Survey: Two-thirds of Global Staffing Firms Will Adopt AI-driven Applicant Tracking Systems by End of 2020

U.S. Ranks Third in AI Adoption for Staffing Solutions, While Southeast Asia Leads the Charge, Finds Ceipal Report

ROCHESTER, NY— December 11, 2019 — A new global survey from Ceipal, a SaaS provider for the front- and back-office business operations of staffing companies, reveals universal acceptance of artificial intelligence (AI)  as the future of recruitment. According to the 2019 Artificial Intelligence in the Recruiting Industry benchmark report,  two-thirds of all staffing firms will adopt AI-driven ATS (applicant tracking systems) by the end of 2020, while 79 percent of enterprise staffing firms (firms with more than 100 recruiters) will have done the same.

“As the first technology company to deploy an AI-driven ATS solution, Ceipal has enjoyed a front-row seat to the disruption that’s happening in this industry by way of artificial intelligence, which provides us a unique opportunity to establish industry benchmarks,” said Sameer Penakalapati, founder of Ceipal. “Now that the reality of AI technology in our industry has actually caught up to its buzz, we want to quantify the sea change it’s causing and share that data with our customers and the rest of the staffing world in preparation for the coming new year.”

Other key findings and data points include the following:

• Large Staffing Firms Are Lagging: Large-sized staffing firms (50-100 recruiters) showed relatively low awareness of AI-enabled ATS technology even when compared to their smaller mid-sized (25-50 recruiters) counterparts. While enterprise-sized firms are unsurprisingly leading the adoption curve, 43 percent of large-sized staffing firms have no plan to adopt AI.
• Consensus on AI’s Future and Benefits: All respondents either agreed or strongly agreed that AI is the future of recruitment and that its adoption will enable recruiters to build better relationships with candidates.
• Most Say AI Helps to Eliminate Human Bias: The majority of respondents (71 percent) believe that AI will eliminate human bias from the recruitment process. However, there were 29 percent who strongly disagreed with that sentiment.
• AI-enabled Chatbots Are Critical for Reaching Gen-Z and Millennial Recruits: More than half of today’s recruits span a generation that has famously shunned email and phone calls in favor of texting. Unsurprisingly, 52 percent of respondents strongly agreed that AI-enabled Chatbots will improve productivity and the recruitment experience of those candidates.
• Drivers for Adopting Artificial Intelligence: Respondents indicated “marketing requirements” are the biggest driver toward AI adoption along with productivity, quality and reporting needs. Respondents who reported marketing requirements as a pain point were 23 percent more inclined to adopt AI in their recruitment practices (80 percent said they were likely to adopt) than those who did not report marketing as a pain point (65 percent said they were likely to adopt).
• AI Adoption Trends by Geography: Southeast Asia leads the pack in AI adoption for recruitment. This trend is likely to continue, as firms in that region often work on transactional placements with smaller margins and strict requirements for operational excellence. Firms in the U.K. followed closely behind with U.S. firms technologically lagging behind both those regions. However, 60 percent of U.S. firms intend to catch up within the year by incorporating AI technologies into their current practices.

The vast majority of respondents to Ceipal’s benchmark survey indicated either current reliance on AI-driven ATS solutions or future deployment of such technologies within the coming year. Based on this response, survey authors conclude the industry is moving away from inefficient and easily gamed manual processes, such as manually created Boolean keyword searches, in favor of automation and AI. According to the study’s authors, AI is well poised to tackle some of the core challenges facing today’s recruiters and helps to improve close rates by improving the marketing of open job requisitions, productivity and performance, and candidate sourcing and matching.

Key AI-driven capabilities that are changing the landscape for staffing firms include ideal candidate “cloning” to identify similarly qualified candidates at the click of a button, management of resume harvesting that leverages unused daily credits to augment a firm’s internal database of candidates to fill future openings, and intelligent chatbots that improve and streamline communication channels, particularly for “Gen Z” and “Millennial” candidates. Ceipal will continue monitoring AI adoption trends and data across the recruiting industry and deliver updated industry benchmarks on an ongoing basis.

A complete copy of the report can be found here.

Ceipal Customer Quotes About AI-driven ATS & Recruitment

“I’ve seen the features, and I honestly think artificial intelligence is the only way to go.”
Anil Kilaru, CEO | Primus Global

“AI is the next generation of recruiting – we plan on looking more into this and adopting it sooner rather than later.”
Vinay Jain, VP | Q1 Technologies

“It’s most important for any staffing company to reach out to the best 50 suitable people for a given job, and not to mass mail 1,000 people for every new job.”
Vaibhav Mishra, Director  | United Software Group

“Traditional recruitment will be forced to evolve or become extinct with the implementation of AI into its space…. recruitment cycles will be shortened, accuracy and retention will be at an all-time high, and biasness will be a thing of the past.”
Gary Koh Managing, Director | Smart Recruitment, Singapore

“Forecasting and reporting are extremely important to any staffing business. With AI, if a system is able to forecast the number of placements and revenue it will help us make better, timely, educated business decisions.”
Ajai Kumar Dhavala, AVP – Business Excellence | Systel

“Ceipal is showing the recruitment world what artificial intelligence actually looks like in practice, and our recruiters couldn’t be more excited.”
Derrick Alex Head of Delivery Excellence  |  VDart Inc.

“Screening resumes efficiently and completing the other processes time-efficiently still remains the biggest challenge in talent acquisition. If AI is applied effectively, it will mean these tasks are automated, thereby freeing up recruiters to focus on clients and candidates.”
Praveen, Managing Director | Adroit People, UK

About Ceipal

Ceipal provides a SaaS platform that automates both the front- and back-office business operations of staffing companies. Ceipal offers a complete workforce management platform, including a fully integrated applicant tracking system (ATS) and human resource information system (HRIS). Founded in 2015, Ceipal now serves over 1,200 customers and 16,000 recruiters globally.