Matt GillespieYour company depends on hiring the best candidates. Recruiting software has often fallen short, in part by trying to be too many things to too many people. A veteran recruiter who uses a platform every day is accustomed to viewing complex information, yet will benefit from optimized workflows aligned with their professional preferences. A new hiring manager using the software for the first time will want a simple guided view directing them to essential tasks. The future of better usability for both of them (and everyone else) can come from an adaptive user interface (UI) that tailors itself to individual needs.
Increasing the efficiency of talent acquisition (TA) practices is a must in the face of growing application volumes. A SmartRecruiters survey found that 44% of business leaders report spending the majority of their time on TA tasks, and 57% of companies allocate over 40% of their HR budgets to TA. This post describes how an adaptive UI can improve those numbers, with the following topics to help make your recruiting platform more efficient, effective, and joyful to use:
- What is an adaptive UI?
- How does an adaptive UI work?
- Five ways adaptive UIs transform recruiting
- Four key ingredients for a great adaptive UI
- A more effective future with Winston at your side
What is an adaptive UI?
An adaptive UI uses AI and data-driven algorithms to personalize the user experience, improving usability and efficiency. It dynamically adjusts its layout, content, and functionality based on user actions, preferences, or device characteristics. Individualized experiences accelerate workflows by putting the most important features front and center for each person, so they don’t have to dig around for the tools they need.
How does an adaptive UI work?
Maximizing usability has traditionally been complicated because different user personas—experienced recruiters, novice hiring managers, interviewers, and coordinators—all have different priorities. That’s where Winston comes in, as the AI companion at the heart of the SmartRecruiters experience. Winston helps break through the limitations of static interfaces by understanding what individual users need from the software based on how their peers are using it.
Winston thrives on dry stuff like usage patterns, telemetry, and heuristics. New users can begin from a UI template based on their persona or role. Getting to know them, Winston might observe, “Hey, I notice you keep clicking through to get to the screening questions. Do you want me to put those directly on your home screen?” Even though he’s data-driven, Winston also values teamwork and good manners, so he pays attention and learns when to offer help and when to be unobtrusive.
Five ways adaptive UIs transform recruiting
Better tools make for better outcomes, and adaptive UIs give recruiters what they need, when they need it.
1. Streamline recruiter workflows
The key goal of adaptive UI is to make it easier and faster for users to get to the features and capabilities they need. Winston helps optimize those workflows and experiences. For example, he can tailor dashboards so a recruiter focusing on high-volume hiring could see AI-generated candidate rankings prominently, while a corporate recruiter might prioritize advanced filtering tools.
2. Anticipate user needs
The best assistants proactively know what’s coming next. Winston takes pride in making users ready for anything. In response to a user action, he could remember how similar scenarios unfolded in the past and direct a recruiter to a choice of next steps, such as prompting to another screen or a form-letter template.
3. Reduce cognitive load
With complex software, decision fatigue is all too common, and it increases with every click, scroll, and task. Winston strives to reduce the friction that causes that burden, with fewer steps to complete work. With Winston’s help, users can focus with a clear mind on more important things than clicking through the right menus.
4. Deliver candidate-centric experiences
Adaptive UIs can tailor the application experience to the candidate’s device, preferences, and other context to attract more applicants better matched to jobs. Winston can work with a chat interface, an old-school webform, or other channel of choice, helping potential applicants pre-screen job postings, answer questions, and improve the experience. He can also suggest how to polish resumes or improve mobile or low-bandwidth usability.
5. Increase hiring success
When the UI adapts to users, better recruiter efficiency and applicant quality can deliver extraordinary return on investment. While Winston is committed to making SmartRecruiters software a joy to use, he never loses sight of the fact that both of you have a job to do. Collaborating with him puts you on a winning team that attracts the best hires.
Four key ingredients for great adaptive UI
Adaptive UI can change everything, but it’s also firmly grounded in your existing practices and business models. Success means judiciously bringing those two properties together, with usability as the key.
1. Absence of clutter
Great user experiences depend on orderly UIs that don’t cram too many features into the foreground. The SmartRecruiters design strategy has always focused on what we are able to leave out of the UI as much as what we put in. AI takes that ideal to the next level, with user-centric experiences and personalized usability. Hiring teams win when everyone has fast, undistracted access to the features that matter most to them.
2. Ability to scale and adjust
Recruiting platforms must not be built for just one size and shape of an organization. For example, dragging and dropping individual candidate pipelines in a graphical UI could be effective with 20 applicants but become unsustainable with hundreds or thousands. SmartRecruiters has made fidelity at every scale a primary objective, and as you add new user personas, they will fall in love as the system adapts to them.
3. Prudence and discretion
While suggestions to adapt the UI are valuable, too many of them can be annoying. The right balance is different across users, and adaptive UIs must satisfy all of them. Winston learns from previous user interactions what to ask in the future, forever becoming more intelligent and thoughtful.
4. Support for the ways users want to work
Everyone has favorite communication channels they use every day, whether they gravitate to email, Slack, or WhatsApp. No matter how great a piece of recruiting software is, it shouldn’t try to push its users out of those preferred workflows. Winston is committed to meeting users where they are and letting them set the terms of the interaction.
Future success with Winston at your side
Feeding the momentum toward outstanding recruitment experiences, SmartRecruiters product teams often use terms like “love” and “joy.” As the emissary of collaboration where everyone wins, Winston is your faithful companion. He is charismatic and capable, but also unobtrusive.
Winston has savoir-faire to show up just when you could use some help. For adaptive UI, that often means making software features more easily available or else moving them out of the way. Winston’s job is to make those changes without interrupting your work, so you can focus on what’s important—recruiting candidates that move the company forward.
If you’re ready to turn the page on clunky, cluttered software, get in touch for a demo, and experience that joy we keep talking about.
Sarah Wallace
Lee Ann Prescott