How To Recruit Top Talent With An Assist From AI

Recruiting isn’t a numbers game. That’s because it’s no longer effective to bring a deluge of applicants into the pipeline for a role. In fact, a large pipeline means nothing if the candidates aren’t good fits. Sourcing top talent is about finding the sweet spot of candidates that have the experience, as well as the desire, to fill the role you’re hiring. 

That’s why networks matter now more than ever. According to LinkedIn’s Future of Recruiting 2023 report, 73% of recruiting professionals cited relationship building as the most important soft skill needed over the next five years. Why? Because building rapport while recruiting candidates correlates to sourcing folks with the highest intent to fill your role. So how do you build relationships while sourcing top talent? Let’s dive into the referral model of recruiting, and learn how to pair it with AI to give you an unexpected recruiting boost. 

How to source top talent with a referral based model

Referrals play a crucial role in the hiring process. That’s because they offer several benefits for both employers and job seekers: high quality candidates, a faster hiring process (and onboarding), and even higher retention rates amongst employees. There are lots of channels from which to source referral candidates, here are a few common ones:

• Employee referrals: According to recruiters, employee referrals are their preferred source of talent acquisition. There’s almost nothing that can compare to a current employee sharing their own experiences at the company with a candidate. And in turn, they are able to seek out folks they know would be the right fit. Employees often refer candidates who share the company's values and culture.
• Vendor or Partner Referrals: Companies often have partnerships with other organizations, vendors, or service providers. Recruiters can ask for referrals from these partners, as the employees at these companies often possess the unique knowledge and skills required for the role. 
• University and Alumni Referrals: For entry-level or junior positions, recruiters may reach out to universities, colleges, or alumni associations. These institutions often have career centers that can help connect recruiters with recent graduates or alumni who are seeking job opportunities.
• Former employee referrals: Slightly less common, but prior employees who left the company on good terms can also be a source of referrals. These individuals are already familiar with the company's culture and expectations, making them potential sources of top talent.
  
  

When you are searching for relevant candidates for a role on LinkedIn and you dig into their network to see you have a mutual connection, using Hifive can help streamline the intro. After downloading Hifive, click “Get Intro” on a potential candidate’s profile, and then choose your mutual connection as the person from whom you’d like the intro. From there, Hifive populates a message template that you can customize. This process makes it easy to start working with highly relevant referral candidates.

How AI can help you recruit top talent 

It might initially seem counterintuitive to say that AI can give you a boost on the relationship building side of recruiting. But hear us out—by using AI to generate rote tasks faster, like striking just the right tone with a potential mutual referral, you can now spend more time getting detailed and specific on personalized interactions. For example, some candidates have a lot of thoughtful questions, or want to understand company culture on a deeper level. You now have more time to spend on calls with them, because you’ve left the menial work to the robots. 

Hifive’s AI Assist is just the sort of automation you want when you need an extra boost in your candidate outreach. 

Here’s how it works:

1. After you’ve found the person that you want an introduction to, click “Request an intro” and see a suggested message template pop up that you can customize to your liking.
2. Click the “AI Assist” button at the top, and select from the use case drop down that you’d like to use. Hifive’s AI Assist offers templates for countless use cases. In this instance, you would choose “Hiring.”
3. You can also select the tone you’d like the message to be in: Professional, Friendly, Quirky, Grateful, or Haven’t Connected In A While. This saves you time trying to ideate the right way to strike up a new convo.
4. Add any additional information you’d like AI to know before generating your message

By using AI as an extra boost in your referral outreach, you now have more time to spend cultivating thorough relationships with the high quality candidates in your pipeline. 

It’s clear that when it comes to sourcing top talent, the network is in full effect. Use Hifive to gain intros to top candidates that are connected to people already in your network, then use AI Assist to make the process smoother and faster.