“70% increase in recruiting efficiency – thanks to chatbots”

Judith Eisser and the reason for her chatbot enthusiasm

Judith Eisser has been a research assistant in the Media Management Bachelor’s program at RheinMain University of Applied Sciences in Wiesbaden for 3 ½ years. She deals with chatbots and specifically with chatbots in recruiting, which is also the subject of her doctoral thesis. Your work is primarily concerned with the requirements for acceptance of chatbots by HR staff who have to work with this “new” technology.

There are hardly any studies on chatbots

Chatbots are not new, but there are almost no new studies on them. There are a few standard acceptance models, but they do not yet take chatbots with AI into account and are therefore lagging behind.

From a practical perspective, there are studies on the use of chatbots. Especially the annual study by CHRIS with Professor Weitzel, which is commissioned by the job exchange Monster.

Then there are studies on the Technology Acceptance Model, which relate to various fields of application. These only consider individual fields of use and not the chatbot as a whole or chatbots with AI.

Low usage figures for bots in HR

The usage figures for chatbots are still not very high. According to Judith and her experience, this is often due to ignorance and uncertainty on the part of those who should be using the new technology in the company. This is also the result of the DACH chatbot study, which can be downloaded here.

What do applicants say about chatbots?

Over half of people have heard of chatbots, but have never really used them or are not enthusiastic about using a chatbot. This is because many users still can’t really imagine what a chatbot actually is and what it means when the chatbot has AI (artificial intelligence). The issue of data protection can also repeatedly lead to uncertainty on the part of applicants. They are often not sufficiently informed about what happens when they enter their data in the chatbot.

What do companies say about chatbots?

Companies generally give the following reasons for not using chatbots:

• Chatbots are too expensive
• No time for a chatbot project
• Problems with data protection

How can the number of users of bots in recruiting be increased?

It is very important to inform companies and users and show them what a chatbot is and what it can do. If you can make it clear to companies that a chatbot used for applications can save 70% of the time, the arguments against chatbots are quickly invalidated.

Judith conducted a small experiment in which she found out that at least 70% of recruiting requests can be automated.

What is Judith currently researching?

Judith and her team are currently working on a major concept: a holistic chatbot toolbox for companies. No chatbot is built, but a toolbox where companies can take elements such as FAQs or hard facts (e.g. “What languages do they speak?”) and then implement them in their chatbot.

For her doctoral thesis, Judith is conducting a study on appointments and initial interviews in the chatbot. Questions such as “How does this work and what do your own employees say about it? Do you find chatbots useful? Are they easy to use? Are you afraid that your own tasks will be taken over by the chatbot? Are they afraid that they will be left without tasks at some point?”

The initial results are exciting. Employees find the chatbots useful, especially for applicants. But they are also afraid that tasks will be taken away from them.

Judith continues her research on this basis. Especially on the question of what can be done to combat these fears.

It is already clear that communication is an important aspect of this. It is important to inform employees and involve them as early as possible so that they support the topic and do not build up any fears. Incidentally, Florian Schrodt also said this in podcast episode #5. The episode can be heard here.

Chatbots need to be optimized and adapted!

A chatbot is like a new employee, it has to be introduced and then constantly developed further. Companies that use chatbots must not stop developing the technology. The Chatnbot must be regularly monitored and optimized.

The employees who work with the chatbot must also undergo continuous further training and keep up to date with new findings and technological advances in the field of chatbots and artificial intelligence.[vc_empty_space height=”40px”]

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Further links

For all those who would like to read more on this topic, here are the most important studies:

Usage figures/interesting facts about chatbots

• Recruiting Trends 2020/Recruting Chatbots (Tim Weitzel of the Centre of Human Resources Information Systems (CHRIS, Universities of Bamberg/Erlangen-Nuremberg on behalf of Monster): https://arbeitgeber.monster.de/recruiting/studien.aspx
• At your service. Embracing the disruptive power of chatbots. (Accenture, 2017),https://www.accenture.com/us-en/insight-at-your-service Studies and articles by Stefan Scheller on the topic of chabtots in recruiting,https://persoblogger.de/hr-studien-download-portal/

Further studies relevant to the topic

• Our study on the topic of substitution anxiety caused by chatbots: Automation Anxiety as a Barrier to Workplace Automation: An Empirical Analysis of the Example of Recruiting Chatbots in Germany (2020), https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3378539.3393866
• State of Chatbots Report 2018 (classic, much quoted, 2018 by Drift with n>1000) https://www.drift.com/learn/chatbot/
• Digital Automation of Customer Contact Processes – An Empirical Research on Customer Acceptance of Different Chatbot Use-Cases (Völkle/Planing, 2019, in “Digitalen Wandel gestalten” by Lochmahr et al.), https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-658-24651-8_6.4
• Chatbot Acceptance in Healthcare: Explaining User Adoption of Conversational Agents for Disease Diagnosis (Laumer/Maier/Gubler, 2019), https://aisel.aisnet.org/ecis2019_rp/88/
• A Mixed Method Analysis of the Adoption and Diffusion of Chatbot Technology in the German Insurance Sector (Cardona/Werth/Schönborn/Breitner, 2019),https://aisel.aisnet.org/amcis2019/adoption_diffusion_IT/adoption_diffusion_IT/18/