Chatbots have revolutionized the staffing industry’s top-of-funnel digital strategy. The benefits are numerous since chatbots can:

• Save time
• Increase diversity in recruiting
• Save money
• Provide relevant candidate information
• Improve candidate experience
• Source the very best talent

Not only can chatbots streamline staffing and recruiting, but they can also help with employee retention as well. The evidence suggests that chatbots are here to stay, but that doesn’t mean using chatbots can’t become a liability for recruiters and their clients. We’ve found some helpful tips to help you use chatbots without sounding like you’re a chatbot.

When chatbotting goes awry

Chatbots, for all their usefulness, can present a conundrum for recruiters:

• Chatbots can negatively affect a candidate’s experience. Some chatbots can become confused by a candidate’s questions or answers. Not knowing how to respond to a job seeker, a chatbot could stall out and become repetitive in asking them to repeat or rephrase their question. Some chatbots can even become unresponsive. This can make candidates feel like they’re getting mechanical or impersonal responses that reflect poorly on an employer.
• Chatbots can be heavily front-loaded tools. They are extremely useful in the long run, but setting up a chatbot can be frustrating and time-consuming (especially when you’re trying to get your chatbot to sound as natural as possible, and to provide relevant information to inquiries).
• Chatbots aren’t designed to identify the go-getters. While chatbots are great at increasing diversity in recruiting by reducing bias, often chatbots can’t identify that “it factor” that could make a candidate outstanding.
• If a chatbot is operating on strict binaries, it might include candidates who meet qualifications of a job description but who are mismatched to the company’s core values.
• Chatbots could also overlook ideal candidates who might not meet a specific requirement in the job description. This can be especially bad news for recruiters who regard required skills for open positions as more of a loose guideline than a strict requirement.

Even still, chatbots are an incredibly useful tool if you can get them to act and sound… well, not like a chatbot.

Tips to help chatbots keep from sounding chatbotty

Anyone who sends something funny to their coworkers by email or slack risks their punchline landing flat. Humor and nuance can be clunky and difficult to convey over text. Now imagine your understanding of nuanced social exchanges comes from a synthetic AI interface. Bots are only as intelligent as their design.

To engage authentically with job seekers, a bot should be able to understand sarcasm, read between the lines, or get the context of dialogue. This is often the first thing that will trip up your bot, creating a frustrating experience for your visitor.

The best way to avoid these awkward and frustrating interactions is to keep your chatbot simple and human. (We’re aware that humans are anything but simple, so stick with us here.) 

Keep it simple

Your chatbot is there to be a helpful first point of contact, to direct job seekers or employers towards what they’re looking for, provide relevant information and hopefully get enough information to create a lead. Chatbots are not designed to interact with candidates on a deeply emotional level. They’re not therapists, and they’re not there to tell a story.

Keeping questions simple like, “Where can I direct you today?” or, “Are you looking to hire someone or get hired?” Also, be transparent with your chatbot. Using clear language like, “I’m just a chatbot, but I can help!”

Also, if you have a membership portal for job seekers or employers, don’t rely on the chatbot to take account numbers or passwords. Just have the chatbot either provide a login form or send the visitor to the login page. By keeping your chatbot’s interactions simple and clear, you can avoid getting into complex transactions the chatbot isn’t designed to handle. 

Keep it human

Your bot can be fun without having to go deep. Writing emoji’s into your bot’s language and using colloquial language like “What’s up friend? ” or “How you doin?” can go a long way to keep the conversation loose and light.

Also, humans make mistakes. So bots can also make mistakes and own up to them. Likely, your bot could trip up somewhere. It’s a good practice to plan for confusion and write a response that can keep the conversation on track and to find a proactive solution. You can do this by writing responses like, “Sorry! I’m just a chatbot, I might have blown a fuse there. Let’s get your contact info to someone who can help you more!”

People who interact with chatbots usually want help right away. Reinforcing how important it is that their needs are met and that someone will reach out to them immediately can avoid causing them to feel like they’re being given a runaround.

Go deep with proactive programming or artificial intelligence

Many staffers and recruiters might need to go deeper with their chatbots than surface-level conversation. Often, the people they’re dealing with are looking for work, and that can be an emotionally charged endeavor.

Deeper chatbot interactions require more pre-programing.

If you want your chatbot to keep up with deeper human interactions, you or a programmer will need to spend a little more time at the outset building out your bot for more complex interactions by:

1. Mapping out the many different paths a job seeker or employer would follow through your site. Predicting as many scenarios as possible and writing a variety of responses to address each scenario. 
2. Program your bot to behave with more human characteristics by:
   1. Programming it to speak with a human voice
   2. Recognizing and combining two-part answers. Translating responses like, “I’m looking for a job” and “I’m interested in openings for engineering and technology” to “Find me open positions in engineering and technology.”
   3. Programming empathetic responses by prompting your chatbot to recognize certain trigger words and phrases such as “frustrating,” “fired,” “can’t get hired,” “job search,” or “unemployed.”
   4. Adding a typing status during longer searches. This will indicate that, just like people, the chatbot is working on the answer and hasn’t bailed on the conversation.

AI: better chatbots without the manual legwork

Many employers want a deeper level of interaction from their chatbots but don’t have UX designers, writers, programmers or conversation designers they need to build out the bot of their dreams. Then we turn to artificial intelligence chatbots who are programmed with machine learning and natural language processing to better understand and assist people and their needs.

AI chatbots might cost a bit more, but those costs are offset by the time and resources you’d otherwise spend having your own team predict, map out and respond to every UX path conceivable on your website.

Plus, AI chatbots only get better. With machine learning, they build on every human interaction. They become smarter and more efficient at completing tasks, so the longer they work, the better they get!

Consider other automation tools to attract and engage with job seekers and employers

Chatbots aren’t for everyone. We get it. Some staffing and recruiting firms are just set against the idea of a robot at the wheel. And that is okay! At Parqa, we’ve developed several tools to automate your outreach and engagement. We make attracting leads, nurturing engagement and growing your staffing and recruiting firm a snap by:

• Building out your ideal customer profile and buyer’s journey
• Automating your workflow
• Implementing your content strategy
• Providing useful, relevant data to help you make key decisions

If you’re ready to inject your staffing and recruiting firm with efficiency and scalability, contact the team at Parqa today. (Chatbots are also welcome! We can talk about the latest binary plug-ins, or whatever.)

Many recruiters may recall the days before LinkedIn as one might imagine the days before electricity. It’s astounding to think of the ways LinkedIn has transformed staffing and recruiting from the days of posting job openings in the newspaper.

LinkedIn continues to evolve, and 2021 is looking like another banner year for the platform. With LinkedIn’s new and improved key features, staffing and recruiting firms have more options than ever to:

• Find and connect with the best talent
• Take their company branding to the next level
• Publish compelling content in new, engaging ways
• Engage in a deeper, more meaningful way with clients and candidates

New view & expanded capabilities of LinkedIn Company Pages

The new view and capabilities of LinkedIn’s Company Pages feature just got a big redesign to help more companies humanize their brand and engage with their network like never before. Here are a couple new features we’re excited about:

• Sharing content with your community easily and more often by posting as a page or member of a page
• Quickly view engagement metrics for individual and company updates
• A dedicated page for members to view company updates
• Real-time engagement with your community via LinkedIn Live Streaming
• Grow your community from your network with Invite to Follow feature
• Improved content recommendations
• New lead gathering options
• View Page Followers feature

With these latest updates to LinkedIn’s Company Pages, businesses are now able to take a more integrated, targeted approach to branding, leveraging the profiles and networks of their employees to help spread their messaging.

Get face-to-face with video chat in messages

For users who want a more engaging chat experience, LinkedIn created video chatting in LinkedIn Messenger. Adding video capabilities in Messenger is a great way to take a brief discussion to the next level.

Video capabilities in chat are especially useful in a time when people are less likely to meet in person, helping to create an even more authentic experience between users or groups sharing career advice, discussing job opportunities, or catching up in virtual group meetings happy hours.

LinkedIn takes a note from Instagram with Stories

Companies and their users are now able to more easily share images and short videos with a loose, shoot-from-the-hip feel with the new LinkedIn Stories feature. LinkedIn Stories is similar to other platform’s stories with:

• Full-screen view on content
• Stories only available for one day
• Another, even more genuine way to publish content
• Allowing members to engage with each other via private messaging

With stories, users can even guide readers to a URL or landing page, by adding a “swipe up,” action to their story. Just one more way LinkedIn is further our ability to maximize conversions and audience engagement. (This feature is limited to LinkedIn Pages or users with at least 5,000 connections who’ve set the “Follow” button as their profile’s primary action.)

On an anecdotal note: many of us at Parqa only use Instagram for their stories feature. If LinkedIn’s stories becomes as widely used as Instagram’s, the possibilities here are very promising. Especially with LinkedIn’s push to focus on content, their algorithm will likely favor those early adopters of LinkedIn stories.

Your profile’s new “featured” section

LinkedIn’s new featured section (you can find it between the “About” and “Experience” sections) is designed to allow users to display their expertise front and center on their profile. Since the arrival of the new featured section, we’ve seen several users find creative ways to fill this section with their best work.

Some other ideas to make the most out of your new featured section:

• Use it to feature posts and articles you’ve written and published on LinkedIn
• Post links to external websites like a portfolio, blog or other websites that provide useful information about you and your work
• Use the featured section to create a cutting-edge feel to your profile by changing content frequently

Build your brand and drive demand with LinkedIn Events

More than ever, businesses are looking for a way to safely meet and connect with people. LinkedIn events provide a trusted space for hosting public and private events. Similar to virtual events on Facebook, hosts and attendees are able to invite other users, see who else is attending, and chat with participants in the event feed.

Which event is right for you? We’ve found this handy guide helpful for creating and hosting a variety of events depending on your needs:

• Boosted public events without registration for maximum outreach and brand awareness
• Public events with registration to amplify your ability to collect leads
• Private events for building community with a targeted audience

Events with LinkedIn make a lot of sense, especially when you consider how LinkedIn has found a wealth of activity in groups like workplaces, recruiter or alumni organizations. Whether you want to find creative new ways to build leads, get your brand top of mind, or just engage with an audience, you’ll find a lot of extra value hosting and participating in LinkedIn Events.

Stay connected with coworkers with Teammates

It’s only natural the people we spend the most time with at work become some of our closest friends. Here are some interesting statistics that demonstrate the power of building relationships at work:

• 63% of people have relationships with coworkers outside work
• 60% of LinkedIn members are more likely to like, comment, share, or message coworkers vs. their other connections
• 95% of people agree it’s good to have friends at work

LinkedIn Teammates allows users to further manage and interact with their professional network. In Teammates, users can tag coworkers, managers as well as direct reports as part of their immediate network and current team. Depending on a users privacy settings, LinkedIn will alert users to the activity and important milestones of team members, such as posts, shares, comments and birthdays and work anniversaries.

For companies who are looking to build a strong sense of community and culture at the workplace, LinkedIn Teams is a great way to bring coworkers together.

Try new things and remember: failure is not fatal

It’s natural we’d be a little hesitant to post our first LinkedIn story. And what if we mess up starting a video call with a potential new employee? Trying new things can be daunting and time consuming. But LinkedIn does a great job with making intuitive changes that are fun and easy to pick up like a pro (even for your first try). 

Most importantly when you try new things – your audience will notice. Especially on LinkedIn, audiences react to users and companies who go out on a limb with them. And with these new features, businesses and individuals have never had so many options to live into a genuine online presence with authenticity and the human touch. Remember, nothing ventured, nothing gained – and it certainly beats posting openings in the local classifieds.