A major AI-based experiment has proved it’s possible to give personalised feedback to every job applicant, solving one of the biggest complaints about the recruitment process.

Over a six-month period, PredictiveHire gave personalised, same-day feedback to 250,000 candidates after each completed a text-based interview using its AI platform, says CEO Barbara Hyman.

The candidates ranged in age from 16 to 80 and included people from non-English speaking and Indigenous backgrounds. The feedback highlighted their strengths, as well as tips on areas for development.

The outcome, Hyman tells Shortlist, is that 99% of candidate reported satisfaction with their interview experience; 70% said they were more likely to recommend the company as an employer of choice; and 95% reported they loved receiving their feedback and “found it empowering, constructive and ‘scarily accurate'”.

Recruiters using PredictiveHire gain insights into each candidate’s personality, communication skills, and the quality of their response to behavioural interview questions, such as ‘tell us about a time you had to solve a difficult problem’.

PredictiveHire realised candidates would benefit from receiving some form of feedback and insight into their traits as well, and so it began rolling this out 15 months ago. The feature has since won a UK-based candidate experience award.

The feedback specifically does not include information about whether the candidate is a good fit for the role, “because that’s not our job – that’s the client’s job”, Hyman says.

For AI to be trusted, she says, the candidate needs to trust it, and so the candidate needs to get something out of it – including “the ability to understand themselves”.

Candidate experience isn’t simply an automatic email that says, “thanks, we’ve had lots of applicants, but we may not get back to you”, Hyman says.

Rather, a good candidate experience is “when everybody gets something out of it”.

“There really isn’t any excuse now for ghosting. And the feedback that companies give when they do it through humans is not that constructive. Getting a phone call saying you’re not a great culture fit – what’s that telling you? That’s a big cop-out.”

Employers’ fears allayed

When PredictiveHire first deployed the candidate feedback feature, its clients were initially too scared to use it, says Hyman.

“They thought that if you give candidates feedback, you’ll risk a whole lot of candidates calling up and asking, ‘why didn’t I get the job?’ or candidates would disagree with it and it would undermine their trust in the process, and that might diminish their employer brand,” she explains.

But these fears proved unfounded when recruiters started reading the responses candidates were invited to give about their feedback, which included whether they agreed with the feedback and whether they would recommend the organisation as an employer or retailer (most of PredictiveHire’s clients are consumer brands).