we essentially do outsourced HR for smallmedium businesses. And one of the big differentiators for us is the fact that not only do we hire for Extensus, which has grown tremendously. Uh we have 27 years of existence. The last 3 years have been the biggest years we've ever had. Uh but we also include recruiting for our clients. So the partnership with Hireer Easy has allowed us to do that at an unbelievable rate. Uh and I'm excited to talk to you about leveraging AI across the life cycle. A lot of what other U panelists here have mentioned a little bit. Uh but also just that human element, right? I little background about myself. I've been in the AI recruiting world for about nine years now. Before I joined Extensus, I was with a startup based out of New Jersey that was doing AI sourcing. Uh and every nine years, there's a ton of webinars and trainings and all these things that are AI related and they all talk about one thing and that is the fact that you cannot lose the human element. Right? So we're going to talk a little bit about that as we go through the process, but essentially just want to go step by step, right? We're going to start with there we go. And uh you know where we start right workforce planning requisition uh requisition intake forms uh you know AI where can it help it helps with analyzing hiring trends compensation benchmarks. We use a platform that pulls straight from the federal census bureau to make sure that we're comparing and contrasting our different markets in terms of salary and compensation talent pools. Uh we've grown like I mentioned the last couple years tremendously and moved into the southeast. we moved out west. So, being able to compare these accurately uh has been unbelievable, right? And giving us a lot of insight uh to what we're looking for when we're going into these new markets. Uh creating intakes and templates uh as well as suggested questions. Uh the suggested question part is huge. Uh for us, we work with our clients. You know, we hired over 300 uh 300 people for our clients alone last year. That wasn't counting the 100 plus for expenses. But we are not subject matter experts on all on every client we work with. Right? So, uh when they come to us with certain jobs or different from a different industry that we might not necessarily be um as accustomed to, it's we go into AI, we pull these suggested questions. It really allows us to go in and be strong and have that leverage in the conversation uh that is there, right? Um and again identifies the market availability and the time to fill it. The expectations that we're able to provide uh for our clients is tremendous. It's a huge thing because a lot of them come in with very much high hopes and we're able to either level set or or match that enthusiasm based on some of the data that we're able to pull from a lot of these AIdriven platforms that are providing these different trends and benchmarks. All of that is great, but where's the human side of it come in? Right. For us, we're working with clients. we're working with our hiring managers and to me you got to build that trust with the hiring managers in order to build a long-term relationship. Uh when you're working with them and we're hiring them, I want my team to become really an extension of their department, organization. Uh and that happens through human, you know, human elements, human interaction. Um clarifies obviously the business goals and all these team dynamics. Uh and understanding some of the nuances and urgency. Um I love the urgency part on that slide, right? Because for us again dealing with clients, we have an included piece of our solution. So some of them are coming to us and kind of trying to feel it out. Uh so it's important for us to have these conversations and these discussions, you know, personto person so we can understand, hey, are you looking for someone yesterday or is this more of like a slow build? Are we kind of feeling this out? Is this something that might be down the road? Uh all of that takes place more in that human interaction in those conversations uh as opposed to data driven, you know, um results. The job description creation is probably the most obvious and easiest one that came to us, right? Uh we've started using it right off the bat to create job descriptions. Uh I honestly just the polished job description that you can get through AI uh is incredible. Uh I love the interview process. I love meeting with people. I love the human element of it. Uh I don't love, you know, writing out something for 45 minutes to make sure that it sounds right. And you use templates. Are they up todate? are they compliant? The AI piece to this allows for a lot of those things to stay uh fresh. Um using different words, obviously rem removing the biased language. Uh it really has allowed for a cleaner uh more uniformed when we need to be more unique when we want to go that route. Uh job description and it's what we've seen is that it's allowed for us to really kind of enhance how we go about getting our candidates in and building that

talent pool. Um, but again, there's got to be eyes on it, right? So, you're ensuring what our company culture looks like, what do we want to get out there, highlights and unique selling points. For example, if I'm creating a job description for my organization, I want to make sure that the idea that we're growing so rapidly is involved. The idea that we were just named one of the top companies uh in the PO in terms of employee engagement is involved. Those are things that I'm going to know, right? They're not necessarily within those AI search platforms. Uh so I need to make sure that they utilize it when I'm entering in there and kind of build it around that. Uh and same with the align uh aligning with uh the leadership expectations. Um Chachi PT is not necessarily in the SLT meeting or uh in our town hall. So it keeps that sense of urgency, that sense of um uh just kind of time freshness uh in terms of what we're delivering to the candidates. Sourcing is obviously, you know, we we've utilized H Higher Easy now for four plus years, uh, building out searches, casting that wide net. One of the things I love for us is that it obviously the automated outreach. We use the autoengage and hire easy constantly, right? Uh, I know for me back in the day, I used to do a lot of university style hiring, 20 25 U employees on a monthly basis. you're reaching out to hundreds of people on in a quarter knowing, you know, did I reach back out to them? Have I heard back? And you're following through an applicant tracking, but it's not the same. That autoengage has been probably the biggest game changer for me uh in 15 plus years of recruiting. Um it's really phenomenal that and the gamified approach that hire easy allows us to go about it with a collaborator license where it's thumbs up thumbs down starts the autoengage or adjust the search uh when necessary. U not only has it sped up the process and it made us more efficient. Uh it puts a lot of you know puts skin in the game for our clients and for the hiring managers and makes them have to be responsible to go in and review those profiles. Quick that thumbs up, thumbs down. Uh so it's been a win-win for us and really a gamecher. Um that being said, you know, you still got to the candidate the employee experience starts with the candidate experience. Um so there's always that personal touch and I think more so than ever where there's so much automated outreach, every response seems to be calculated. Even the text messages you're getting, right? Uh I think more and more people are aware of it and they want to have that human element at some point during the process. So, the personal touch, the evaluation of the candidates, especially if they're passive candidates, they might throw their their name in the hat for a second. Uh, having those conversations and really building them, putting on your sales hat in certain spots to tell them, you know, to get them convinced and kind of enthusiastic for the job. Uh, those are things that the human element comes in. But, man, being able to build out a search in seconds and blast it out or become as fine as we need it to be has really been unbelievable. You know, in the screening side, I know uh Larry was talking earlier about using um the notetakers and things along those lines. Again, you know, for me, I love the art form of the interview. That's my favorite part of being a recruiter. Uh it's something that I've always, you know, really gravitated towards and why I got into the business to be honest is something that I felt uh that I could do well and and really intrigued me. The AI notetakers are allowing you to be engaged in the conversation instead of taking notes. Instead of my scribble, which is just awful, and worrying about whether or not I got all the information necessary, you know, I'm able to sit there and and really be involved. I find that my interviews are longer. They're a little bit deeper. I'm able to get candidates to elaborate a little bit stronger on their stories because I'm not worried about getting to the next question. It's made my team and myself much stronger at the interview itself. Um, one thing here it says, you know, flags skill matches uh matches and potential gaps. It's great that these AI notetakers allow the job description to kind of coordinate with the conversation. But just remember that decisions should not be based on, you know, by the AI. You want to look into them. It's a good those red flags are good for you to dive into. Ask more questions. Ask the candidate to elaborate, but don't be making decisions based on what that says. Um, and again, you know, these screenings are amazing, but you want to talk to someone. You want to build a rapport. They're buying you. They're still buying the recruiter in a lot of sense of the word. Um, so you want to evaluate their different their motivations. Well, you want to talk to them about their experiences. It's really important for uh, you know, for them to understand who they're dealing with and who they're interacting with. I see it all the time. We've hired a lot of entry- level people over the years and you know they have a connection with the recruiter not just through the onboarding process but for years and years to come. Uh we just

had a candidate actually get promoted within our organization that worked with one of our senior recruiters. We found her in um in you know coming out of school started in the entry level got into our mentor mentee program developed a relationship and they've been interacting for years. uh that's something that you can't remove uh from the process and from your organization. It's something that's going to help develop uh an organization that people want to work with and want to stay with and and grow with over a long period of time. Obviously, the automated scheduling and reminders is phenomenal. I saw someone mention that earlier. Um you know, it makes life so much easier than, hey, here's six availabilities. You know, you use these invites and whatnot. uh and you're tracking feedback, you're generating summaries. Uh again, a lot of it's just reminders. We're all moving so fast. It's great to have a quick summary or a profile as opposed to the, you know, old school three-page resume, right? Uh it just kind of condenses it into what you need and makes it much more efficient. Uh that being said, you know, people leave jobs and join jobs because of managers and because of who they're interacting with, right? So it allows, you know, it's really important that our managers understand where they can utilize the information they're getting, but still put their uh their human touch on that. Um, you know, there's a lot of different things with the interview coordination, but uh a lot of it is still, you know, understanding where the managers are coming from and where they need to jump in. In the candidate evaluation, again, it provides feedback, the comparisons, obviously there's different things there. uh the identifying risks, but again it's more of to me the summary aspect of it. Uh but what you want to do is you want to make sure that you're balancing the dynamics between yourself and the data and your leadership team using your understanding of what's going on uh and where it fits in within the organization timing aspects of it as well uh and and how it moves along within the process. Uh these are all very important pieces where the human element and the data that's coming through the AI uh really blend together. Obviously, offer letters, creating offer letters and drafts is phenomenal. Uh, we do something, we have so many different offer letter templates with clauses and variables and so on and so forth that the AI matches with the job description. Um, and allows for our compliance team and our legal team actually to be able to review them in a much uh quicker and efficient fashion. Uh, but again, the human element, right? For me, 15 years, the biggest change I've seen is that every single person negotiates. It doesn't matter if they're uh an intern or an internal employee or a CEO. Every everybody's going to negotiate uh and they're going to negotiate with the recruiter or with the hiring manager. So, there's always something to have that conversation with. Uh and the other piece is like the close out, right? I think there's a time and place for those automated messages, but if you have someone who goes through a process and maybe they're a final two of a three or four step process, to me, there's still, and maybe it's an old school approach, there's still value in making that phone call and talking to the person and discussing with them what uh you know that you're not moving forward. Um it's there's clarity there. There's closure. Uh, and there's a human element to it that allows for them to look at you and your organization as uh, at least sympathetic uh, and a and a warmer organization than one who would just auto, you know, send an automated um, decline message after multiple steps. Onboarding, the syncing of everything, schedule check-ins, different kind of engagements. We use it a lot for getting people prepared uh, internally. Hey, our tech team and things along those lines of what's coming in. Uh it all kind of ties together with how these systems blend. Uh but the human element again, those long-term relationships, our new hires develop a relationship with the recruiter and with our trainer uh at an unbelievable level. uh that partnership and the strengthening of the relationship and the comfort level they have when they come into the organization uh is something that you know automated messages and whatnot during onboarding you know can't really provide. uh so it's very important especially there that we're starting them with you know a warm and fuzzy feeling that I think only that human interaction can provide you know so for me again the technology enhances it for recruiters it doesn't replace them uh but when we can blend these together it allows for you know just a great experience and it's really made for a much more efficient process and I know for extens allowed us to enhance what we're able to offer our clients uh which has enhanced our business tremendously over the last couple years.